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)".) The years since its initial release have solidified the high estimation of "La Strada". It holds a 97% rating on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes from 31 reviewers who, on average, scored it 8.7 on a scale of 10. Its numerous appearances on lists of
La Dolce Vita because they rendered a woman very gorgeous who could, instead, be a skeleton of squalor and solitude inside." Credit for the creation of Steiner, the intellectual who commits suicide after shooting his two children, goes to co-screenwriter Tullio Pinelli. Having gone to school with Italian novelist Cesare Pavese, Pinelli had closely followed the writer's career and felt that his over-intellectualism had become emotionally sterile, leading to his suicide in a Turin hotel in 1950. This idea of a "burnt-out existence" is carried over to Steiner in the party episode where the sounds of nature are not to be experienced first-hand