Amelia, a beautiful and irrepressible girl known as "La Rossa", returns from Paris to her country, a small seaside town in southern Italy, where her father is the lighthouse keeper.

Amelia, a beautiful and irrepressible girl known as "La Rossa", returns from Paris to her country, a small seaside town in southern Italy, where her father is the lighthouse keeper. To her father and her fellow villagers she gives the impression that she is married to a rich gentleman. In reality she is only the friend of Pierre Dupont, an elegant Parisian bandit, wanted for a jewelry theft. Pierre Dupont however, actually gives the girl a certain economic comfort. Before leaving for France, Amelia was engaged to Salvatore, a humble fisherman from the country, who now has a wife, Maria, who helps her husband by being a home tailor, and a daughter, Carmelina. Amelia begins to approach several fishermen who own a boat, but is always rejected for her reputation as a woman that gives nothing in exchange for nothing. During a check by the Carabinieri at the Casa della Rossa, to understand the reason for Amelia's presence in the village and the origin of her wealth, the sergeant warns the girl to be aware of how she maintained herself even before leaving for Paris. Only the father seems to want to ignore reality. Amelia, once alone, reproaches her father how she was left alone, without a mother, among the men who wanted her and how he got drunk by spending the money she'd given him without ever wondering how she got it. Meanwhile Pierre, the alleged husband of la Rossa, arrives in the country incognito, being wanted for a large theft of jewels in Paris and Amelia, her lover and accomplice, helps him to hide. In the meantime, the girl manages to get close to Salvatore's family by earning the affection of his daughter, giving her several gifts, and causing Maria jealousy, also tormented by the fact of not being able to give Salvatore even a son, from him much coveted, due to his precarious health.