La terrazza is a 1980 Italian drama film directed by Ettore Scola. The all-star cast features the best of Italian Cinema of its era: Marcello Mastroianni, Ugo Tognazzi, Vittorio Gassman, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Serge Reggiani, Stefano Satta Flores, Stefania Sandrelli, Carla Gravina, Ombretta Colli, Milena Vukotic. The film director Ettore Scola and the screenwriter Agenore Incrocci make cameo appearances.

Plot

On a terrace in Rome, some old friends and colleagues, guests of a living room couple, periodically meet. The film focuses on the days following one of these encounters and recounts this time span in five different episodes from five different points of view. The first episode tells of Enrico, an uninspired screenwriter who ends up in the throes of a very heavy nervous breakdown; the second episode tells of Luigi, an out-of-fashion, pleasure-seeking, womanizing journalist who tries to win back his wife, a politically engaged journalist who is twenty years his junior, and actively pursuing feminist causes; the third episode tells of Sergio, an anorexic and clinically depressed RAI official; the fourth episode tells of Amedeo, a successful film producer struggling with the artistic ambitions of his wife, who in fact endorses the career of a haughty director of scabrous arthouse films, and with which he no longer has any relationship despite his efforts to rekindle; the last episode tells of Mario, a deputy of the Italian Communist Party, facing a strong existential crisis who finds himself cultivating an adulterous relationship. At the end of these five stories, the film closes with a new meeting on that same terrace, which takes place a year later.

Cast

Awards