The Criterion Channel Presents: La Strada (1954)

   

     Federico Fellini really was something, huh?

     1954’s La Strada is generally considered to be the turning point of Fellini’s career, the movie where he broke with the Neo-realists (and received quite a backlash in Italy for doing so), and began his journey of poetic and magical realism that would come to dominate his best known work. It’s a quiet movie, much in the vein of those Neo-realist pictures, translating simply as “The Road” -though it’s quite different from the Cormac McCarthy novel. Essentially it’s the story of a travelling performer and his slave. That is what Gelsomina is -we never get any sign that she’s being compensated for her work and she was sold to the brute Zampanó by her mother for 10,000 lire. He abuses her terribly as well, is callous and mean towards her -an innately physically violent man. And the movie just depicts this relationship as they travel from venue to venue.

     It’s not a pleasant relationship to be privy to, and even worse taken literally once elements of romance creep in -a kind of Stockholm syndrome in Gelsomina at best, a romanticizing of horrible behaviour on Zampanó’s part at worst. It’s hard not to see that side of what’s presented here, especially in 2021. But there’s an atmosphere about the piece, a specificity and unreality to the premise that shuns the very notion of such critical approaches and invites you very palpably to engage with what’s happening symbolically -to look deeper at these figures and the greater tragedy of La Strada; and it is a tragedy.

     Gelsomina is characterized as simple-minded, a bit naive and certainly intellectually innocent. She has an immense capacity for joy and beauty though -we first encounter her gazing dreamily at the sea, taking in something the other characters are incapable of -especially Zampanó. Throughout the movie she will be similarly beguiled by the little things that lift her heart. Giulietta Masina, Fellini’s wife, plays Gelsomina masterfully with a whimsical earnestness and a sad candour that balance each other out through her exceptional channeling of Gelsomina’s binary personality. For her there are no in-between emotions, no real nuances to how she’s feeling, and it’s why she flips back and forth in sensibility so often. Throughout the movie, she’s accompanied by a stirring leitmotif by the great Nino Rota, whose music here is among his best. The character has been often compared too to Charlie Chaplin, and though part of this is due to her clown identity as Zampanó’s assistant that requires the use of bowler hat, broad expressions, and comic physicality, I think it also has to do with the make-up of the character herself. She’s got the same deeply empathetic buoyant yet melancholy attitude that endears so many to the Tramp. A scene of her sitting on a pavement feeling dejected evokes Chaplin in much the same pose in A Dog’s Life.

     Anthony Quinn gives one of his best performances as the utter bastard Zampanó, playing well the contrast between his confidence and showmanship as an amateur strongman, and the toxic, introverted, entitled oaf that he is. For this though, he is pathetic, and irreparably, inextricably sad. To that end you can sympathize with Gelsomina’s situational affection towards him -he’s a very pitiable figure even as his actions challenge that pity. He’s male rage and male insecurity personified. Fellini certainly feels for him in any case (La Strada was his favourite and most arduous movie), and as a dark, violent man with just enough of a salvageable soul, he’s proven very influential on similar film characters worldwide. Scorsese cites him as a precursor to his Jake LaMotta of Raging Bull for example.

     The key sequence of the film is where Gelsomina converses with a character known only as the Fool (Richard Basehart), a high wire artist who takes considerable glee mocking Zampanó and acts as a sort of rival to him for Gelsomina’s interests. As she debates leaving with a circus rather than staying with him, it’s the Fool who persuades her she has some more profound purpose with Zampanó. Later when the two men meet again and Zampanó inadvertently kills the Fool in a fight, it proves too much for Gelsomina, whose subsequent depression and destroyed illusions of Zampanó’s redemption at last brings out Zampanó’s humanity. And for that he has to abandon her. The film ends years later in Zampanó’s solitude, having sunken into his own despair in light of gut-wrenching news of Gelsomina’s death. He wails into the sea in a broad, dramatic, raw display of anguish, leaving to the audience the burden of his fate. No wonder the Neo-realists hated it.
 
Criterion Recommendation: The Shape of Water (2017)

     I recently watched The Devil’s Backbone and it occurred to me that like with his friend Alfonso Cuarón, Guillermo del Toro only has his Spanish-language films in the Criterion Collection. And of his English ones that deserve to be in there, none fit the bill more than The Shape of Water, his Oscar-winning spin on the monster movie and most succinct realization of a core theme that has permeated his filmography: the importance of understanding and even loving “otherness”. The story of a deaf woman in Cold War era America falling in love with a fish-man creature being suppressed and studied as a potential biological weapon is one of the most unconventional yet sweetest love stories of the last several years. Sally Hawkins, Richard Jenkins, Michael Shannon, and Michael Stuhlbarg all give tremendous performances, though del Toro regular Doug Jones perhaps stands out the most as the forlorn creature. Aesthetically lush and with any number of iconic gorgeous compositions, del Toro’s “fairy tale for adults” is a culminating work that deserves every honour bestowed on The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth.

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