The film follows the Parondi family—a widow and her five sons—as they migrate from the impoverished rural south (Basilicata) to the booming industrial north of Milan.

Visconti, a communist aristocrat, used the film to address —the socio-economic disparity between Italy's agrarian South and industrial North.

: While the move is driven by the hope of a better life, the family unit eventually fractures under the pressures of urban alienation.