Paris 1940: During a meeting of the Communist Party a clumsy and ingenuous "tovarich", Mr. Hogan is sent to Italy for a secret mission: he will help a Russian comrade to cross the frontier. Rome, Cinecittà Studios 1940: the set for the first Italian film in colours, a "regime movie", is in progress. Skilled Technicolor technicians are coming to Cinecittà from US to teach Italians how to work with colour print, but they are stopped in the custom office.
Mr. Hogan ends up by chance in Cinecittà and is taken for one of the Technicolor technicians. He is involved gradually in the set organization and, inspired by his Communist ideology, persuades the director to focus the feature on the real and hard life of the countryside, with workers and peasants as actors. Mr. Hogan starts a political propaganda on the set and tries to persuade everyone to join the Communist Party, but the "actors", loyal supporters of the Fascist Regime, get angry and revolt against him. The peasant "revolt" is filmed: the first neorealist scene of the Italian cinema!
Mr. Hogan escapes and brings the film to his French comrades, to show them "the Italian Revolution” . . .