Directed by Federico Fellini • 1954 • Italy
Starring Giulietta Masina, Anthony Quinn, Richard Basehart
With this breakthrough film, Federico Fellini launched both himself and his wife and collaborator Giulietta Masina to international stardom, breaking with the neorealism of his early career in favor of a personal, poetic vision of life as a bittersweet carnival. The infinitely expressive Masina registers both childlike wonder and heartbreaking despair as Gelsomina, loyal companion to the traveling strongman Zampanò (Anthony Quinn, in a toweringly physical performance), whose callousness and brutality gradually wear down her gentle spirit. Winner of the very first Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language Film, LA STRADA (“The Road”) possesses the purity and timeless resonance of a fable and remains one of cinema’s most exquisitely moving visions of humanity struggling to survive in the face of life’s cruelties.
Up Next in Sight and Sound Directors’ Poll: Greatest Films of All Time
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The Rules of the Game
Directed by Jean Renoir • 1939 • France
Considered one of the greatest films ever made, The Rules of the Game (La règle du jeu), by Jean Renoir, is a scathing critique of corrupt French society cloaked in a comedy of manners in which a weekend at a marquis' country château lays bare some ugly tr...
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L’avventura
Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni • 1960 • France, Italy
Starring Gabriele Ferzetti, Monica VittiMichelangelo Antonioni invented a new film grammar with this masterwork. An iconic piece of challenging 1960s cinema and a gripping narrative on its own terms, L’AVVENTURA concerns the enigmatic di...
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PlayTime
Directed by Jacques Tati • 1967 • France
Starring Jacques Tati, Barbara Dennek, Georges MontantJacques Tati’s gloriously choreographed, nearly wordless comedies about confusion in an age of high technology reached their apotheosis with PLAYTIME. For this monumental achievement, a nearly three-y...
