Federico Fellini

La strada

La strada

There has never been a face quite like that of Giulietta Masina. Her husband, the legendary Federico Fellini, directs her as Gelsomina in La strada, the film that launched them both to international stardom. Gelsomina is sold by her mother into the employ of Zampanò (Anthony Quinn), a brutal strongman in a traveling circus. When Zampanò encounters an old rival in highwire artist the Fool (Richard Basehart), his fury is provoked to its breaking point. With La strada, Fellini left behind the familiar signposts of Italian neorealism for a poetic fable of love and cruelty, evoking brilliant performances and winning the hearts of audiences and critics worldwide. The Criterion Collection is proud to present La strada, winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 1956.

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Film Info

  • Italy
  • 1954
  • 108 minutes
  • Black & White
  • 1.33:1
  • Italian
  • Spine #219

Special Features

  • New high-definition digital transfer, with restored image and sound
  • Video introduction by Martin Scorsese
  • Audio commentary by Peter Bondanella, author of The Cinema of Federico Fellini
  • Federico Fellini’s Autobiography, a 2000 documentary originally broadcast on Italian television
  • Optional English-dubbed soundtrack featuring the voices of Anthony Quinn and Richard Basehart
  • New essay by film scholar Peter Matthews
  • New and improved English subtitle translation
  • Optimal image quality: RSDL dual-layer edition

Cover by Aesthetic Apparatus

Purchase Options

Collector's Sets

Collector's Set

Essential Fellini

Essential Fellini

Blu-ray Box Set

15 Discs

$199.96

Collector's Set

Essential Art House: 50 Years of Janus Films

Essential Art House: 50 Years of Janus Films

DVD Box Set

50 Discs

$650.00

Special Features

  • New high-definition digital transfer, with restored image and sound
  • Video introduction by Martin Scorsese
  • Audio commentary by Peter Bondanella, author of The Cinema of Federico Fellini
  • Federico Fellini’s Autobiography, a 2000 documentary originally broadcast on Italian television
  • Optional English-dubbed soundtrack featuring the voices of Anthony Quinn and Richard Basehart
  • New essay by film scholar Peter Matthews
  • New and improved English subtitle translation
  • Optimal image quality: RSDL dual-layer edition

Cover by Aesthetic Apparatus

La strada
Cast
Giulietta Masina
Gelsomina Di Constanzo
Anthony Quinn
Zampanò
Richard Basehart
The Fool
Aldo Silvani
Widow
Livia Venturini
Nun
Credits
Director
Federico Fellini
Screenplay
Federico Fellini
Screenplay
Tullio Pinelli
with the collaboration of
Ennio Flaiano
Based on a story by
Federico Fellini
Based on a story by
Tullio Pinelli
Dialogue
Ennio Flaiano
Director of photography
Otello Martelli
Music
Nino Rota
Editing
Leo Catozzo
Assistant director
Moraldo Rossi
Production director
Luigi Giacosi

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Explore

Federico Fellini

Writer, Director

Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini

One of Italy’s great modern directors, Federico Fellini was a larger-than-life maestro who created an inimitable cinematic style combining surreal carnival with incisive social critique. While his most popular—and accessible—film, the darkly nostalgic childhood memoir Amarcord, is a great entryway into his oeuvre, 8½, a collage of memories, dreams, and fantasies about a director’s artistic crisis, is perhaps his masterpiece. In his early career, Fellini was both a screenwriter for neorealist pioneer Roberto Rossellini and a newspaper caricaturist in postwar Rome, competing influences he would bring together with startling results. After such early works as I vitelloni, Fellini broke away from neorealism’s political strictures with the beloved La strada, and from there boldly explored his obsessions with the circus, societal decadence, spiritual redemption, and, most controversially, women, in such films as Nights of Cabiria, Juliet of the Spirits, and And the Ship Sails On.

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