In postwar Vienna, Austria, Holly Martins, a writer of pulp Westerns, arrives penniless as a guest of his childhood chum Harry Lime, only to learn he has died.
A disfigured woman is helped by a talented composer to recover her face with plastic surgery. Then he discovers that she's a beautiful woman and a talented singer.
A bizarre mechanic tells a traveler the story of a bank employee, Peppino Biancaneve, who with the help of a disc is trying to put together the words he would like to use to ask for the hand of the daughter of the jeweler Carlo Casertoni, but while he mulls over the sentences he should pronounce to his future father-in-law he comes across a strange individual who could be a bringer of bad luck: a jettatore.