La Strada (PG.)
Directed by Federico Fellini. 1955
Starring Giulietta Masina, Anthony Quinn and Richard Basehart. Italian with subtitles. Re-released in cinemas. 106 mins.
Fellini's fourth film, which is back in cinemas this week for no particular reason other than it's received a 2K restoration, is the heartbreaking and touching tale of a simple girl, Gelsomina (Masina), who is sold to a cruel circus strongman Zampano (Quinn) who abuses and demeans her as they travel and work on the road. Or, it's the story of a simple man, with simple needs who just wants to get on with his life but keeps getting pestered by annoying clowns who just won't let him be, and are obsessed about how their relationship with him has a spiritual dimension.
We are told that Gelsomina is “special” in some way, suffering from a condition that makes her take on the attributes of a silent movie performer. With her Gloria Hunniford haircut and mime artist wide eyes, she looks like Naomi Watts performance as Princess Diana doing a Harpo Marx impersonation. Right from the start her innocent eyes are expanded like scanners trying to pick up any passing tragic signals, any old tears for her to laugh bravely through. And then, if spending all the time with her wasn't enough, the pair run into the Fool (Basehart) a talented trapeze artist and clown whose greatest skill is for being annoying.
It isn't really clear why Zampano picks her out as an assistant, other than he seems to have an arrangement with the mother to work his way through the entire brood; when he first turns up it is announced that the oldest daughter he had previously taken on as an assistant has died. The film suggests that she is expected to perform martial duties alongside passing the hat round and doing a bit of mime, but all we see of him strongly suggests that Zampano prefers the bigger ladies with a bit more meat on them.
Though his previous film I Vitelloni had given him an international profile, La Strada was really the film that made Fellini, as well as winning the first of his four Oscars for Best Foreign Film. It is the epitome of the early black and white Fellini film that you are supposed to revere, as opposed to the later, colour Fellini film that (with the exception of Amarcord) you are supposed to condemn as overblown and silly. Even the man standing in front of Woody Allen and Diane Keaton in the movie line in Annie Hall, who said that Fellini's latest “was not one of his best” and that he was one of the most self indulgent filmmakers, granted that La Strada was a great film.
Though visually restrained by his later standards, this is Fellini's break with the neo-realism that was Italian arthouse cinema's default post war setting. You can see most of the images that would be Fellini fallbacks over the years: wind whistling through deserted village streets, the use of caricature figures as extras. There is also the ubiquitous Nino Rota score with it mournful Gelsomina's theme.
The music bring us to a technical aspect that no restoration can improve – the horrendous dubbing. As was the norm in Italian cinema, no sound was recorded on set, which is why Fellini could cast two actors who didn't speak Italian in leads roles, but it looks particularly bad here. With Quinn you can accept that he is Italian but Basehart always looks out of place, a man fundamentally at odds with the sounds coming out of his mouth. The music which is often supposed to be being performed by the people on screen springs pristine from the screen, as divorced from the people supposedly playing it as a band on Top Of The Pops.
Often with films this old, a modern viewer will look at them and say they don't get it. With La Strada, I absolutely get it, can see why it is/was so loved while at the same time not getting it at all. Perhaps, it is a forerunner of Forrest Gump: a fundamentally bleak vision that many people can view as a sentimental tragedy, and find in it something that is spiritual and uplifting.
Directed by Federico Fellini. 1955
Starring Giulietta Masina, Anthony Quinn and Richard Basehart. Italian with subtitles. Re-released in cinemas. 106 mins.
Fellini's fourth film, which is back in cinemas this week for no particular reason other than it's received a 2K restoration, is the heartbreaking and touching tale of a simple girl, Gelsomina (Masina), who is sold to a cruel circus strongman Zampano (Quinn) who abuses and demeans her as they travel and work on the road. Or, it's the story of a simple man, with simple needs who just wants to get on with his life but keeps getting pestered by annoying clowns who just won't let him be, and are obsessed about how their relationship with him has a spiritual dimension.
We are told that Gelsomina is “special” in some way, suffering from a condition that makes her take on the attributes of a silent movie performer. With her Gloria Hunniford haircut and mime artist wide eyes, she looks like Naomi Watts performance as Princess Diana doing a Harpo Marx impersonation. Right from the start her innocent eyes are expanded like scanners trying to pick up any passing tragic signals, any old tears for her to laugh bravely through. And then, if spending all the time with her wasn't enough, the pair run into the Fool (Basehart) a talented trapeze artist and clown whose greatest skill is for being annoying.
It isn't really clear why Zampano picks her out as an assistant, other than he seems to have an arrangement with the mother to work his way through the entire brood; when he first turns up it is announced that the oldest daughter he had previously taken on as an assistant has died. The film suggests that she is expected to perform martial duties alongside passing the hat round and doing a bit of mime, but all we see of him strongly suggests that Zampano prefers the bigger ladies with a bit more meat on them.
Though his previous film I Vitelloni had given him an international profile, La Strada was really the film that made Fellini, as well as winning the first of his four Oscars for Best Foreign Film. It is the epitome of the early black and white Fellini film that you are supposed to revere, as opposed to the later, colour Fellini film that (with the exception of Amarcord) you are supposed to condemn as overblown and silly. Even the man standing in front of Woody Allen and Diane Keaton in the movie line in Annie Hall, who said that Fellini's latest “was not one of his best” and that he was one of the most self indulgent filmmakers, granted that La Strada was a great film.
Though visually restrained by his later standards, this is Fellini's break with the neo-realism that was Italian arthouse cinema's default post war setting. You can see most of the images that would be Fellini fallbacks over the years: wind whistling through deserted village streets, the use of caricature figures as extras. There is also the ubiquitous Nino Rota score with it mournful Gelsomina's theme.
The music bring us to a technical aspect that no restoration can improve – the horrendous dubbing. As was the norm in Italian cinema, no sound was recorded on set, which is why Fellini could cast two actors who didn't speak Italian in leads roles, but it looks particularly bad here. With Quinn you can accept that he is Italian but Basehart always looks out of place, a man fundamentally at odds with the sounds coming out of his mouth. The music which is often supposed to be being performed by the people on screen springs pristine from the screen, as divorced from the people supposedly playing it as a band on Top Of The Pops.
Often with films this old, a modern viewer will look at them and say they don't get it. With La Strada, I absolutely get it, can see why it is/was so loved while at the same time not getting it at all. Perhaps, it is a forerunner of Forrest Gump: a fundamentally bleak vision that many people can view as a sentimental tragedy, and find in it something that is spiritual and uplifting.
