As in Nights Of Cabiria, this film is a picaresque that simply follows these poor souls across Italy in Zampano’s bedraggled little caravan/covered wagon, towed by his cheap motorcycle. Despite his early rape of her, his cheating on her, his physical and emotional abuse, Gelsomina somehow feels that she has a duty to Zampano — perhaps out of family honor, or the fact that he often claims her as a common law wife to strangers who might frown upon a young woman living so reckless a life with an obviously older man. We never really find out why. Of course, women often masochistically stay with men who use and abuse them for they lack the self-confidence and self-knowledge to leave. In this sense, La Strada is clearly a realistic film, psychologically speaking.

On the plus side, Zampano does teach Gelsomina a trade, being an entertainer, and she quickly becomes the star of their act. Masina’s affinities to Charlie Chaplin, which would haunt her career, are clearly seen in an early scene where Zampano gives her some outfits, and she chooses a black bowler quite like The Tramp’s, and even makes Chaplinesque facial and bodily motions. When she finally leaves Zampano, she first encounters The Fool, with his high wire act, as hundreds watch him in a town square. We cannot tell whether she is smitten with him romantically, or merely fascinatedly, as a child. Zampano soon retrieves her and forces her back into his employ, and the two join a traveling circus, where The Fool, an unexplainedly bitter man, is now performing. The antipathy between the two men is palpable, and Zampano won’t even let Gelsomina perform a musical act with him, with her trumpet, to make some extra money. The final straw between them comes when The Fool heckles Zampano’s strongman routine at the circus. After a few more scenes, Zampano even tries to kill The Fool, and is carted off to jail for using a knife.

Then comes one of the best scenes in the film, where The Fool, later that night, displays humor and cruelty, wisdom and arrogance, by mocking Gelsomina’s looks, her feelings for Zampano and his for her. He offers her a job on the road with him, after the circus has offered her a job, after banning both Zampano and The Fool from their employ, and he may be expressing sexual feelings of love for her, yet knows that he cannot compete for her heart against Zampano — whatever bizarre hold the brute has on her. He even seems to have a perverse sort of affection and contemptuous admiration for Zampano, and finally wishes Gelsomina to stay with him, and improve his enemy’s miserable life, as her own purpose, for the most important thing he imparts to her is a sense of self-worth by declaring that even a pebble has a purpose in the universe. He says, "Everything in this world is good for something... If it were useless, then everything would be useless - even the stars."