La strada

La Strada brings two souls together to tell a story that ultimately displays humanity's finer aspects. The title gives a clue to the meaning of Fellini's masterpiece: The Way. The brute, Zampano, buys the urchin-like Gelsomina to be his traveling companion in his one-man carnival act. He is physically and emotionally cruel to her. Her longing to love and be loved, and her child-like, yet acute perception of life, and desire to live it, despite hardships, makes her the perfect complement to the selfish and despicable Zampano. Their unification affects each other. However, although Zampano's harshness adversely effects Gelsomina's life, it is her influence that will eventually, and more significantly, change him. This may sound like the familiar Beauty and the Beast fairy tale, but it is more than a love story. It is about love, but it isn't until the very end of the film that we realize it. More than love, it is about a man who gains insight and awareness because of love. It is his finale transformation that demonstrates both the frailty and vitality of the human condition. It overpoweringly suggests that the individual, no matter how depraved, is able to spiritually evolve.

Every frame and scene in this masterpiece has purpose and meaning.

It is the early sixties in Annapolis, Maryland. Although a Third Class Petty Officer in the Navy, I am still in my teens & have never sampled the cinema except for what Hollywood has had to offer. I have just stumbled out of a theater & I am stunned yet aware that I have just witnessed a work of art that was devoid of compromise. That work was La Strada, a cinematic creation directed by Federico Fellini. I have viewed this film several times since but it never pales & each time I take away something new. In this post I'll concentrate on the main characters & some of the cast.

Anthony Quinn was perfect for the role of Zampano, the grubby strongman performer touring the villages & countryside of post-WW2 Italy. No other actor of the day could have possibly brought what Quinn brings to the role. There may have been some European actor who would not have shamed himself in the part, but I can't think of who it might have been & certainly no actor known by Hollywood could have done so well as Quinn. One has to resort to other eras & reach far into the imagination to attempt such speculation. If Wallace or Noah Beery, sr. could have managed a not too corrupted Italian persona; perhaps. If Gilbert Roland had lifted weights & taken supplements for a year; maybe. Victor McLaglen could never have passed for Italian – don't laugh – he had the rugged looks & the physique. Ricardo Montalban? Too handsome. Ditto, Victor Mature. Mitchum was way too 'American.' Nehemiah Persoff, Eli Wallach, Telly Savalas, Rod Steiger, Karl Malden, even Van Heflin, all considered, all rejected. Brando might have been credible. One remembers "A Streetcar Named Desire" & "On the Waterfront" & thinks: Possibly. But Quinn plays the role as if it was what he was put on earth to do.

Quinn's Zampano is earthily callous yet the viewer senses vulnerability buried deep within the character. Among other facets his perfect performance presents to the viewer is a faintly perceived inkling of past disappointments, of indirectly inferred reasons that Zampano is cruel & insensitive. Quinn's consummate technique paints the broad picture of a lout yet the viewer is able to pull a slender thread of sympathy from his character & that sympathy is necessary for the end of the movie. To be very bad & to still be likable, if only barely, is produced by Quinn as if it were a gift to the viewer. It is acting on the highest possible plane.

Giulietta Masina plays Gelsomina, a tattered urchin Zampano purchases from her poverty-bested mother. Here too, the viewer witnesses genius of casting. Masina's face is one of Fellini's main canvases in the film. It mugs, it displays pride, love & resignation in fleeting cascades of expression, sometimes all within a second. Even without the plasticity of her face her body alone would be enough to write volumes for the viewer. It gambols, prances, pratfalls & cunningly sneaks, sometimes at breakneck speed though the viewer's eye is never allowed to blur these perceptions despite the rapidity of much of the execution.

