Fellini’s La Strada Get’s Restoration For UK Cinema Release, Watch Trailer

Italian master of cinema Federico Fellini will always be known for 8 1/2 and La Dolce Vita, the culturally aware masterpieces. Before the blinding lights of the big studios, the renowned Italian filmmaker like many of his compadres started with smaller more delicate drama movies. Next month we can celebrate one of those truly magical movies when La Strada returns to UK cinemas and Studiocanal has sent us a gorgeous looking new trailer. Check it out…

Over sixty years since La Strada won the best foreign film at the Oscars (1954), the movie has received a 2k restoration that gives the impression the movie was made this year. A movie that Fellini wants to remind us, life, in general, is like a circus, which in a way is very true.

In a story of true outsiders, Giulietta Masina (Fellini’s wife) plays Gelsomina, a naïve young woman sold by her desperate mother to boorish strongman Zampanò (an immensely charismatic Anthony Quinn) to be both his wife and performance assistant as he tours central Italy. Zampanò – a brute by trade and by nature – repeatedly abuses Gelsomina as she struggles to learn the ropes; meanwhile, she finds a kindred spirit in his rival the Fool (Richard Basehart). Soon all three find themselves part of the same travelling circus, but with tragic consequences.

Transcending the dogmatic underpinnings of the early neorealist movement, La Strada was key to exploring a new poetic sensibility in Italian cinema, as echoed in Nino Rota’s score; and marked Fellini’s definitive move towards a symbolic cinematic language that combined autobiography with universal concerns.

La Strada is set for a UK&Irish cinema release in select cinemas from 19th May and if you’re unlucky to live not close a cinema showing the movie, this little gem will be released on Blu-ray and DVD from 5th June.