Skip to main content

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.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Strange History of the American Spoof Movie

Parody movies have been around for a lot longer than we tend to think of them. Even from the earliest days of Hollywood there were movies meant to satirize a particular subject or genre. In the silent era, Buster Keaton was responsible for a few. And in the early sound era, almost as soon as the monster pictures took off did you see comic versions of them -Abbott and Costello hosting a few. But parody movies tended to be subtle for most of cinema history, or parody came in conjunction with another goal of the comedy. It really wasn’t until the 1980s and 90s that it took off and became popularly understood. And there is perhaps a line to be drawn to the counterculture comedy explosion that began in the 1970s through avenues like  Saturday Night Live , which frequently parodied from even its earliest years popular movies and cultural properties of the time. But that is still a way’s back. To my generation though, ‘parody movie’ is perhaps a less known term than the more blunt ‘s...
Post a Comment
Read more

Notes on the Title Cards of The Lord of the Rings

It might be sacrilege for one who both considers The Lord of the Rings  trilogy to be one of the greatest triumphs of cinema and has been an avid lover of the films since adolescence, to declare that the original theatrical cuts of the films are better than the much beloved extended editions. Easily it’s my most controversial opinion regarding these movies. Don’t get me wrong, I do like the extended editions quite a lot, especially as someone who just enjoys spending time in that universe. They flesh it out more, add extra flavour, and in increasing the length by about an hour really emphasize the epic quality of these films. But I find that the original cuts are generally more cleanly paced, more seamlessly edited, and much more accessible to audiences. All the stuff there is to love about The Lord of the Rings  is there in the original versions, the plethora of new and extended scenes merely add to that for fans. And of those, they fall into three camps for me: 1....
1 comment
Read more

Back to the Feature: New York, New York (1977)

New York, New York  is a two hour forty minute musical movie largely about a toxic relationship and I understand why it was Martin Scorsese’s first big flop. Some have blamed its poor reception on the kind of movie it was, of a style and tone Scorsese wasn’t known for, but I find that hard to believe. Even after only five films, he’d proven himself an extremely versatile director, and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore  found an audience. Sure this jazz musical love letter to New York City was following up Taxi Driver and its’ far more cynical take on the city, but then it’s also ‘from the director of Taxi Driver ’ which itself was a big hit. Was it a matter of public appetite for musicals, or mere word of mouth and early critical reception that dissuaded viewers? Irrespective of that, I was stunned to discover this movie was the origin of the titular song, which I’d assumed was much older (it’s definitely got the sound of something that might have come out of the Jazz sce...
Post a Comment
Read more