The teacher from Vigevano (Lucio Mastronardi)

Vigevano is a small town in northern Italy; after ww2 it's quickly turning from timid rural village with enchanted reinassance atmosphere into rich industrial centre devoted to shoe-making.
These are the years of the so-called "boom": northern Italy is gradually becoming an important industrial zone, leaving all old rural habits.

Mr Mombelli works as a teacher in the state school, which here stays for a symbol of the uselessness of culture; he tries to cope with the big change, but small industrials grow richer and richer while Mombelli's wife dreams of a decent life that her husband's pay can't grant her. She first starts to work in a factory then convinces him to give up his job and invest his little money in a shoe businness of their own.
Richness comes. And quickly goes, taking away everything with it: family, job, meaning of life.

It may look like any common "rise and fall" story, but this one is actually a faithful mirror of what Italy was sixty years ago (a husband feeling ashamed of his woman having to go to work), and in many ways still is (those small town habits that make turists happy but hide a schyzophrenic way of life).

The novel was made into a movie in 1963. Famous Italian shoes are now mainly made in China btw.