Like in many other Monicelli movies, the main theme of Amici miei is friendship, seen from a rather bitter point of view. It tells the story of four middle-aged friends in Florence who organize together idle pranks (called zingarate, "gypsy shenanigans") in a continuous attempt to prolong childhood during their adult life.
The story is set in southern Italy and recounts the tragedy of Canio, the lead clown (or pagliaccio in Italian) in a commedia dell'arte troupe, his wife Nedda, and her lover, Silvio. When Nedda spurns the advances of Tonio, another player in the troupe, he tells Canio about Nedda's betrayal. In a jealous rage Canio murders both Nedda and Silvio. Although Leoncavallo's opera was originally set in the late 1860s, Zeffirelli's production is updated to the period between World War I and World War II.
Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni), a famous Italian film director, is suffering from "director's block". Stalled on his new science fiction film that includes veiled autobiographical references, he has lost interest amid artistic and marital difficulties. As Guido struggles half-heartedly to work on the film, a series of flashbacks and dreams delve into his memories and fantasies; they are frequently interwoven with reality.
In occupied Rome (an open city after 14 August 1943), German SS troops are trying to arrest the engineer Giorgio Manfredi, a communist and a leader of the Resistance against the Nazis and Fascists, who is staying in a rooming house. The landlady warns him in time of the Germans' arrival, so that he can elude them by jumping across the rooftops. He goes to the home of another Resistance fighter, Francesco. There he encounters Pina who lives in the next apartment. Pina is Francesco’s fiancée, and is visibly pregnant. She first suspects Giorgio of being a cop and gives him a rough time, but when he makes it clear he is not, she welcomes him into Francesco’s apartment to wait for him. With Pina’s help (she is also part of the Resistance), Giorgio contacts Don Pietro Pellegrini, a Catholic priest who is also helping the Resistance, and asks him to transfer messages and money to a group of Resistance fighters outside the city: because Giorgio is now known to the Gestapo, he cannot do it himself.
Gelsomina (Giulietta Masina), a credulous young woman, learns that her sister Rosa has died since going on the road with the strongman Zampanò (Anthony Quinn). Now the same man has returned a year later to ask her mother if Gelsomina will take Rosa's place. The mother accepts 10,000 lire, and her daughter departs the same day.
Ferdinando Cefalù (Marcello Mastroianni), an impoverished Sicilian nobleman, is married to Rosalia (Daniela Rocca), an unattractive but devoted wife. However, he is in love with his cousin Angela (Stefania Sandrelli), a very much younger and attractive woman whom he sees only during the summers because her family sends her away to the city to a nunnery to receive her education. Besides his wife, he shares his life with his elderly parents and his spinster sister and her boyfriend who runs a funeral business; the family share their once stately palace with his uncles, who are slowly but surely eating away the remainders of the then rich estate of the Baron.
Two friends, Giuseppe Filippucci (Rinaldo Smordoni) and Pasquale Maggi (Franco Interlenghi), test-ride horses. It is their dream to own one for themselves. Though they are saving to purchase a horse, it is difficult for them to afford one, as they are only living off their income from shining shoes in the streets of Rome.
Silvio (Alberto Sordi) is an Italian partisan, he and his companions belong to Italian resistance movement fighting against the fascists and the Nazis. They are at Lake Como. He is helped by Elena (Lea Massari). He spends three months hiding in Elena's grandfather's mill. They fall in love. Silvio is an idealist, probably communist, journalist writer. He goes back to war.
Le 16 janvier 1967, pour le dixième anniversaire de la mort d'Arturo Toscanini, Herbert von Karajan, qui lui vouait une grande admiration et avait été son élève, dirige le Requiem de Verdi à la Scala de Milan. Les 14 et 15 janvier, pour ne pas perturber l'hommage solennel, Clouzot filme le concert dans la salle vide. Il réalise ainsi un film qui tient autant du reportage que du concert filmé.
The film is set in Turin at the end of the 19th century and opens with a scene showing workers of all ages, including young teenager Omero (Franco Ciolli), rising at 5:30 in the morning before heading to a textile factory where they work until 8:30 in the evening.
A Roman small-time crook, Cosimo, is arrested for the attempted theft of a car. After he is convicted and put in prison, he starts haranguing his girlfriend and former accomplices by telling them that he has a plan for a heist but that he needs their help to be freed. In order to assure his release, they find an acquaintance named Peppe (Vittorio Gassman) with a clean criminal record to take the blame for the theft in the hope that the police will release Cosimo. They instead have both of them jailed. While Peppe is in jail, Cosimo tells him the plans for the heist of a safe in a pawnshop. Peppe then reveals that he got off merely with probation, leaving him free to pursue the heist without Cosimo, much to his chagrin.
Giovanni Pontano (Marcello Mastroianni), a distinguished writer and his beautiful wife Lidia (Jeanne Moreau), visit their dying friend Tommaso Garani (Bernhard Wicki) in a hospital in Milan. Giovanni's new book, La stagione (The Season), has just been published and Tommaso praises his friend's work. They drink champagne but Tommaso is unable to hide his severe pain. Shaken by the sight of her dying friend, Lidia leaves saying she'll visit tomorrow. Giovanni stays behind and as he leaves his friend's room, a sick and uninhibited young woman attempts to seduce him before being interrupted by the nurses.
A stranger arrives at the little Mexican border town of San Miguel. Silvanito, the town's innkeeper, tells the Stranger about a feud between two families vying to gain control of the town: on the one side, the Rojo brothers: Don Miguel, Esteban and Ramón; on the other, the family of the town sheriff, John Baxter. The Stranger decides to play each family against the other in order to make money, and proves his speed and accuracy with his gun to both sides by shooting the four men who teased him as he entered town with ease.
The Russian writer Andrei Gorchakov (Oleg Yankovsky) travels to Italy to research the life of 18th-century Russian composer Pavel Sosnovsky, who lived there and committed suicide after his return to Russia. He and his comely interpreter Eugenia travel to a convent in the Tuscan countryside, to look at frescoes by Piero della Francesca. Andrei decides at the last minute that he does not want to enter.
The film opens with Marcello Clerici (Jean-Louis Trintignant) in Paris finalizing preparations to assassinate his former college professor, Luca Quadri (Enzo Tarascio). It frequently returns to the interior of a car driven by Manganiello (Gastone Moschin) as the two of them pursue the professor and his wife.