Through the pattern of this film a ‘Test’ at Lord’s runs like a thread and a broadcast commentary on the match is imposed on the background of cricket as a game, a craft, an interest of a people, a piece of history.
Lilli Marlene, a French girl working as a bar maid in her uncle's café in Benghazi, Libya, turns out to be the girl that the popular German wartime song Lili Marleen had been written for before the war, so both the British and the Germans try to use her for propaganda purposes - especially as it turns out that she can sing as well.
In Milan, the beggar Carlone has formed a brotherhood. Carlone's sister Anna, is a poor blind girl. One day Carlone saves a mutilated, who tried to end his days.