This film is about a lonely art collector (Burt Lancaster) who lives in Rome and how his life is changed when the wife of a rightist industralist, Marchesa Bianca Brumonti (Silvana Mangano), her gigolo Konrad (Helmet Berger), her precocious daughter and her daughter's boyfriend Stefano end up renting the upper portion of his luxurious apartment. He gets involved in the affairs of complete strangers much against his will and ends up being even lonlier than before.