Richard Basehart plays the Fool, foil to Quinn's brute. Whereas Quinn's act subsists on feats of strength, Basehart's character is all about finesse: juggling, acrobatics & tightrope-walking. Zampano is awkward on those occasions that he attempts real affection toward Gelsomina. The Fool is light strokes of joviality; joking & flirting is his natural mode. Zampano's voice is gruff and in the baritone range; Basehart's lines are delivered high-pitched, with a lilting modulation. However, just as Zampano has an almost hidden vein of sensitivity, Basehart imbues his lighthearted portrayal with a close to imperceptible strand of hardness.

The vehicle of the plot is a journey, but a journey with no particular physical destination. In a work such as "Huckleberry Finn" Twain provides a direction(down-river with the current). Here the characters appear to wander aimlessly from place to place, seemingly interacting by chance with whoever they meet & somehow this very lack of goal helps to give the piece a lifelike aura of randomness. The viewer becomes unaware of watching a film. Like all truly great works of art, technique never intrudes & the viewer could be a fly on the wall.

This lack of artificiality allows the viewer to be fully immersed in the unfolding events. The landscape is the blasted Italian environment just after WW2 & is symbolic of the work's bleak message. The camera rolls on weeds, shacks, broken concrete, poorly maintained roadways, dry, desolate hinterlands & famine-ridden villages. There is no looking away allowed, the viewer is made to see, forced to behold stark realities.

It is impossible to say exactly what makes this film a masterpiece. By a mysterious & perhaps lucky combination of ingredients it propels itself into the highest circle of cinema. The end is emotionally wrenching & I would venture that few are able to leave it as I did long ago in Annapolis without a sense of having been deeply moved.

Fellini's "La Strada" is memorable, atmospheric, entertaining, thoughtful, and many other things. It is often sad, not even so much because of the things that happen, but simply for what it reveals about the human condition. It is sometimes surreal, not in a bizarre visual sense, but in the unexpected combinations of emotions that it sometimes evokes. And it is always human, commenting on individuals and humanity as a whole with a keen eye and with cinematic skill.

The three main characters make an odd and interesting mix of personalities. Anthony Quinn gives plenty of life to Zampano, who is hard to like, but hard not to have compassion for. Fellini's repeated filmings of Zampano's chain act bring out the pitiable side of his character even more so than the dramatic scenes do.

Giulietta Masina gives a rather stylized performance as Gelsomina, at times bearing a surprising resemblance to comics such as Harpo Marx or even Harry Langdon. Yet she is completely engaging and sympathetic, and she creates a memorable character. Richard Basehart likewise manages to make The 'Fool' an idiosyncratic, rather annoying, but again sympathetic character.

Fellini's approach, of course, adds much to the characters and to the story. Some of the vignettes, such as the wedding banquet sequence and the convent sequence, would stand up very well on their own with just a minimum of outside context. The camera is often used in subtle ways to bring out the symbolism or significance of the scene.

Nino Rota's music is also an essential part of making "La Strada" what it is, at times establishing an atmosphere all by itself. (And, while it is completely extraneous to an appreciation of "La Strada", there are moments when it is hard not to be reminded of Rota's score for "The Godfather".) Probably the only real weakness of the movie is the dubbing, which is too noticeable not to become distracting at times.

Finally, the movie is a worthy classic not least because Fellini, his cast, and his crew all work together to turn the lives of some very ordinary human beings into a worthwhile and sympathetic look at humanity.

Often it is hard to find a romance which does not include actual romance - i.e. - liplock, hugging scenes. The viewer is overflowed with emotion because the film itself focuses on human emotion, and is a pure amusement to watch because of the many symbols. When Zampano tries to steal a silver heart from the church and Gelsomina pleads with him not to, we can only think of the cold silver heart, his sad action of trying to "steal" such an emotion as "love", Gelsomina's soft nature - this film overflows with such subtleties, but such subtleties! so impactful in conveying emotion..

