I never knew a movie could be a masterpiece until I saw La Strada in 1960, as a sheltered 20-year-old with a new husband and a plan for a life in the theater. Giulietta Masini, Anthony Quinn, and Richard Basehart showed me what acting really was. At the same time I was transported to a time and place in which one was in the company of destiny—joining three apparent losers on the road of life, without means or even hope. Yet they are in a circus. Zampano is brutish strong man, Gelsomina his assistant, and the acrobat and beguiling clown (Basehart) zigs and zags through the scenes making mischief as he performs his high-wire act. They are jostled against each other, reacting and avoiding, needing and rejecting. The road they face is harsh. The landscape of Italy has been strafed by war; their life is as black and white as the film of it.
First, and central to all, is the girl, Gelsomina. I identified with her totally. Masini's naïf was the kind of character I had always thought of myself as—like Leslie Caron in Lili and The Glass Slipper, but this film towered above such Hollywood creations. Masini and her mentor, her husband and director of the film Federico Fellini, filled the character of Gelsomina out with a rough authenticity born in poverty and pain. With her clumsy, lost looks, she is the essence of a sweet spirit, impervious to the jolts and shocks of her own life. Growing up on a beach somewhere, a sister of hers has been sold off to an itinerant street performer whose act is based on his physical strength. The sister dies—and we never are to learn how. The strong man, Zampano, buys Gelsomina for what we learn is the equivalent of $10, to use her in his act.
We laugh at Gelsomina's attempts at performing, yet her inherent charm and tenderness win us over as well as the crowds who gather to see Zampano's rather unpleasant self-aggrandizing turn. Wherever she is, little children are amused by Gelsomina and are drawn to her as one of them. She is a grownup who is truly childlike.
I was awash with tears throughout the movie the first time I saw it. I saw Gelsomina as me, taken to about the 10th magnitude--an innocent in an untenable life, at the mercy of men who did not understand. The playful "fool" of the movie did not offer Gelsomina escape from Zampano, but he was sensitive enough to suggest a way she could learn to accept her life with the dark strongman. As it turned out, I would ultimately divorce my husband (who was in actuality more like the clown persona than the heartless Zampano), but I never forgot the movie. I was haunted on some subconscious level by its images and the raw grandeur of its theme, story, and message. I have since seen it again more than once, and it has never lost its power.
La Strada is the opposite of a love story, yet the redemption of Zampano, one of the protagonists, lies in that shred of love that Gelsomina symbolizes. If the film makes you cry, so be it. You will meet three of the most unforgettable characters in all moviedom, and you will learn from the complexity and humanity of a masterpiece created by one of the greatest artists ever to work in the medium of film.
First, and central to all, is the girl, Gelsomina. I identified with her totally. Masini's naïf was the kind of character I had always thought of myself as—like Leslie Caron in Lili and The Glass Slipper, but this film towered above such Hollywood creations. Masini and her mentor, her husband and director of the film Federico Fellini, filled the character of Gelsomina out with a rough authenticity born in poverty and pain. With her clumsy, lost looks, she is the essence of a sweet spirit, impervious to the jolts and shocks of her own life. Growing up on a beach somewhere, a sister of hers has been sold off to an itinerant street performer whose act is based on his physical strength. The sister dies—and we never are to learn how. The strong man, Zampano, buys Gelsomina for what we learn is the equivalent of $10, to use her in his act.
We laugh at Gelsomina's attempts at performing, yet her inherent charm and tenderness win us over as well as the crowds who gather to see Zampano's rather unpleasant self-aggrandizing turn. Wherever she is, little children are amused by Gelsomina and are drawn to her as one of them. She is a grownup who is truly childlike.
I was awash with tears throughout the movie the first time I saw it. I saw Gelsomina as me, taken to about the 10th magnitude--an innocent in an untenable life, at the mercy of men who did not understand. The playful "fool" of the movie did not offer Gelsomina escape from Zampano, but he was sensitive enough to suggest a way she could learn to accept her life with the dark strongman. As it turned out, I would ultimately divorce my husband (who was in actuality more like the clown persona than the heartless Zampano), but I never forgot the movie. I was haunted on some subconscious level by its images and the raw grandeur of its theme, story, and message. I have since seen it again more than once, and it has never lost its power.
La Strada is the opposite of a love story, yet the redemption of Zampano, one of the protagonists, lies in that shred of love that Gelsomina symbolizes. If the film makes you cry, so be it. You will meet three of the most unforgettable characters in all moviedom, and you will learn from the complexity and humanity of a masterpiece created by one of the greatest artists ever to work in the medium of film.