Frustrated small-town boys with big ideas, the central characters are sons of indulgent, middle-class families, who cadge off their parents, loaf, and dream of women, riches, and glory. Their energies are wasted in idiotic pursuits; whatever dreams or ideals they have are pathetically childish or rotten. The director, Federico Fellini, observes the farce of their lives without condescension; his tone is satirical, yet warm and accepting—the distinctive Fellini tone, in his first fully confident piece of direction. The group suggests an American wolf pack. There is Fausto the flirt (Franco Fabrizi), who will become another unhappy, middle-class family man; plump, ludicrous Alberto the buffoon (Alberto Sordi, Fellini’s “White Sheik” of the previous year, and before that a music-hall actor who first achieved recognition as the dubbed voice of Oliver Hardy); Leopoldo the poet (Leopoldo Trieste), whose naive artistic illusions wilt when he is propositioned by an ancient homosexual actor; and Moraldo (Franco Interlenghi, who a few years earlier had been one of De Sica’s two great child stars in Shoeshine). Fellini’s autobiographical hero, he is the only one who finds the guts to say good-bye to this futile provincial life.