Beautiful ingénue Liliana (Carla Del Poggio) joins a tawdry music hall troupe and quickly becomes the show's feature attraction in Federico Fellini's debut film, co-directed with neorealist filmmaker Alberto Lattuada. The troupe's aging comic (Peppino De Filippo) falls in love with Liliana, ignores his companion of many years (Giulietta Masina) and hatches a plan to start his own show starring Liliana and himself -- but Liliana has other ideas.