The famous opening scene, as a statue of Christ is carried above Rome by a helicopter, is matched with the close, in which fisherman on the beach find a sea monster in their nets.Two Christ symbols:the statue "beautiful"but false the fish"ugly"but real.During both scenes there are failures of communication The helicopter circles as Marcello tries to get the phone numbers of three sunbathing beauties. At the end, across a beach, he sees the shy girl he met one day when he went to the country in search of peace to write his novel.

* 

She makes typing motions to remind him, but he does not remember, shrugs, and turns away.If the opening and closing scenes are symmetrical, so are many others, matching the sacred and profane and casting doubts on both. An early sequence finds Marcello covering the arrival in Rome of an improbably buxom movie star (Anita Ekberg), and consumed with desire. He follows her to the top of St. Peters, into the bowels of a nightclub, and into the Roman night, where wild dogs howl and she howls back.