Post by klep on May 24, 2021 11:26:50 GMT -6
MOVIE OF THE WEEK for 5/17: La Strada
1950s WEEK!
CW: abuse, sexual violence
Note: This week's essay is graciously provided by a guest contributor.
La Strada is a movie that benefits both from context and lack of context.
The important outside context is that in 1954 La Strada marked a turning point for cinema. In the years following World War II, neorealism had been the dominant approach to filmmaking and marxism the dominant approach to criticism. Neorealism eschewed studio sets and glamorous stars in favor of shooting on location and casts of nonprofessional actors. After the collapse of Italian fascism, the marxist discourse focused on the social, economic, and political situations faced by the poor and the working class. The films getting made and getting celebrated were all about putting people in the context of the world around them.
The important lack of context is that La Strada doesn’t really do any of that. There’s three central characters and a handful of memorable supporting characters, and we’re given almost no information about their lives prior to the events of this movie. Hints are dropped and questions are provoked, but that’s it as far as backstory. The characters are generally in poverty, but the film isn’t particularly focused on their class struggles They scrape by and the question of survival or getting their needs met is never really a plot point. And rather than attempt a verisimilitudinous facsimile of real life, La Strada dabbles in Catholic allegory, melodrama, and fantastical elements. We’re just going to have three dancing musicians lead the main character to the next plot point and no we’re not going to explain that at all.
The film tells the story of Gelsomina, a simple-minded young woman (Giulietta Masina) bought from her mother by Zampanò (Anthony Quinn), a brutish vagabond who performs a circus strongman strongman act. We learn up front that Zampanò’s previous traveling & performing companion was Rosa, Gelsomina’s older sister, and Rosa is now dead. Zampanò makes Gelsomina his new traveling & performing companion and they hit the road to perform his act in any town where they can find an audience.
Gelsomina is naïve and unworldly; it’s hard to tell how much she understands about the world around her or her place within it. She’s got no skills or talents. Her cooking is so bad that even she won’t eat it. Her strongest asset throughout the movie is her playful charm. Giulietta Masina plays Gelsomina as a natural clown, full of wide-eyed facial expressions and amazement at the world. She starts the movie with no training or experience performing, and the training she does get is abusive and inadequate, but put her in front of a crowd and she’s a natural. She can be funny and make the world laugh with her. She has both a talent for and an inadvertent tendency for physical comedy; dramatic moments are often interrupted by pratfalls such as her walking into a doorframe or falling into a literal hole. And unlike all the other performers in the movie her playfulness makes her improvisational as well; the other performers we see have practiced routines that they keep practicing, but Gelsomina is unafraid of adding to what she’s doing; it never occurs to her not to be inventive. The movie alternates between presenting her as childlike (with actual children often seeing themselves in her) and presenting her as saintlike maternal grace as a counterpoint to the men in the film.
While Gelsomina may be childlike, Zampanò is animalistic. He is toxic masculinity taken to its most brutish ends. Zampanò is an abuser. At the outset when he proposes taking Gelsomina on the road he brags that he can make her a great performer because he could even train a dog; that turns out to be grim foreshadowing because the tiny and inadequate training he does give her is reinforced by beating her with a switch. [Note: beating a dog is also abuse. The movie makes the grim metaphor clear, and he’s treating her how he would treat a dog, but treating a dog that way would be animal cruelty.] The film implies as much as it can (in the cinematic language of 1954) that Zampanò rapes Gelsomina in their first night together and that it’s her first sexual experience of any kind. Where Gelsomina is intellectually limited Zampanò is emotionally stunted and verbally inarticulate. He can’t express his own emotions and wouldn’t engage with his own emotions even if he could. He’s perpetually angry, and he’s verbally & physically cruel to every single person in the movie. Zampanò’s strongman act is a tired routine with a lame script where he performs one (1) feat of brute physical strength by flexing his pecs enough to break a chain around his chest; that’s his only act and all of it.
