In La Strada the road ends at the water, the place where the road began. Gelsomina is no longer with Zampanò. He has lost her like he lost Rosa. No other human beside him, he is alone with the sound of the waves licking at the shore.

Like many of the best neorealist films, La Strada is melodramatic, in the sense that its emotional tenor is rooted in the suffering of the moral figure, the abuse of the hidden and ignored who actually are the ones who can offer redemption to the world.

Nearly 40 years after the film was made, the parable of redemption hidden beneath an apparently picaresque plot had become even more compelling and lyrical.” “La Strada is the movie that perhaps I loved the most.” “The theme for Fellini's spiritual fable is that everyone has a purpose in the universe.

Gelsomina, an apparently somewhat simple-minded, dreamy young woman, learns that her sister Rosa has died after going on the road with the strongman Zampanò.