avik-basu1889
'La Strada' is considered by many critics to be the first film made by Fellini which can be given the tag Felliniesque. His earlier work as a screenwriter as well as his previously directed films had a very palpable sense of neo-realism enriching them. This was the first film where Fellini started to break off from some of the norms of Italian neo-realism and make a gradual transition to a more poetic and surreal visual language. This directorial decision also made a number of Italian critics of the time negatively remark upon the film as well as Fellini for his 'betrayal' of neo-realism.Having said all that, I still think that 'La Strada' borrows the basic societal background from neo-realist films. The film opens with Gelsomina's family. We get to know about their sorry plight from a financial standpoint. The matriarch has to sell off Gelsomina to Zampano just to get some money so that the others in the family could be fed. This element of abject poverty in post WW2 Italy forcing ordinary people to compromise is something that was an integral part of Italian neo-realist cinema. But in the previous neo-realist films, this economic insufficiency served as the main driver of the plot, whereas in 'La Strada', Fellini uses this poverty as the backdrop, but the essential driver of the plot is the personal existential crisis suffered by the characters. The screenplay of the film written by Fellini, Tullio Pinelli and Ennio Flaiano is simple. The basic storyline is something which is very familiar. Two different characters get together and they hit the road and on the way they confront certain realities about themselves. But Fellini, through his direction adds a fantasy/fairy tale like element to the film that makes it unique. Gelsomina is a naive, gullible young woman who gets thrown into an unfamiliar world with a complete stranger. Zampano is the big, arrogant, rude, brute of a man who keeps treating Gelsomina in the worst ways possible which involves constant slapping and physical assaults. She keeps taking it because she loves the actual performing aspect of the work. She keeps wandering off akin to her natural wild ways. She then meets The Fool, another travelling artist. Although he is not the most perfect individual either, but even then he is the one who at least verbally communicates with Gelsomina and gives her hope and encouragement by telling her that everyone, including she has a purpose on this Earth. In a way the film can be viewed as a vehicle for the transition that takes place in Zampano's character. 'La Strada' in Italian translates to The Road. It is Zampano who travels on the road to achieving a conscience. He gradually comes to realise the wrongness of his ways and behaviour and repents. But he does so when it's too late. Although 'La Strada' doesn't have the visual flair and bravura to the extent that is present in the Fellini films from 'La Dolce Vita' onward, however even with the restrained camera work, there are still moments of typical Felliniesque surreal visuals like the sight of a single horse walking down the street, the three musicians appearing out of nowhere to cheer up Gelsomina, the shot of The Fool wearing angel wings sitting on a chair on the rope suspended in the air,etc. Nino Rota's music beautifully accentuates the moments of a change in tone. The camera movement is restrained, but still expressive. Fellini uses the beach in a thematically rich way which elevates the scenes staged there.For me the best performance in the film comes from Anthony Quinn. The character Zampano represents the cold, brooding individual who has decided to wear a thick armour of insensitivity. His character represents a cynical world view which juxtaposes the naive and gullible character of Gelsomina and also to some extent The Fool. Just like Jake LaMotta in 'Raging Bull', Zampano is a character that is easy to loathe due to his despicable demeanour. However Fellini gives Zampano the chance to start his journey at redemption through the heartbreaking last scene of the film where Quinn gives a masterclass of emoting and expressing so much without saying a single word.The only reason why, 'La Strada' doesn't get an 9 or 10 in my books is because of the way Fellini uses the character of Gelsomina. From a thematic standpoint her character makes sense. But the way in which she gets portrayed by Giulietta Masina is a little too corny. I can understand that the exaggerated mannerisms and Charlie Chaplin-esque antics goes with the fairy tale-esque feel of the storyline. She even looks adorable with the big eyes and it does break your heart when she is constantly abused by Zampano and forced to grow up. But I do think, the film could have worked slightly better with a little more understatement to her character mixed with the clown-like behaviour during the performance scenes.I don't think 'La Strada' is a perfect film, but it still has so many elements that could be admired. Fellini's command over the visual language is very apparent. This is the work of a master filmmaker who was still sharpening his skills.
