I Vittelloni may finally be ranked as Federico Fellini's best film, sufficiently rooted in neorealism to convey an authentic sense of environment, yet touched with the ether of memory in its evocation of youthful boredom and rootlessness in the provincial town where Fellini grew up. The vittelloni are the not-so-young sons of the middle class, perpetually unemployed mother's pets whittling their lives away in childish pursuits. ("They shine during the holiday season and waiting for this takes up the rest of the year," Fellini has said.) They include Fausto (Franco Fabrizi), the flirt headed in spite of himself for the dull pleasures of family life; Alberto (Sordi), the sentimental buffoon who dresses as a woman for the fête; the writer Leopoldo (Trieste), who seeks fame but settles for an affair with a chambermaid; and the rebel Moraldo (Franco Interlenghi), Fellini's autobiographical hero who takes a walk, toward La Dolce Vita. The macho banter and the idiotic arguments, the anti-climax of the feast days and the nostalgia already built in to these young lives: "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" (Pauline Kael).