Moving Pictures

THE BELCOURT THEATRE’S FELLINI FESTIVAL HITS THE ROAD WITH 'LA STRADA'

BY JOE NOLAN, FILM CRITIC

Federico Fellini began his film apprenticeship in the 1940s after director Roberto Rosselini discovered him at the Funny Face Shop — the storefront where Fellini and Italian comics artist Enrico De Seta survived the post-war recession in Rome by selling caricatures to American soldiers. Fellini took quickly to Rosselini’s signature style of neorealist filmmaking, and he and Sergio Amidei received an Academy Award nomination for their Rome, Open City (1945) screenplay. Fellini was poised to make a breakthrough in 1954 after the hit-and-miss receptions received by his first films as a director. Fellini called La Strada, “a complete catalog of my entire mythological world,” and the film brims with clowns, circuses, parades, images of the seaside, and figures suspended in the sky. All of these visual elements recur throughout the director’s filmography, and La Strada is the first emblematic example of what we talk about when we talk about “Fellini-esque” cinema.

La Strada — “The Road” — is one of Fellini’s simplest stories. It’s a fable-like tale about an itinerant strongman who buys a widow’s daughter to cook his meals, clean the wagon that serves as their house, and to act as his sidekick in his strength stunt performances. Gelsomina is mentally disabled and rarely speaks. Zampanò, the strongman, is abusive and dishonest, but an unlikely bond develops between the two, bringing a complicated twist to a heartfelt story about art and love and vagabond life on the road.

Italian neorealism cast the aftermath of World War 2 as a backdrop, but La Strada reads more like a fairytale yarn that twists through small villages and the Italian countryside just like the winding road where Zampanò and Gelsomina live their lives and perform their acts. There’s a timeless quality to La Strada, and the surreal magic of circuses and carnivals punctuate this tale with moments of unexpected mystery and magic: Gelsomina gets lost in a Catholic procession in the tight streets of a village. When she stumbles across another stunt performer in the midst of his high-wire act it reads like a miracle. When Gelsomina performs her clown act for a sick boy at a convent he’s speechless as if he can’t believe she’s real. That scene with the misshapen boy features lighting and camera work that reveal Fellini moving away from the raw immediacy of neorealism towards the stylized, fantastical films he became known for.

At the beating heart of La Strada are the pair of performances by Anthony Quinn and Giulietta Masina. Quinn is brutish and nearly feral in his portrayal of Zampanò. Quinn growls and bellows his dialog when he’s not breaking chains or drinking wine. Zampanò is always hungry for more meat, thirsty for more alcohol, and on the lookout for another woman to share the night with before pushing off to the next town. Quinn staggers and swaggers from scene to scene full of selfishness and cruelty without ever becoming merely a macho cartoon. Masina is miraculous as Gelsomina. The “simpleminded” girl has nearly no dialog and Masina manages what amounts to something like a silent movie performance full of physical comedy, dancing, and countless stares, smiles, smirks, grimaces and pouts from her ceaselessly expressive face. Masina wears a bowler hat while performing in Zampanò’s act and her timeless performance in La Strada has rightly been compared to Charlie Chaplin.

La Strada was the first Fellini film I ever saw, and it’s a great pick to kick-off the Belcourt Theatre’s Essential Fellini program which includes the director’s lesser-known early films as well as classics like 8 ½ and La Dolce Vita.

La Strada opens at the Belcourt Theatre June 25. Go to www. belcourt.org for times, tickets and discounted passes for the entire series

Joe Nolan is a critic, columnist and performing singer/songwriter based in East Nashville. Find out more about his projects at www.joenolan.com.