La peli has Ana stepping into Simonney's bar, and after a lengthy tale of lovers lost and passion dead, they recognize each other. The ending finds Simonney abandoning his camera and being forgiven by Ana. The movie pays homage to Federico Fellini to a great extent: several references are made to "La Dolce Vita" and "8½" throughout the film. The protagonist is a frustrated, veteran director with a style of his own that grows weary of fame and show business and seeks refuge in women (one of them in particular, Ana, perhaps a reference to Anita Ekberg from "La Dolce Vita"). Obsession
La Dolce Vita because they rendered a woman very gorgeous who could, instead, be a skeleton of squalor and solitude inside." Credit for the creation of Steiner, the intellectual who commits suicide after shooting his two children, goes to co-screenwriter Tullio Pinelli. Having gone to school with Italian novelist Cesare Pavese, Pinelli had closely followed the writer's career and felt that his over-intellectualism had become emotionally sterile, leading to his suicide in a Turin hotel in 1950. This idea of a "burnt-out existence" is carried over to Steiner in the party episode where the sounds of nature are not to be experienced first-hand