(Italy / 1954 / Directed by Frederico Fellini)

A brutish strongman takes a young woman on the road in a traveling circus act in Fellini’s La Strada, winner of the first Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language Film. Re-harnessing the pain, solitude, beauty, and spectacle at its center, this 4k restoration brings brilliant new life to iconic performances from Guilietta Masina and Anthony Quinn.

It’s hard to forget the face of Gelsomina (Masina), with her round cheeks, painted smile, and wide eyes that give her an almost doll-like appearance. She rolls along reluctantly in Zampanò’s (Quinn) motorcycle-trailer, performing as a clowning sidekick to his pitifully routine act of breaking chains across his chest. Disguising his own inner loneliness, Zampanò has a pension for drink and gravitates toward primitive, immediate tastes. With very little self-restraint, his fury is provoked to its breaking point when he encounters an old rival in highwire artist “The Fool” (Richard Basehart), leading to trouble for both himself and Gelsomina. Fellini’s inspiration for La Strada started with a story surrounded by a diffuse sense of guilt, of two people who stay together even if that decision is fatal. Drawing from old photographs of his wife as a child and his own memories of growing up in the coastal town of Rimini, his film delivers a fable of love and cruelty with moments of curious charm, metaphor, and larger-than-life performances that have won the hearts of audiences and critics worldwide for decades.

Unrated / 1 hr 48 mins.