Film review: La Strada (1954)

After the surprising delights of The White Sheik, I thought we'd follow up with the other Fellini (that he made only a couple of years later) in our 50-film collection. A bit different, to put it mildly.  The story of how a brutish self-employed itinerant strongman (Zampano, a masterfully unpleasant performance by Anthony Quinn), having already killed her sister (in some unspecified way) buys an evidently simple young woman (Gelsomina, played by the Chaplinesque (the man himself praised her performance) wife of Fellini, Giulietta Masina) off her desperate single mother 

and slowly breaks her spirit until she goes mad and he (having mellowed enough to care for her for a while) abandons her on a wintry hillside.  And if that isn't enough, it includes a coda of finding out years later that she was taken in by a kindly family only to die in her sleep, evidently of a broken heart.  Oh, and I missed out the part where a good-natured, much more talented rival performer ("the fool" - another American, Richard Basehart), 

who has constantly teased Zampano just because he deserves it, and who offers the young woman the opportunity to escape the strongman while he's briefly incarcerated, instead persuades her that her purpose is to be the one person who loves the brute, is later (accidentally) killed by him.  This is what finally snaps Gelsomina's hold on reality. Fun!  Here's a scene after he's forced himself on her and she's convinced herself she could love him, and just before he invites over another woman that he'll end up spending the night with:

But...  Even though this is an ugly, bombed-out, Italy-of-the-margins, filled with ugly people scraping by, this film is so alive and the very opposite of enervating.  And even though I am not a fan of movies that are "fables," whose story is not really just the story of the characters (because too often the characters become cyphers), this film is going to stay with me.  Which doesn't exactly make me unique, given its status in the pantheon, but it goes to show that a great filmmaker has something intangible that can reach you even when you resist it.  I mean - a film where the heroine is a mildly mentally-handicapped sad clown?  That is set amongst circus folk?  And did I mention the sympathetic nun character? Shudder.  But it works.  (And after all, just try describing The Seventh Seal in a way that doesn't make prospective viewers run screaming.)  Slightly disappointing to find that it's not Quinn or Basehart speaking their fluent Italian, as all the voices were dubbed afterwards and they're actually counting in English as Fellini shouts instructions at them.  But Quinn really is a revelation - it's a volcanic performance of pure physicality.  (And apparently he really did learn his one feat-of-strength trick off actual strongmen performers.)  And the soundtrack is lovely. Ah go on - watch it.  I'll take the risk that you'll hate me afterwards.

I do envy their motorcycle mobile home, I have to say...