Along their travels the pair of them meet The Fool (Richard Basehart), another circus performer who appears to be everything Zampanò isn’t. The Fool is lighthearted and witty, able to articulate himself far better than anyone else we meet. He has at least two different circus acts — an elaborate tightrope walk and playing the violin — and both of those acts involve refinement and finesse. At first he seems like the antidote to Zampanò, but the movie draws parallels and positions him as another side of the same coin. The Fool also has a tendency to insult everyone he encounters but his insults are more articulate and manage to cut deeper. When things don’t go his way he’s quick to don a selfish worldview that fine he doesn’t need anyone anyway. The Fool introduces the two most didactic ideas in a movie that’s otherwise not driven by dialogue. The first idea is that everything in this world has a purpose in the Divine scheme of things, even a tiny pebble. And the second, truly toxic, idea is that Zampanò’s relationship to Gelsomina must be one of love; The Fool tells Gelsomina that she should love Zampanò back. It’s hard to tell whether the movie endorses that conclusion because there’s no counter ever offered and the idea becomes the text of the rest of the film, but that idea also leads directly to multiple tragedies and a bleak & tragic ending.
La Strada was too different from its contemporaries for Italian tastes, and got a mixed reception in Rome. However it struck a chord with international audiences who were less concerned with post-fascist marxist ideals of the Italian left. The international jury of the Venice Film Festival awarded La Strada with the Silver Lion and the Oscars awarded La Strada with the first competitive Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film (now Best International Feature). Giulietta Masina’s infectious charm made her an international celebrity. And the character of Gelsomina was so beloved that Walt Disney even approached Fellini about the rights to make a comic book or an American animated movie about her.
OUR NEXT MOVIE OF THE WEEK for 5/24: Kiki's Delivery Service
ON THE JOB WEEK!
For On The Job Week we'll be watching a tale of a young girl trying to make it on her own with Hayao Miyazaki's beloved Kiki's Delivery Service. Be sure to join us next week for our discussion of this film, available on HBO Max and for digital purchase in the usual places.
1950s WEEK!
CW: abuse, sexual violence
Note: This week's essay is graciously provided by a guest contributor.
La Strada is a movie that benefits both from context and lack of context.
The important outside context is that in 1954 La Strada marked a turning point for cinema. In the years following World War II, neorealism had been the dominant approach to filmmaking and marxism the dominant approach to criticism. Neorealism eschewed studio sets and glamorous stars in favor of shooting on location and casts of nonprofessional actors. After the collapse of Italian fascism, the marxist discourse focused on the social, economic, and political situations faced by the poor and the working class. The films getting made and getting celebrated were all about putting people in the context of the world around them.
The important lack of context is that La Strada doesn’t really do any of that. There’s three central characters and a handful of memorable supporting characters, and we’re given almost no information about their lives prior to the events of this movie. Hints are dropped and questions are provoked, but that’s it as far as backstory. The characters are generally in poverty, but the film isn’t particularly focused on their class struggles They scrape by and the question of survival or getting their needs met is never really a plot point. And rather than attempt a verisimilitudinous facsimile of real life, La Strada dabbles in Catholic allegory, melodrama, and fantastical elements. We’re just going to have three dancing musicians lead the main character to the next plot point and no we’re not going to explain that at all.
The film tells the story of Gelsomina, a simple-minded young woman (Giulietta Masina) bought from her mother by Zampanò (Anthony Quinn), a brutish vagabond who performs a circus strongman strongman act. We learn up front that Zampanò’s previous traveling & performing companion was Rosa, Gelsomina’s older sister, and Rosa is now dead. Zampanò makes Gelsomina his new traveling & performing companion and they hit the road to perform his act in any town where they can find an audience.
