La dolce vita (; Italian for "the sweet life" or "the good life") is a 1960 comedy-drama film directed and co-written by Federico Fellini. The film follows Marcello Rubini (Marcello Mastroianni), a journalist writing for gossip magazines, over seven days and nights on his journey through the "sweet life" of Rome in a fruitless search for love and happiness. The screenplay, co-written by Fellini and three other screenwriters, can be divided into a prologue, seven major episodes interrupted by an intermezzo, and an epilogue, according to the most common interpretation.