Gelsomina's faith to Zampano is heartwrenching - she is presented with opportunities to leave Zampano, such as leaving to the nunnery or joining the circus, but she declines all. This fidelity builds up, only to have.. well, let's just say that Fellini is especially skillful in drawing your sympathy and then channeling for it in a single scene.. he knows how to focus and concentrate your emotion, I felt sort of violated after watching the film, since I rarely cry for movies! Also, if the symbolism does not stir a reader to interest, the amazing cinematography will. The tightrope act atop the city buildings, the motorbike rides, the Christ ceremony-

This movie is unpredictable and is interesting to watch, since it keeps the mind afloat with the different scenes which are packed with symbols and metaphors, wonderful puzzles to decipher. Since Fellini does not present it straight-forwardly, and rather wraps meaning in several layers of symbols, uncovering the truth becomes fulfilling for the viewer.

The way Fellini develops his characters is unforgettable. We feel their demise, but urge to see and understand more. I feel only Fellini can accomplish such a remarkable quality. And in case you didn't get the gist of my rating (and my ranting).. 4 stars. Please rent this and enjoy, Fellini's incredible! :o)

A man of uncommon strength, who lives on the road and makes his living as an entertainer performing feats of strength, but who masks the emptiness of his life with a perpetual show of bravura, is the focal point of `La Strada,' directed by Federico Fellini and written by Fellini and Tullio Pinelli. It's the story of Zampano (Anthony Quinn), who travels from town to town, eking out a meager living by passing the hat after each performance, which consists mainly of wrapping a quarter-inch chain made of iron around his chest, then breaking it by expanding his lungs. In his endeavors he is assisted by Gelsomina (Giulietta Masina), a simple-minded young woman who is devoted to this selfish man endowed with little more intelligence than she. The tragedy of Zampano is that while he seeks fulfillment in meaningless carnal pursuits and the hollow acclaim of strangers, the happiness that eludes him is at hand; but his own self-deception prevents him from recognizing what a treasure he already has in Gelsomina. One of Fellini's earliest films, there is a straightforward, almost simplistic richness to his style, both visually and narratively, that is devoid of the surreal atmosphere with which he invests his later projects. Still, the mood he creates is mesmerizing, aided to a great extent by the haunting theme and score by Nino Rota. It is a story that gradually draws the viewer in through the sympathy evoked by the gentle innocence of Gelsomina, whose purity of spirit is seemingly in such stark contrast to that of Zampano. Watching her respond to his unthinking brutality of her with unadulterated kindness, time after time, is heartrending; and in the end, when Zampano ultimately secures our sympathies as well, it seems almost contradictory, though contextually just. As Zampano, Anthony Quinn gives what is arguably one of the best performances of his career; with depth and nuance, he creates the epitome of the brutal simpleton, a man whose lack of wit forces him to exist by the most basic of instincts. And Quinn conveys it all so perfectly, both physically and emotionally; it is an inspired, memorable performance. But without question, the true heart of the film is provided by the wondrous Giulietta Masina. What a superb, unforgettable performance; everything about her is totally engaging, beginning with the supple roundness of her face, which accentuates her expressive eyes and winning smile. Her Gelsomina is so lithe, her presence so angelic, that at times it seems as if she is about to float up off the screen. She conveys such compassion and vulnerability, such warmth of being, that it becomes impossible not to lose your heart to her. It is quite simply an irresistible, truly heartwarming performance. Also, in an exceptionally effective supporting role, is Richard Basehart, as Il `Matto,' the `Fool.' A tightrope walker by trade, the Fool is the antithesis of Zampano, a lighthearted soul who befriends Gelsomina and becomes her voice of hope and logic, while at the same time manifesting a taunting, challenging and unwelcomed presence to Zampano. Ironically, it is the Fool who becomes the catalyst for the tragedies that ultimately befall Gelsomina, and finally Zampano. The supporting cast includes Aldo Silvani (Il Signor Giraffa), Marcella Rovere (The Widow) and Livia Venturini (The Sister). An earthy, thought-provoking film, `La Strada' is one that will linger on sweetly in your mind's eye; the images and impressions it creates may, with time, dissolve-- but the essence of it will remain with you always. For once Fellini has touched you, it is forever. I rate this one 10/10.