[1][4][5] While riding on a tram, Cesare, a 53-year-old plumber and widower, witnesses a passenger's sudden death from a heart attack.

In a loosely connected series of scenes, he visits places he hasn't been to before like an airport or an art exhibition, goes to see his former girlfriend Giulia and other workers at their job, or watches residents of a housing area protesting intolerable sanitary conditions.

His Days Are Numbered had been conceived by Petri before his debut film The Assassin (1961),[1][6] but considered not commercial enough by the producers.

[1] His Days Are Numbered premiered on 25 March 1962 at the Mar del Plata International Film Festival.

[1] While initially not a success,[7] film historians and institutions have acknowledged the importance of His Days Are Numbered in later years, seeing influences of neorealism and the French nouvelle vague,[6] Roberto Rossellini, Michelangelo Antonioni and early Jean-Luc Godard in particular,[8] and drawing comparisons to Vittorio De Sica's Umberto D., Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries and Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru.