La strada

Anthony Quinn who was Cecil B de Mille's son in law told the story of showing La Strada to his father in law. It seems that De Mille couldn't take it. He asked for the projection to be interrupted in more than one occasion. He was disturbed, confused. Maybe it was the simplicity, the total lack of artifice. Let's remember Fellini shot it in the immediate post-war Italy with no means whatsoever and here it was, a masterpiece changing the world of cinema pushing us to a reality that was as pungent as it was poetic. The heartbreaking story of Gelsomina - an extraordinary Giulietta Masina - and Zampano - a spectacular prime Anthony Quinn who plays his humanoid with shattering truth - went to become a global sensation and an Oscar winner. Apparently, after the film was over, Cecil B de Mille got up and left the room without saying a word.

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.

La Strada can sometimes come across as similar to the Hollywood films made in the 1950s, but for the most part, is a unique and beautiful story. It concerns a young woman, Gelsomina, being given to traveling "artist" Zampano by her poor mother in exchange for money. Zampano makes his money by traveling around Italy, putting on a strong-man show for crowds. Gelsomina has dreams of becoming an artist as well, and therefore was more than happy to go with Zampano, but Gelsomina quickly realises that Zampano is nothing more than a drunkard and a brute, with eating, sleeping and sex being the only things he cares for.

The character of Gelsomina, played by Giulietta Masina, is the highlight of the film. With a face like no other, it exudes a certain beauty but is also very odd, with a definite quirkiness to it …"like an artichoke". Masina is excellent as expressing emotions with nothing more than a look, and it is because of this that the film stands strong. The story itself is simple, but with Gelsomina being such a romantic at heart, she is constantly searching for love and an understanding of a world she doesn't know, being such a sheltered loner when living with her mother and four younger sisters.

Zampano, the traveling strong-man, follows the basic of human instincts, irrespective of their bearing on others, namely Gelsomina. Anthony Quinn gives the character a great ignorance, Zampano being, for the most part, oblivious to the impact his actions have, only wanting to be able to earn money to eat and drink wine, and sleep with women. It is not until Zampano and Gelsomina (Gelsomina having become Zampano's sidekick in his traveling show) take on a position as part of a circus in town, and Gelsomina meets an acrobat clown, credited in the film as Il Matto – The Fool. She falls for his happy and carefree nature, exampled when he teases Zampano whilst he is trying to do his show. Zampano soon despises the Fool, and becomes jealous of the friendship forming between Gelsomina and the clown. This is where Zampano begins to show real emotion, and although he doesn't deal with the situation in the most appropriate way, it is the beginning of his life experience that changes him forever.

The film is gorgeous, with some memorable characters, namely Gelsomina. It doesn't end on a happy note, but you are still left satisfied with the story told, especially the lesson taught to Zampano, although it was all too late for him, and it is not certain that he learned from the experience. Masina is an absolute delight to watch, holding you captive with her face alone, beaming with love. The film is not for those looking for Hollywood drama and action, but for anyone who knows how it feels to be confused and in need of understanding about life's ways.

La Strada is the third Fellini movie that I have delighted myself with—the other two being Otto e Mezzo and La Dolce Vita—and coincidentally the least Felliniesque of the three, and I dare say, the simplest to interpret. And precisely that's the reason I have chosen it to begin of my eulogy on Fellini's lifelong masterful works. Fellini's staunch critics had audaciously deemed him narcissistic and his singular works self-indulgent and self-gratifying. Their myopic vision made them overlook the fact that narcissism and solipsism are the very virtues that give form to art and aesthetics. A true artist uses these traits to isolate himself from the worldly pursuits so that he can create a connection with the divine and attain a sense of enlightenment. He then pours his heart out and offers it selflessly in form of his art. Thus, the artist's apparent self-indulgence is actually a means to share his hard earned and newly acquired knowledge, gratis with the rest of the world. Fellini too like any true artist gave his audience what he thought they deserved: a product of his intellect and vision with the sole motive of titillating their senses.

La Strada is Fellini's improvisation on the epic theme of a beast and a beauty as depicted in the 1740 fairy tale 'Beauty and the Beast' and later on glorified by Victor Hugo's literary marvel 'The Hunchback of Notre-Dame'. What makes Fellini's rendition different is that even though Zampano perfectly fits into the caricature of a beast, Gelsomina falls short of the literary definition of a beauty. However, what Gelsomina lacks in pulchritude is more than made up by her celestial charm and naive disposition. These conflicting traits give Gelsomina an irresistible persona that makes her inexplicably amicable and desirable. Zampano on the contrary does not have a single trait that is likable and offers a great contrast to Gelsomina's innocuous self.

Zampano is a traveling entertainer who earns a living by performing street acts that demand extreme physical strength. Gelsomina's poor old mother sells her to brutish Zampano for a sum of 10,000 lire as a replacement for her dead daughter Rosa. Zampano ill treats Gelsomina, and despite her compliance and willingness to learn, uses brute force to teach her. She naively acquiesces even to Zampano's sexual advances. Zampano teaches her to jest and dance as well as to play drum and trumpet. One day when she finds him drunk after a night of debauchery, she decides to leave him in order to explore other possibilities. En route, she meets Il Mato—an equilibrist with a great sense of humor. Zampano manages to locate her and forcibly takes her back. Zampano joins the same circus group that Il Matto is a part of. Soon fate presents Gelsomina with an opportunity to choose between Zampano and Il Matto. La Strada goes beyond revealing Gelsomina's choice and its consequences. It accentuates that even the most bestial of the souls has a latent goodness that makes him capable of love and worthy of being loved. La Strada demonstrates that the human emotions defy reason and are driven by instinct.

Anthony Quinn arguably gives the best performance of his life as the stone cold Zampano. He effortlessly conjures up his brutish alter ego and makes him appear absolutely abominable to the viewer. As Zampano, Quinn manages to portray a caricature that has become the epitome of callous ruthlessness in cinema. Federico Fellini's wife, Giulietta Masina perfectly fits into the sketch of Gelsomina. With the portrayal of Gelsomina, Masina proves her worth as an actress. Her inspired portrayal absolves Fellini from the suspicion that her casting was inspired by motives other than talent. As Gelsomina, she not only offers a striking contrast to Quinn's part, but also manages to create a special place in the movie. In fact, by the end it becomes quite obvious that La Strada belongs to her more than Quinn or, I dare say, Fellini. In the initial few minutes, Masina looks a bit over-aged for Gelsomina's part, but she soon enchants everyone with her peculiar charm and the rest becomes completely immaterial. The cinematography of the movie is highly picturesque and presents the viewer with scenes that get etched permanently in the memory. Nino Rota's mellifluous music gives the movie a lyrical touch.

Overall, La Strada is a moving experience for aficionados and masses alike. It is a great opportunity for the students and lovers of cinema to get acquainted with Fellini's oeuvre before venturing into his more personal works like Otto e Mezzo, La Dolce Vita, Amarcord and Satyricon. 9/10

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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.