So, I would have given serious consideration to seeing the new MCU movie about the martial arts superhero Shang Chi, but I am a little concerned about the Delta variant. I’m vaccinated and wear a mask, but I think I might have been a little too psychologically worried to really enjoy the movie. That said, my decision for now is mostly to not see that movie opening night or possibly opening weekend. I think I can wait a week or so.
The point is, instead I watched my first Federico Fellini movie last night, the utterly delightful La Strada.
Gelsomina (Giulietta Masina) is a poor peasant girl living in the middle of nowhere when her mother calls her home with some news: the strongman performer Zampano (Anthony Quinn), who had previously taken Gelsomina’s sister Rosa, has returned with news that Rosa is dead and he needs a new all-around assistant for his traveling act. He’s just paid a large sum of money for Gelsomina to take over for Rosa, and as Gelsomina’s mother is poor and has a number of mouths to feed, well, Gelsomina has just been pushed away to sort of join the circus. Unsurprisingly, Zampano is not a gentle soul and has a bit of a temper. However, the unexpected happens: Gelsomina loves to travel, and she’s something of a natural clown. Sure, she isn’t overly fond of Zampano, but she does like playing around in an innocent and childlike manner.
There aren’t really many complications to a film like this, and the closest comes when the pair encounter the tightrope walking clown Il Matto the Fool (Richard Basehart), a more freewheeling type who doesn’t take life anywhere nearly as seriously as the stern Zampano. The two men just cannot get along, even as they are both temporarily employed by the same circus, with Matto constantly mocking the thin-skinned brute Zampano. Now, if you think this means that Gelsomina might run away with Matto…no, that isn’t what happens. Gelsomina, for some reason, does seem to feel some loyalty to Zampano. True, she tries to leave him once, but she doesn’t get very far. The movie is not about Gelsomina finding love with a man. Instead, it’s about her discovering the world around her that she never would have seen had Zampano not bought her from her mother, and what it would take to shatter her childlike innocence.
This movie was great, and what made it great, beyond Fellini’s circus-like tone to much of the film, is Masina’s highly expressive face. Her facial expressions at times reminded me of a great silent comedian’s like Charlie Chaplin’s, able to smile broadly and look sheepish when no one else was looking, mostly to amuse herself in what could be seen as a dire life situation. She’s a woman who loves seeing new things and performing, and the fact performing allows her to see those new things is just an added bonus. For most of the film, the camera follows her as she experiences a world that may not look like much to many as it’s mostly just going around various Italian villages and small cities, but is absolutely wonderful for a woman who, judging by what little we see of her home life before she left with Zampano, has never seen much of anything before.
But the film ends in a somewhat unexpected way when, in the final minutes, the film shifts perspectives from Gelsomina to Zampano. Events from the movie have separated the two, and Zampano, unexpectedly given what he was like throughout the film, is experiencing true regret and sorrow for what he did to the woman. Zampano may have been a brute, but he perhaps had a limit he stepped over himself in part because he didn’t know he had it. Zampano, realizing he broke something in the innocent woman, ends the movie sobbing on a beach, and it is a testament to Quinn’s acting that he sold Zampano’s change at the end as the profoundly affected man the character undoubtedly was. Gelsomina’s sad fate is not exactly a surprise given Zampano’s behavior in the first two acts of the film, but seeing how her loss affected him shows the real power might have been in her all along, making his own revelations on what he has done not only tragic for himself, but all the more for the audience as well.
Grade: A
0 Comments