Before 1960, celebrity photography existed, but Fellini dramatized it. He turned the chase into the story. In the film, the paparazzi are not villains; they are exhausted participants in the social whirl. They are the original content creators.
Luxury marketing has been obsessed with for six decades. Why? Because the film sells a paradox: the sadness of excess. Modern consumers are cynical; they don’t want to see happy, static wealth. They want "melancholic hedonism."
The film follows Marcello Rubini (Marcello Mastroianni), a gossip journalist, over seven nights and seven dawns. He drifts between the aristocratic villa of a silent film star, the sexual candor of an American heiress (Anita Ekberg), and the tedious intellectualism of a party thrown in a castle.