A lone waif plies the strand and searches for firewood, pottering with a walking stick until a group of children, running wildly to her, calls her back home as one explains that “there’s a man here. He came on a big motorcycle. He says Rosa is dead.” Returning with the waif, the children find their mother in tears bartering with an oafish, swarthy gentleman, who in exchange for 10,000 lire has bought the very waif called by the children. A woman more lugubrious than woebegone, having spoken to the strongman whose name is Zampanò, the mother says to justify her daughter’s competence that “she’ll do what she’s told. She just came out a little strange. But if she eats every day, maybe she’ll get better.”
Strange as a descriptor ill befits Gelsomina, who seems to be equal components of rootless whimsy and naïveté, a childlike and amusing spectacle. Having been sold by her reluctant mother, Gelsomina boards the strongman’s ramshackle vehicle, and while they speed off the children, as seen from a reverse moving shot, pursue her desperately along the causeway as the motorcycle diminishes into the distance.
Capturing the subtleties of human behavior within the heterodox settings of circus itinerants, the film rests on the strength of its characters, rendering the story both convincing and moving. The foremost character of the film, Gelsomina alone vindicates the story’s bizarre milieu, while Zampanò and the Fool bolster the superlative cast, adding richness to the film’s humanity.
Played by Giulietta Masina, Gelsomina has idiosyncrasies so forceful and convincing that they become an experience in themselves. Her moments are many: Gelsomina on the wayside before a bonfire, flapping her poncho like an avian and muttering incantations as Zampanò dully observes, incredulous; Gelsomina performing in the garb of her clown, beginning a musical number for a bridal shower with the words, “it was all because of a dance!” whereupon she dances to the perfunctory drumbeat of Zampanò; by a barn along which hay and fodder have been scattered, Gelsomina feuding with her Zampanò, stomping into a trench engulfing her like a predator. Masina’s performance alternates throughout between childlike innocence and madness; although Roger Ebert writes that “the character should never be aware of the effect she has, but we sometimes feel Gelsomina’s innocence is calculated,”[1] her lapses in character are nonetheless few and subtle.
Guileless and dull, Gelsomina attaches herself to him who discards her like a soiled sock: the brutish Zampanò, who deserts her in a mountainous wasteland and drives his motorcycle to his next performance. In a world of human brutality and human frailty, Gelsomina’s degradation, her abandonment and loneliness, lead to her inevitable destruction and death. After evoking tenderness and innocence, Gelsomina dies and becomes only a memory; her appearance and mannerisms remain, a lasting icon of which Rita Kempley writes, “it’s Gelsomina’s sad clown face that remains the film’s most haunting image.”[2] Of all the images in the movie, it is this image that will endure the decades of cinematic history as it continues, expands, and deepens.
Played by Anthony Quinn, the strongman Zampanò is both bestial and endearing, and Quinn evokes the complexity of his primal character with such dexterity that by the end of the story he earns his subdued humanity. A capacity for tenderness surfaces during the pivotal moments of his reconciling with Gelsomina, many occuring when he rebuffs her, scattering her sensitivity to the wind, then attempts with condescension to appease her. One such moment occurs when Gelsomina, shuffling away, catatonic after the grievous death of the Fool, turns to Zampanò so that her face, pitiable and inconsolable, is reflected by the reverse shot of the strongman; revealing the tragedy of his predicament, the desolation of Zampanò’s face betrays that his love contends with forces that are punishing him.
At the end of the story, having heard of Gelsomina’s death, Zampanò sprawls along the beach before the moonlight and the tumult of the sea, weeping for what he has abandoned; encapsulating the uneasy nadir of the strongman, Michael Tait writes that “only the film’s coda allows us a moment of redemption, as Zampano himself suffers, realising how profoundly alone he has become. He has alienated even his own conscience.”[3] The strongman can go no further than the beach.
The Fool, played by Richard Basehart, is the most intelligent of the characters, and his intelligence underlies his mischief, propelling him to a conscious and calculated cruelty of which the other characters are innocent; noting this cruelty, Roger Ebert writes that “he has a mean, sarcastic streak I had not really registered before, and his taunting of the dim Zampano is sadistic. To some degree he is responsible for his own end.”[4] But like the other characters, the Fool possesses goodwill and tenderness; his giving a locket to the distraught Gelsomina before he leaves her attests to the depth of his character. And despite the Fool’s loathsome cruelty, his acuity and spirit are to be treasured, so that his death becomes not deserved but unfortunate, even tragic. Like Gelsomina and Zampanò, the Fool is both flawed and endearing, meriting both love and disapproval. And Basehart’s performance, like the sweetest of lozenges fading on the tongue, lingers in the mind long after his death.
La Strada affords so generous a depiction of human interiority and strife, so peculiar a series of relationships whose simplicity is almost allegorical, that its timelessness cannot be doubted. Providing this dynamic pleasure for the consideration of casual and critical alike, Federico Fellini, in this first of his many artworks, has created a story of interest and integrity repaying those who enjoy the interest of its characters, and can appreciate its authenticity.
And the images of Gelsomina, frozen in fancy and childlike passion, should be ever renewed with the adulation of our eyes.
- Roger Ebert. “La Strada,” rogerebert.com, April 1 1994, https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/la-strada-1994 ↑
- Rita Kempley, “La Strada,” washingtonpost.com, January 14 1994, https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/movies/videos/lastradanrkempley_a0a400.htm ↑
- Michael Tait. “The Film That Makes Me Cry,” theguardian.com, March 18 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2015/mar/18/film-that-makes-me-cry-la-strada ↑
- Roger Ebert. “La Strada” ↑
