Gli uomini, che mascalzoni... (1932)

In industrious Milan in the 1930s, chauffeur Bruno falls for the reserved Mariuccia, a saleswoman in a perfume shop and the daughter of a taxi driver. Since the girl and her colleagues do not seem to take him seriously when they see him riding a bicycle, Bruno sets out to impress her by picking her up from work in his employer’s car, which he has taken without permission on the pretext that it needs repairs. Instead of taking her home, he drives her to Arona, on Lake Maggiore. On the way back, they stop at a tavern, where they dance together to the song “Parlami d'amore Mariù.” When his employer’s wife comes along the same road and recognizes the car, Bruno pretends that he has only taken it out for a test drive after repairing it, and is forced to take the woman straight back to Milan. Bruno tells Mariuccia that he will be right back, but gets into an accident on the return trip. The girl is left alone, far from home and without money. Having won the tavern keeper’s wife’s sympathy by telling her about her predicament, she is given a place to stay for the night and taken back to the city the next morning. Bruno, fired for nearly wrecking the car, goes to the perfume shop to apologize to Mariuccia, but she receives him coldly, convinced that he made a fool of her, and prompts him to buy an expensive perfume as punishment for his behavior. They lose touch, then happen to meet again when Bruno’s new employer gives Mariuccia a ride in his car. Bruno cannot bear the humiliation of being the girl’s chauffeur and gives up the job he had worked so hard to find, leaving the car and its passengers in the middle of the road. Having discovered that Bruno is not a gentleman but an ordinary working man, Mariuccia is willing to reconsider and give him another chance, but now he wants nothing more to do with her and accuses her of being interested only in rich men. Regretting the way he treated her, Bruno looks for Mariuccia again and finds her at her new job at a stand at the trade fair. Feeling guilty for having unintentionally caused Bruno to be fired, the girl takes advantage of the interest she has aroused in a middle-aged engineer to find Bruno a job at the fair, without letting him know she is responsible. The two are now a couple, but their relationship is once again thrown into crisis by a misunderstanding: one evening, as a gesture of gratitude, Mariuccia finds herself obliged to accompany the aforementioned engineer to the amusement park inside the fair. Bruno, working at a stand a few booths away, hears about it from a saleswoman at a candy stand who has fallen for him and, without a second thought, asks her to go with him to the same place. Bruno pretends to be on familiar terms with the saleswoman, upsetting Mariuccia. But when the blameless girl runs off in tears, Bruno leaves the saleswoman and chases after Mariuccia, catching up with her in a taxi. There, they finally clear things up, and he proposes to her. As it happens, the taxi driver is Mariuccia’s father, who has heard everything and is quite willing to bless their union.