“Federico Fellini manages to accomplish with film what mostly abstract painters do – namely, to communicate emotion without ever saying or showing anything in a direct manner, without ever explaining anything, just by a sort of sheer magic.”
—David Lynch

Giulietta Masina (the real-life Mrs. Fellini) is brilliant as a young woman sold into servitude as an assistant to a performing strongman (Anthony Quinn). They go on the road together—La Strada means “the road”—and her life is changed forever by the experience.