A young Federico Fellini gets a helping hand from veteran Alberto Lattuada as co-director on the future master’s first film, a nominal neo-realist comedy/drama about a poor traveling variety troupe that gets a bolt of energy, and audience, when beautiful and enterprising Carla Del Poggio joins the ensemble. Some future Fellini staples are present here – the emphasis on unique, grotesque, and downtrodden faces, the sideshow atmosphere, the use of wife Giulietta Masina as the film’s heart and pathos – but Lattuada’s presence is indelible, especially in the Rome sequences where our hero, a broad comic named Checco, travels the streets picking up bohemian performers for his new act. For such an important film in the development of a renowned filmmaker, Criterion’s no-extras DVD is surprisingly weak, though like with the re-release of “Amarcord”, we can only hope a 2-disk special edition will eventually be in the works.