As film scholar Mark Shiel has pointed out, when it won the first Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1957, La Strada became the first film to win international success as an example of a new brand of neorealism, "bittersweet and self-conscious".

Rota's score for La strada masterfully conveys moods ranging from energy to poignancy, and it demonstrates his deft handling of music to portray quirky characters.

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

The circus gives viewers a glimpse into Fellini's mind and moviemaking, showing what inspired him and why circus arts, acrobats, clowns – and the whimsical fantasy and extravagance surrounding the circus – were, in Fellini's view, a perfect metaphor for life itself with all its mysteries and magic as well as the ...