AllMovie

A quartet of neighborhood boys plays at banking in Venice in the 1930s as they save flattened bottle caps, pretending they are special coins -- they need 12,000 in order to buy a jazzy red canoe. As they begin to approach their goal, their collection of bottle caps is suddenly stolen from their clubhouse, pushing them forward into a city-wide search for the culprit. This thief is an unknown entity who sends them messages about where to look for their stash of special coins, messages mysteriously signed "The Morca." Along the way to searching out the Morca's identity, the boys roam Venice and have several adventures. Set against their entertaining search with an unexpected shocking ending, are the gathering storm clouds of World War II -- distant, but visible now and again.