A 1960 movie by Federico Fellini, starring Marcello Mastroianni, Anita Ekberg, Anouk Aimée, Alain Cuny ... the script was written together by Fellini and the great Ennio Flaiano (major satirist).
The movie takes place in a very recognizable Rome, accompanied by the music of Nino Rota, and it follows "Marcello" (played of course by Marcello Mastroianni, a well-dressed middle-class journalist that basical wastes his life and his talent. This is the Rome of the boom years, the war forgotten, a city suspended between the modernity of the movie industry, primitive Catholic visions and the endless warm Vespa-crossed nights.
Marcello, being a journalist, is suspended between the worlds of the working poor and the idle rich. Together with his colleagues and the photographers, he moves around Rome, constantly smoking and chasing women. He has a stable girlfriend that obsesses about him and attempts suicide, and one friend, that manages to commit suicide. The most famous scene of the movie features the incredible Swedish actress Anita Ekberg dipping in the Fontana di Trevi.
The movie runs almost 170 minutes, and I don't really know how it got the reputation of being a happy movie; it is a very beautiful movie, but devastatingly sad, particularly in the end - where nothing much happens, and Valeria Ciangottini waves to Marcello on the beach while Marcello turns and goes away.