Lolotta, a kind old woman,
discovers a baby in her cabbage patch and adopts the boy, who she names Totò. She teaches him things like math, but also instills him with joy and wonder, and they live together happily until he is 11, when Lolotta dies. Totò is sent to an
orphanage, where he stays until reaching adulthood. Cast out alone into the cold Milanese winter, Totò, who has not lost his openhearted optimism, winds up settling in a
shantytown on the outskirts of the city. Totò's presence initiates a transformation in the shantytown, and soon it begins to become a real community, with the inhabitants working together to build sturdier and more elaborate structures along named streets surrounding a central square. New arrivals are welcomed, and the community grows. One day, Brambi and Mobbi, two wealthy businessmen, come to look at the plot of land on which the squatters are living, as Mobbi is considering purchasing it from Brambi. Totò invites them to warm their hands at a small fire, and an uncomfortable Mobbi, who does not like Brambi's price for the land anyway, makes a speech saying the squatters should not have to move, and that they are all brothers. The squatters cheer Mobbi as he and Brambi beat a hasty retreat. During a celebration, as a hole is being dug for a
maypole, oil is discovered beneath the shantytown, though the residents initially mistake the clear liquid for water. Rappi, a scheming resident who does not get along with his neighbors, alerts Mobbi in exchange for a reward, and Mobbi promptly purchases the land and sends one of his employees to tell the squatters to leave. The residents drive the man away, and Totò brings the leaders of the settlement to talk with Mobbi, as he believes the magnate's earlier speech was sincere. While he delays the leadership of the shantytown in his office, Mobbi sends his personal police force to begin the evictions, and Totò and his comrades return to discover their neighbors defeated. They lead a charge that pushes back the officers, but then Mobbi arrives with more forces, and the residents are driven back against the railroad tracks by smoke bombs. Totò climbs the maypole and waves his handkerchief as a white flag, but, just then, the ghostly spirit of Lolotta comes down from the sky and gives him a magical dove, saying it will allow him to do whatever he wants, before she flies off, chased by two angels. Using the dove, Totò drives away Mobbi and his troops. His neighbors have noticed the miraculous occurrences, however, and they start to ask him for things. Some requests are practical, and many are not, but he does not discriminate, and spends the next several hours granting as many wishes as he can. With difficulty, Totò eventually slips away to talk with Edvige, a young woman with whom he is smitten. She is initially frightened of him, but he denies there is anything magical or holy about him, and she gradually relaxes. All she can think to ask for is a new pair of shoes, but, after they kiss, Totò offers to give Edvige the Sun. As they watch it rise (after having set not long before), the angels take back the dove. Unfortunately, Mobbi's regrouped troops made a plan to attack at sunrise. They storm into the shantytown and quickly overrun the residents and herd them into police wagons. Edvige evades capture and finds a dove, which she hurries to bring to Totò, handing him the bird through the bars just as the squatters are being taken past
Milan's central square. It is just an ordinary dove, but Lolotta almost immediately appears and swaps it for the magical one, which she has retrieved from the angels, who then take her and the ordinary dove up to heaven. Totò makes the police wagons fall apart and yells for the squatters to grab broomsticks from the workers sweeping the square. They take off, flying over the
Milan Cathedral on their way "towards a land where 'good morning' really means 'good morning'!" ==Cast==