 Others saw it differently. When the 1954 Venice Film Festival jury awarded La Strada the Silver Lion while ignoring Luchino Visconti's Senso, a physical brawl broke out when Visconti's assistant Franco Zeffirelli started blowing a whistle during Fellini's acceptance speech, only to be attacked by Moraldo Rossi. The disturbance left Fellini pale and shaken and Masina in tears. Marxist critics such as Guido Aristarco rejected the film on ideological grounds, particularly objecting to what they considered Christian notions of conversion and redemption: "We don't say, nor have we ever said, that La Strada is a badly directed and acted film. We have declared, and do declare, that it is wrong; its perspective is wrong."