Gelsomina is naïve and unworldly; it’s hard to tell how much she understands about the world around her or her place within it. She’s got no skills or talents. Her cooking is so bad that even she won’t eat it. Her strongest asset throughout the movie is her playful charm. Giulietta Masina plays Gelsomina as a natural clown, full of wide-eyed facial expressions and amazement at the world. She starts the movie with no training or experience performing, and the training she does get is abusive and inadequate, but put her in front of a crowd and she’s a natural. She can be funny and make the world laugh with her. She has both a talent for and an inadvertent tendency for physical comedy; dramatic moments are often interrupted by pratfalls such as her walking into a doorframe or falling into a literal hole. And unlike all the other performers in the movie her playfulness makes her improvisational as well; the other performers we see have practiced routines that they keep practicing, but Gelsomina is unafraid of adding to what she’s doing; it never occurs to her not to be inventive. The movie alternates between presenting her as childlike (with actual children often seeing themselves in her) and presenting her as saintlike maternal grace as a counterpoint to the men in the film.
While Gelsomina may be childlike, Zampanò is animalistic. He is toxic masculinity taken to its most brutish ends. Zampanò is an abuser. At the outset when he proposes taking Gelsomina on the road he brags that he can make her a great performer because he could even train a dog; that turns out to be grim foreshadowing because the tiny and inadequate training he does give her is reinforced by beating her with a switch. [Note: beating a dog is also abuse. The movie makes the grim metaphor clear, and he’s treating her how he would treat a dog, but treating a dog that way would be animal cruelty.] The film implies as much as it can (in the cinematic language of 1954) that Zampanò rapes Gelsomina in their first night together and that it’s her first sexual experience of any kind. Where Gelsomina is intellectually limited Zampanò is emotionally stunted and verbally inarticulate. He can’t express his own emotions and wouldn’t engage with his own emotions even if he could. He’s perpetually angry, and he’s verbally & physically cruel to every single person in the movie. Zampanò’s strongman act is a tired routine with a lame script where he performs one (1) feat of brute physical strength by flexing his pecs enough to break a chain around his chest; that’s his only act and all of it.
Along their travels the pair of them meet The Fool (Richard Basehart), another circus performer who appears to be everything Zampanò isn’t. The Fool is lighthearted and witty, able to articulate himself far better than anyone else we meet. He has at least two different circus acts — an elaborate tightrope walk and playing the violin — and both of those acts involve refinement and finesse. At first he seems like the antidote to Zampanò, but the movie draws parallels and positions him as another side of the same coin. The Fool also has a tendency to insult everyone he encounters but his insults are more articulate and manage to cut deeper. When things don’t go his way he’s quick to don a selfish worldview that fine he doesn’t need anyone anyway. The Fool introduces the two most didactic ideas in a movie that’s otherwise not driven by dialogue. The first idea is that everything in this world has a purpose in the Divine scheme of things, even a tiny pebble. And the second, truly toxic, idea is that Zampanò’s relationship to Gelsomina must be one of love; The Fool tells Gelsomina that she should love Zampanò back. It’s hard to tell whether the movie endorses that conclusion because there’s no counter ever offered and the idea becomes the text of the rest of the film, but that idea also leads directly to multiple tragedies and a bleak & tragic ending.
La Strada was too different from its contemporaries for Italian tastes, and got a mixed reception in Rome. However it struck a chord with international audiences who were less concerned with post-fascist marxist ideals of the Italian left. The international jury of the Venice Film Festival awarded La Strada with the Silver Lion and the Oscars awarded La Strada with the first competitive Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film (now Best International Feature). Giulietta Masina’s infectious charm made her an international celebrity. And the character of Gelsomina was so beloved that Walt Disney even approached Fellini about the rights to make a comic book or an American animated movie about her.
OUR NEXT MOVIE OF THE WEEK for 5/24: Kiki's Delivery Service
ON THE JOB WEEK!
For On The Job Week we'll be watching a tale of a young girl trying to make it on her own with Hayao Miyazaki's beloved Kiki's Delivery Service. Be sure to join us next week for our discussion of this film, available on HBO Max and for digital purchase in the usual places.