If we were to single out one quality that distinguishes Fellini's career-long imaginative evolution, it would be the drive for individuation, the search for ever more authentic ways of rendering growth in his world. Even his early movies—films of increasing alienation—reveal growing pressure for individuation within his imagination and his characters. (His characters individuate themselves from, rather than through, their world; hence their ultimate alienation.) And as Fellini's imagination refines its capacity to create unique and singular creatures, it also evolves beyond stories of individuation-through-alienation to stories of individuation-through-integration: the stories of unitive individuality which inform his movies from The Nights of Cabiria through Fellini's Roma. (p. 68)

[The] evolution from accommodation to breakout within Fellini's first three films seems to usher his imagination into a realm of near-total alienation which becomes visible in his next two feature films, La Strada … and Il Bidone or The Swindle...