From a Roman Balcony
1960 film by Mauro Bolognini
From a Roman Balcony (Italian: La giornata balorda, French: Ça s'est passé à Rome) is a 1960 Italian–French drama film directed by Mauro Bolognini. It is based on several stories by Alberto Moravia, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Pier Paolo Pasolini and Marco Visconti. The Italian theatrical release suffered several censorship problems, including the blocking of screenings, and a criminal complaint against director Bolognini and screenwriters Moravia and Pasolini.
The film was also shown under the alternate English titles Pickup in Rome, A Crazy Day and Love is a Day's Work.
Plot
Davide, a twenty-year-old living in the Roman suburbs, and his girlfriend Ivana have just become parents of a young son. Blamed by both his and Ivana's mother for his idle and irresponsible ways, Davide starts out to look for a day job. On his way, he meets his former girlfriend Marina, who in her own words now works as a "manicure", but is actually a prostitute. After a short sexual encounter, Marina helps him blackmail her client Moglie into giving Davide a job, which consists simply in accompanying driver Carpiti who carries out various tasks for shady industrialist Romani. On their way, the two men cheat prostitute Sabina out of her money, before meeting with their customer. Freya, Romani's mistress, takes an interest in Davide and, after sending Carpiti away under a pretense, sleeps with Davide at the beach.
“From a Roman Balcony” enters the record as 1960 film by Mauro Bolognini. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Roman, Balcony and film can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1753572. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1960.
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This entry incorporates text from “From a Roman Balcony” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.