Down The Ancient Staircase

Mastroianni is the head doctor at an Italian insane asylum in the 1930s. He has a hypothesis that insanity is caused by a virus, and so, caught up in his studies, he hasn't left the hospital grounds in eight years. A young female doctor, Fabian, arrives and finds that the doctor fears for his own sanity but is making life livable by having affairs with the superintendent's wife (Bose), his assistant (Keller), and his colleague's wife (Bouchet). An allegory of the Fascist regime that ran Italy in the 1930s and 1940s, the film falls short of clarity.