La Stra­da (1954)

Men. Awful, awful crea­tures. In Fed­eri­co Fellini’s 1954 film La Stra­da, Antho­ny Quinn’s rov­ing strong man Zam­pano is like a ripped and griz­zled mag­net for foul behav­iour and deviant intent. He is a walk­ing side of beef with morals, ethics and empa­thy trimmed from his car­cass at an ear­ly age. He lev­els abuse at any­one and every­one who gets close to him, clear­ly the prod­uct of a upbring­ing that instilled in him traits of macho indi­vid­u­al­ism and nar­cis­sis­tic pride. There is room for noth­ing else, except jug­fuls of cheap wine.

This is why Giuli­et­ta Masina’s Gel­som­i­na receives the ulti­mate rough ride when she is coerced into hit­ting the road with him in his bust­ed up jalopy that reeks like a pig sty. She is intro­duced as the dimwit­ted ugly duck­ling who pass­es around the hat after he has exe­cut­ed his deeply unim­pres­sive act in which he snaps a chain by puff­ing out his chest. She is a dod­der­ing Har­po Marx-a-like, even wear­ing his tat­ty top hat and over­sized trench-coat.

Where Zam­pano is a void of high emo­tions, she seems to be con­stant­ly over­dos­ing on them – Masina’s trade­mark move here is cred­i­bly switch­ing from joy to sad­ness and back again (and some­times back once more), often in the space of a sin­gle take. Her view of the world is dan­ger­ous­ly sim­ple. If she expe­ri­ences some­thing, she reflects instant­ly through expres­sion. She’s shal­low and easy to read, maybe even lack­ing for complexity.

The sto­ry takes the pair on a wind­ing tour of an unfor­giv­ing Ital­ian land­scape which appears made up sole­ly of parched scrub­land and is peo­pled by filthy, self-serv­ing vagabonds. Gel­som­i­na receives a small jolt of hope when a cir­cus fool tells her that every peb­ble on this earth has a pur­pose, and so maybe she will make some­thing of her­self one day? She wants to impress Zam­pano and make him love her like she loves him, but her quest is futile. He is vio­lent­ly unre­spon­sive to her advances. As she draws in, he bri­dles away further.

The film is about slav­ery and sex­u­al humil­i­a­tion, and Felli­ni reminds at every stage of the trip that the iron fist of the male rules supreme. Gel­som­i­na is utter­ly help­less, as even when she tries to escape from his mighty clutch­es, she ends up return­ing to him. The film sug­gests that human com­pan­ion­ship is every­thing, even when it’s built on a foun­da­tion of psy­cho­log­i­cal abuse. It is prefer­able to lone­li­ness, even when hard-sought phys­i­cal con­tact is more often a slap than it is a kiss.

Nino Rota’s sen­ti­men­tal score becomes embed­ded with­in the nar­ra­tive, its sad refrain becom­ing some­thing of a per­son­al anthem for the hap­less Gel­som­i­na. It’s a cyn­i­cal work, sewing the seeds for the all-out hat­ful malaise that would become so cen­tral to Fellini’s lat­er work and world­view. The futil­i­ty of exis­tence is weighed up against life’s minus­cule moments of nat­ur­al poet­ry, but you know which one tips the scales first. Its trite mes­sage is that com­pas­sion is good for men­tal health, and that the scars you leave on oth­ers will be returned to you ten fold lat­er on.