An Italian man's lifelong conflict between paganism and Catholicism is the subject of this very personal film written and directed by Nino Manfredi, who also stars. He portrays one Parisi Benedetto, fortyish and still a virgin following a confused childhood in which one primal trauma after another sent him into the waiting arms of his patron saint, a lesser martyr named Eusebio. Benedetto rather naturally goes out for monkhood, but piousness is already beginning to choke and he is ejected for lasciviousness. As a traveling salesman in the lingerie line, still clinging absurdly to his chastity, he meets a pragmatic atheist in the person of Lionel Stander, who relieves him of his beliefs and introduces him to his daughter (Delia Boccardo); she offers Benedetto his first mature liaison. "A curse helps you live, a prayer helps you die," his crusty old mentor tells him; but the aphorism proves all too true when the cynic accepts last rites, sending Benedetto back to square one.