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 the angelic Paola; they are framed by a prologue (Jesus over Rome) and epilogue (the monster fish) giving the film its innovative and symmetrically symbolic structure. The evocations are: seven deadly sins, seven sacraments, seven virtues, seven days of creation. Other critics disagree, Peter Bondanella argues that "any critic of "La Dolce Vita" not mesmerized by the magic number seven will find it almost impossible to organize the numerous sequences on a strictly numerological basis". The critic Robert Richardson suggests that the originality of "La Dolce Vita" lies in a new form of film narrative that mines "an aesthetic of