A great collection of three films from Italian maestro Federico Fellini
In Nights of Cabiria (1956), Cabiria (Giuletta Masina) is a resilient Italian sex worker who, despite the various disappointments which come her way, always looks on the bright side of life. Her optimism is threatened, however, when she is dumped first by a glamorous film star (Amedo Nazzari), then by her supposedly respectable fiance, Oscar (Francois Perier), who also absconds with Cabiria's life savings.
In La Strada (1954), a bullying, brutish strongman (Anthony Quinn) cruelly abuses his naive young mistress (Giulietta Masina), who also assists him in his performances and acts as his virtual slave. They take up with a small travelling circus, where the girl's friendship with an acrobatic clown (Richard Basehart) leads to tragedy.
In The White Sheik (1951), when a provincial Italian couple arrives in Rome for a honeymoon, the wife (Brunella Bovo) sets off in search of her photo-romance magazine idol, the 'White Sheik' (Alberto Sordi), and leaves her husband to wander the streets of the city alone. When she actually finds the Sheik and then finds herself alone on a yacht with him, the newlyweds' weekend takes a definite turn for the worse.
