 Critic Roger Ebert, in his book The Great Movies, has described the current critical consensus as holding that La Strada was the high point of Fellini's career and that, after this film, "his work ran wild through the jungles of Freudian, Christian, sexual and autobiographical excess". (Ebert, himself, disagrees, seeing La Strada as "part of a process of discovery that led to the masterpieces La Dolce Vita ( 1960), 8 1 / 2 (1963) and Amarcord (1974)". )
