Something as simple as a herring roasting on a hearth, or a meal of bread, wine and winter melon, takes on the humble aura of a Caravaggio painting in this masterful film. A tragicomedy involving an orange peddler, an Italian recently returned from America, two 'stinky' police officers, a guilt-stricken landowner, a traveling knife sharpener and, perhaps most unforgettably, an indomitable peasant mother who reminisces about meals of snails and wild chicory, her husband's philandering and cowardice, and her own father's belief in an honest days labor, socialism, and St. Joseph.