Plot summary

Seven days (and nights) in the life of a Marcello, a Roman journalist torn between making something serious of his life or drifting along on a pleasant if empty stream of casual affairs and profitable but meaningless newspaper and magazine work. In the course of the week, he flirts with a visiting movie star, has a couple of encounters with a bored socialite (one of them in a prostitute's bedroom), is shocked when Steiner, a "serious" writer and deep thinker, kills himself and his children, and generally ignores his adoring girlfriend. In the end, he seems to have cut himself adrift on a sea of frivolity and self-disgust, with no real idea of how to find his way back "home."—mp99