La Strada

While Pauline Kael's well-known criticism of La Strada breaks the three central characters down into symbols that represent mind, body, and soul, it's not necessary tear a Fellini film apart and analyze it pretentiously. Just because the film is subtitled doesn't mean that watching it will be a heavy intellectual exercise, especially with the amount of joy that Fellini uses in his visual artistry. He frees the audience to have some fun along the journey.

You don't even have to be familiar with The Bicycle Thief and Italian neo-realism to appreciate Fellini's break with the movement upon the release of this 1954 film. But since realizing what "rules" Fellini breaks can add another layer of appreciation, following is a brief description of the movement from Robert T. Eberwien's A Viewers Guide to Film Theory and Criticism:

"Neorealist films are characterized by a pronounced social consciousness on the part of their makers, a concern for the lower classes and their despair and squalor, and a stark realism of technique relying heavily on long takes and depth of field"

Fellini may not have satisfied the Marxists, who thought Italian cinema should have social limits placed on it, but he certainly shows affection for a variety of common and quirky characters in this and many other films. La Strada includes some of his favorite human subjects-circus artists and waifs. These characters may not supply the stereotypes that neo-realists expected, but they entertain and ultimately leave us with indelible images of the human spirit. According to Fellini,

La Strada is about loneliess and how solitude can be ended when one person makes a profound link to another. The man and woman who find this bond may sometimes be the least likely, on the surface, and yet the bond is in the depth of their souls."

On a literal level La Strada translates into "The Road," and it involves an itinerant strongman Zampano (Anthony Quinn) who needs a female assistant. He purchases the services of the second daughter from a poor woman who lives by the seashore (the eldest daughter, Rosa, died under his care), so that the remaining family will be able to fix their roof and have a bit of food. The daughter is the memorable, dim-witted Gelsomina, played by Fellini's own wife-the incomparable Giulietta Masina (Nights of Cabiria, Juliet of the Spirits). Fellini states that he patterned Gelsomina's character from the impressions he received from the closed mouthed smiles of Giulietta's childhood photographs.

Go To Page: 1 2 3

Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic