“La Strada” uses cinema so expertly, it creates the kind of impact and emotional experience you can only get from a movie. A landmark in Italian cinema, this powerhouse of a film became one of the world's most influential films, making Fellini and his wife (the film's star Giulietta Masina) internationally famous.

The film tells the story of Gelsomina, a simple-minded young woman (Giulietta Masina) bought from her mother by Zampanò (Anthony Quinn), a brutish strongman who takes her with him on the road.

La Strada is structurally, and titularly, a road film; “la strada” literally means “the road” in Italian.

A melding of the neorealism in Fellini's past with the fable elements that were to dominate his future, La Strada is basically a three-character drama about the loneliness and the elusiveness of love. Using the grit of neorealism to combat any excessive sentimentality, Fellini...