Masini gives a Chaplinesque performance as the simple working-class girl, with what would now be called learning difficulties, who is sold by her family for 10,000 lire to a brutish travelling player called Zampanò, played by Anthony Quinn.
The heart-wrenching operatic pathos of this early Fellini masterpiece will blow you away, no matter how many times you see it. Masini gives a Chaplinesque performance as the simple working-class girl, with what would now be called learning difficulties, who is sold by her family for 10,000 lire to a brutish travelling player called Zampanò, played by Anthony Quinn. He bullies and exploits her but realises too late that her presence in his life was the working of a mysterious divine grace. It is a rare moment in Fellini when he goes behind the scenes of circus theatricality and shows us that it is not simply a gorgeously surreal phenomenon, but a tough business that involves heartbreak for its practitioners.