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.

Zampanò makes his living as an itinerant street performer, entertaining crowds by breaking an iron chain bound tightly across his chest, then passing the hat for tips.

Fellini's creative process for La Strada began with vague feelings, "a kind of tone," he said, "that lurked, which made me melancholy and gave me a diffused sense of guilt, like a shadow hanging over me.

[10] At that point, Fellini sketched these images, a habitual tendency that he claimed he had learned early in his career when he had worked in provincial music halls and had to draw the characters and sets.

When Rovere read the script for La Strada, he began to weep, raising Fellini's hopes, only to have them dashed when the producer announced that the screenplay was like great literature, but that "as a film this wouldn't make a lira.

"[16] By the time it was fully complete, Fellini's shooting script was nearly 600 pages long, with every shot and camera angle detailed and filled with notes reflecting intensive research.

[19] Ultimately, Fellini drew his three leading players from people associated with the 1954 film Donne Proibite (Angels of Darkness), directed by Giuseppe Amato, in which Masina played the very different role of a madam.

[21] When Masina introduced Quinn to her husband, the actor was disconcerted by Fellini's insistence that the director had found his Zampanò, later remembering: "I thought he was a little bit crazy, and I told him I wasn't interested in the picture, but he kept hounding me for days.

[22] Basehart, too, had been greatly impressed by I Vitelloni, and agreed to take the role for much less than his usual salary, in part because he was very attracted by Fellini's personality, saying: "It was his zest for living, and his humor.

[28] This changed as soon as executives at Paramount viewed the rushes of the scene and lauded Masina's performance, resulting in De Laurentiis announcing that he had her on an exclusive and ordering her to sign a hastily prepared contract, at approximately a third of Quinn's salary.

The temperature had dropped to -5 °C, often resulting in no heat or hot water, necessitating more delays and forcing the cast and crew to sleep fully dressed and wear hats to keep warm.

[29] The new schedule caused a conflict for Anthony Quinn, who was signed to play the title role in Attila, a 1954 epic, also produced by De Laurentiis and directed by Pietro Francisci.

The plan often required the actor to get up at 3:30 am to capture the "bleak early light" that Fellini insisted on, and then leave at 10:30 to drive to Rome in his Zampanò outfit so he could be on the set in time to transform into Attila the Hun for afternoon shooting.

[19] Giacosi also secured the services of the Zamperla Circus, which supplied a number of stuntmen who could play themselves,[19] including Basehart's double, a high-wire artist who refused to perform when firemen arrived with a safety net.

[33] When a crowd scene was required, Giacosi convinced the local priest to move a celebration of the town's patron saint on 8 April up by a few days, thus securing the presence of some 4,000 unpaid extras.

[33] To guarantee that the crowd did not dissipate as the hours passed, Fellini instructed assistant director Rossi to shout "Get the rooms ready for Totò and Sophia Loren" (two of the most popular Italian entertainers of the period), so nobody left.

'"[42] Since he didn't need to worry about noise while shooting a scene, Fellini kept up a running commentary during filming, a practice that scandalized more traditional filmmakers, like Elia Kazan: "He talked through each take, in fact yelled at the actors.

As an example, ducks and chickens appear on the screen throughout Gelsomina's conversation with the nun, but, reflecting the girl's growing sense of enlightenment concerning her place in the world, the quacking and clucking of barnyard fowl dissolves into the chirping of songbirds.

[39] It cost $25,000 to dub La Strada into English, but after the film started to receive its many accolades, it was re-released in the United States on the art-house circuit in its Italian version, using subtitles.

[39] To these are added a fourth recurring theme that appears in the very first sequence, after Gelsomina meets Zampanò, and is often interrupted or silenced in his presence, occurring less and less frequently and at increasingly lower volumes as the film progresses.

Rota, unhappy with that plan, wrote an original motif (with echoes of the "Larghetto" from Dvořák's Opus 22 Serenade for Strings in E major[52]) with rhythmic lines matched to Corelli's piece that synchronize with Gelsomina's movements with the trumpet and Il Matto's with the violin.

In 1994, a new print was financed by filmmaker Martin Scorsese,[54] who has acknowledged that since childhood he has related to the character of Zampanò, bringing elements of the self-destructive brute into his films Taxi Driver and Raging Bull.

Tullio Cicciarelli of Il Lavoro nuovo saw the film as "an unfinished poem," left unfinished deliberately by the filmmaker for fear that "its essence be lost in the callousness of critical definition, or in the ambiguity of classification,"[57] while Ermanno Continin of Il Secolo XIX praised Fellini as "a master story-teller": The narrative is light and harmonious, drawing its essence, resilience, uniformity and purpose from small details, subtle annotations and soft tones that slip naturally into the humble plot of a story apparently void of action.

"[61] Reviewing for Corriere della Sera, Arturo Lanocita argued that the film "gives the impression of being a rough copy that merely hints at the main points of the story ... Fellini seems to have preferred shadow where marked contrast would have been more effective.

[67] In his March 1955 review for Arts magazine, Jean Aurel cited Giulietta Masina's performance as "directly inspired by the best in Chaplin, but with a freshness and sense of timing that seem to have been invented for this film alone."

"[68] For influential film critic and theorist André Bazin, Fellini's approach was the very opposite of psychological realism that maintains analysis followed by the description of feelings.

"),[72] while more favorable assessments were provided by Newsweek ("novel and arguable")[73] and Saturday Review ("With La Strada Fellini takes his place as the true successor to Rossellini and De Sica.").

The website's critics consensus reads, "Giulietta Masina and Anthony Quinn's pitiable pair of outsiders provide a poignant contrast between gentleness and might in Federico Fellini's unforgettable parable.

Zampanò is here, at the center of a debased culture once again: a spiritually abandoned savage, who, trudging in a circle, makes a show of breaking voluntarily assumed chains--his destiny to burrow at last in shifting sand with the tide coming in and the sky bereft of illusion, having rejected the Clown and destroyed the Fool in himself."

[110] Nancy Cartwright, the voice of Bart Simpson, was so impressed by Giulietta Masina's work in La Strada that she tried to obtain theatrical rights to the film for a stage production in New York.