| Director | Roberto Rossellini |
|---|
Alex and Katherine Joyce are a couple from England who have traveled by car to Italy to sell a villa near Naples that they have recently inherited from Alex's deceased Uncle Homer. The trip is intended as a vacation for Alex, a workaholic businessman given to brusqueness and sarcasm. Katherine is more sensitive, and the journey has evoked poignant memories of a poet friend, Charles Lewington, now deceased.
Conversing as they drive through the Italian countryside, Alex and Katherine arrive in Naples and run into Judy, an old friend, and her party. They join and have drinks and dinner. The next day they are given a lengthy room-by-room tour of Uncle Homer's villa by its caretakers, Tony Burton, a former British soldier, and Natalia Burton, the Italian wife Tony married after the war.
Within days of their arrival, the couple's relationship becomes strained amid mutual misunderstandings, buried anger and jealousy on both sides. The two begin to spend their days separately. Alex takes a side trip to the island of Capri. His attempts to have a nice evening all fail, one with a woman who misses her husband, and one with a morose prostitute.
Katherine tours Naples. On the third day of her visit, she tours the large, ancient statues at the Naples Museum. On the sixth day, she visits the Phlegraean Fields with their volcanic curiosities. On another day, she accompanies Natalie to the Fontanelle cemetery, with its stacks of unidentified disinterred human skulls that are adopted and honored by local people.
On the last day, Alex and Katherine impetuously agree to divorce following an explosive argument. They are interrupted by Tony, who insists that they go with him to Pompeii for an extraordinary opportunity. There, the three witness the discovery of another couple who had been buried in ashes during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius nearly 2000 years earlier, leaving Katherine profoundly disturbed. She and Alex depart Pompeii only to be caught up in the procession for Saint Gennaro in Naples. Katherine is swept away in the crowd, and Alex goes after her and retrieves her. They embrace, and Katherine says, "Tell me that you love me!" He responds, "Well, if I do, will you promise not to take advantage of me?" The film concludes with a crane shot showing the couple embracing passionately amid the continuing religious procession.