L'armata Brancaleone

The movie opens with a small Italian village being stormed by a band of Hungarian pillagers. When the murders and rapes are over, a German knight arrives and bravely kills the bandits. However, as he is healing his wounds he is attacked by two of the surviving villagers and one of the thieves. They throw the wounded knight into a river. The attackers try to sell the knight's armor and weapons to a miserly Jewish merchant who finds among his belongings a letter of donation by the Holy Roman Emperor, granting the knight the fief of Aurocastro, an Apulian town. Vittorio Gassman plays Brancaleone da Norcia, a poor and incompetent knight who is recruited by a group of rogues to lead them on an adventure to take possession of this supposedly wealthy land.