A newlywed, petit bourgeois bureaucrat brings his wife to Rome, in order to attend a papal hearing. However, she disappears. Chasing after her favourite romance photo-novel star, she becomes involved in the shooting of an episode, in an islet outside Rome… And whilst her husband desperately tries to cover up her embarrassing absence, she discovers that the charmers of showbiz are quite superficial after-all. In a story by Antonioni, this comic “morality play” was Fellini’s first failure—unjustly so—seeing, that his knowledge of romance photo-novels; his tender satyrical gaze on provincialism and the corruption of the protagonists’ innocence—made him the ideal director of this film. Only Orson Welles, considered it to be his best. Over the top? Maybe… but the only thing, that we can say with certainty, is that this films honesty, inspiration and humanity are lightyears ahead of today’s films.