(Stardust) In the tradition of Fellini's Variety Lights, this is a poignant and dark comedy about third-rate vaudevillians whose lives as entertainers and merry-makers strangely insulate them from the misery surrounding them, yet who live in their own special world of poverty. Alberto Sordi and Monica Vitti portray two dreamy hoofers, Mimmo and Dea Adami, whose heyday comes in the last years of the war but who really are destined never to succeed. Their whistle-stop career suddenly picks up speed when, as the only entertainment around, they are given the royal treatment by the American GIs who expect, and get, a Broadway-type performance. But when the soldiers move north, so does Mimmo's and Dea's moment of glory. Director and star Alberto Sordi notes, "Polvere di Stelle is a nostalgic evocation of a moment of my life.... That is my world, the one in which I started my professional career as an entertainer.... This film shows all our nostalgia for the 1930s in America, that way of dancing.... In other words, making this motion picture was a wonderful, very personal experience."