Trivia / La Strada

• Creator's Favorite Episode: Fellini called this film the one closest to his heart.
• Dawson Casting: Gelsomina seems like she's around 18 or so. Giulietta Masina was in her 30s at the time.
• Fake Nationality: Anthony Quinn (born in Mexico, largely raised in Los Angeles) and Richard Basehart (born in Ohio) as Italians.
• Looping Lines: Rather than actual dialogue, the actors would recite numbers from 1-to-30 to create general "lip flaps" that would be dubbed over later (since La Strada, like most Italian movies at the time, was shot without sound). This process, called "the number system" or "numerological dictation", was intended as a workaround of the on-set language barrier (two of the stars were Americans who didn't speak Italian). Fellini liked it so much he wound up using it in most of his future films.
• Playing Against Type: Richard Basehart, an actor known for playing stoic authority figures like Admiral Nelson, plays a mischievous clown inspired by The Tramp.
• Referenced by...: Jean-Paul Belmondo plays the film's theme by Nino Rota with a trumpet in Hold-up at one point when his character is in Rome.
• Same Language Dub: Quinn and Basehart were respectively dubbed into Italian by Arnoldo Foà and Stefano Sibaldi, but, for the English dub, they voiced themselves.
• What Could Have Been:
  • De Laurenttis and Ponti originally wanted to cast Burt Lancaster and Silvana Mangano (the former's wife) as the leads.
  • At some point, there were plans to turn the license the character of Gelsomina into a marketing icon, replete with toys and a themed candy. Walt Disney even floated the idea of an animated film with her.
• Word of God: Fellini stated each of the principal characters in the film represented the elements: Zampanò is Earth, Gelsomina is Water, and The Fool is Air.

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