Gray_Balloon_Bob
Life is a cruel and punishing road that often seems indignant at our audacity for simply walking along it. There are no guaranteed stops but for that ultimate destination, and so how we get there is entirely up to us. Or sometimes not at all. This isn't Cormac McCarthy's vision of The Road of life, in which the entire landscape is enveloped in nihilistic despair, but what McCarthy's road and Fellini's road both share is that the people traversing it have been dealt a meagre hand in life and have to work with what they've been given. The father and son in The Road, despite the post-apocalyptic oblivion that surrounds them, can survive because they have that sacrosanct shield of familial love to protect them. Here, the seed of love between the girl and her master was un-watered, unacknowledged, the cards they were given were misused, often not because of lack of trying but because of a pure inability to grasp them. What Fellini has constructed, like McCarthy in The Road, is a world of which the logistics do not matter, as the greater environment, whether that be an apocalyptic theatre or a or the sparse Italian landscape, simply serves to highlight its characters and their tragedy at its core. I had described this film as conventional, but it is only conventional in the sense that doesn't have these characteristics, and it's not something that you're necessarily deciphering every image. What we have here is a road movie, both literally and metaphysically (yes? The metaphysical road? Yeah, you know what I'm talking' about) in which is immediately accessible because the emotion is so palpable. I was mentioned in my Drive review the weight of physical acting, and how that often bridges the divide between film and audience just as effectively as dialogue does, and that really applies here. Gelsomina, played by Giulietta Masina, Fellini's wife, is such a wondrous presence; her waifish frame, the round face that is like a fishbowl in which we see all manner of emotion flicker by, and the naïve way in which she clowns about, both tentative and joyed is such a sympathetic synthesis that I'm surprised as to how I hadn't actually discovered this character before watching this film, and it seems that is generally agreed that she is something of a female counterpart to Chaplin. She has one of those readily iconic faces, and when she dons her clown make-up she wears these sharp vertical eyebrows that seem to exaggerate her already widened eyes, and throughout the film it is easy to get lost in both the humour and the sadness of them.Gelsomina is part of a large rural family that lives by the seaside, and in the opening shot she frolics at the shore, surrounded by a gaggle of playful children. Life seems fairly simple, and then the rugged and imposing Zampanò (Anthony Quinn) turns up, and buy Gelsomina from her mother for 10,000. The whole film carries that neo-realist edge, a world of social struggle, as it seems Gelsomina's mother is financially burdened, as we learn that she has already sold a daughter, named Rosa, prior to this arrangement. Apparently Rosa died. We are never explicitly told how or why, but it is easy to speculate, as we see Zampanò who light up a cigarette, all hulking physicality, as he waits to carry of this young girl away from her family forever, and as we soon learn the full extent of his brutality. Zampanò is a man who only seems to be able to communicate through his harsh physicality, through which he lives his entire life. He is a street performer, who only has one small novelty act, in which he tightens a chain around his chest and breaks its grip by a powerful exhale. He lives by rote, a simple creature who can easily break physical barriers but isn't capable of breaking emotional ones. As the movie progresses, it seems to almost fluctuate between different rhythms, at some points a comedic routine as when Zampanò tries to teach Gelsomina how to perform her simple musical duties with a drum and trumpet, in which she approaches with innocent wonder, and other points the feeling is quite sparse, with long stretches of sadness. I suppose it reflects the metamorphosing of their relationship, growing but never settling because it never has the chance. Gelsomina is ultimately something of a cipher, she seems slow-witted, her eyes flit about with wonder, she takes delight in learning the simplest of things, yet when she speaks she has something of a wiser understanding about her, and I wonder if her clownish innocence isn't something more calculated, perhaps because it is only through this approach that she feels safe enough to interact with the world. But then maybe this is the tragedy of the characters, as they cannot quite reconcile their outward persona with something more sensitive inside; amorphous and flickering between two states. The Fool, who we later meet, played with wonderful exuberance and passion by Richard Baseheart, is the classic fool, who comically strides around at mocks people at his leisure, often cruelly, which is ultimately his downfall, but beneath that is a wisdom and understanding that he rarely shares. "I don't know for what this pebble is useful but it must be useful. For if it's useless, everything is useless. So are the stars!" He encourages Gelsomina to understand her own potential as a person, and is the one perceptive enough to recognise the bond between her and Zampanò. But Zampanò is the final tragedy, a brute with a love he could not begin to articulate or even recognise, and when he finally breaks down and cries on the beach, a place which seems like the end of the world, it hurts because like the other characters he understands when it is already too late, and now there is no more road left on which to travel.
gavin6942
A care-free girl (Giulietta Masina) is sold to a traveling entertainer (Anthony Quinn), consequently enduring physical and emotional pain along the way.This film is huge and "one of the most influential films ever made", according to the American Film Institute. It won the inaugural Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1956, and it was placed fourth in the 1992 British Film Institute directors' list of cinema's top 10 films. At no time has it ever disappeared from the IMDb Top 250, showing that general audiences love it, too.This is a great film, a fun film, with two characters really driving the story. Quinn and Masina tell the story with their faces, the laughs and snarls and everything else. Although the film was recorded in Italian, it could have survived as a silent film just as easily.
