Vittorio de Sica co-writes and directs this Italian drama starring Sophia Loren. In 1943, at the height of the Second World War, widowed shopkeeper Cesira (Loren) leaves her grocery store in Rome to escape the bombing of the Allies. Along with her teenage daughter, Rosetta (Eleonora Brown), she heads for her native, rural village of Ciociaria. The road is long and arduous but when they arrive in the mountains, the women meet Michel Di Libero (Jean-Paul Belmondo), with whom Rosetta quickly falls in love. When the Allied troops eventually leave Italy, Cesira decides to return to Rome with her daughter only for them both to experience the horrors of war that they had hoped to escape. The film won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign-Language Foreign Film while Loren won a BAFTA and an Academy Award for her performance.

Upon leaving jail, petty criminal Charlie Croker (Michael Caine) inherits a carefully planned $4,000,000 gold robbery in Italy. With the original mastermind of the plan murdered, Croker needs financial backing and finds it in Mr Bridger (Noel Coward in his last screen role), a quintessential English crime boss still incarcerated by Her Majesty's Prison Service. Bridger supplies Charlie with his own gang of bank robbers, getaway drivers and computer whizz-kids, and helps him plan the heist (during the practice runs Caine utters the infamous phrase 'you were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off'), which results in the world's biggest traffic jam. The gang's getaway in red, white and blue minis is accompanied by the tune 'Getta Bloomin Move On' (aka 'Self Preservation Society') written by Quincy Jones and George Martin.