La Strada

La Strada (1954), made nearly ten years before 8 ½ (1963), seemed to me at first to have been directed by someone other than Fellini. It was a straight narrative with a clear ending, and the most bizarre thing in the film was the unpredictability of the characters, which I’ve grown used to by now; all of that to say that La Strada made a lot more sense initially than 8 ½ did. However, all of the essential themes and symbols were the same in the two films, indicating that La Strada was part of a growing process leading up to films like 8 ½ .

Most obviously, both films have a circus element; in fact, La Strada’s plot revolves completely around circus acts. This sort of setting is perfect for Fellini’s characters because it connotes a sense of loneliness and banishment. Circus performers are outcasts, forced to make a living by performing tricks for the public’s entertainment, but “normal” people do not want to see these freaks outside of the tent. Zampano has one act that he’s been performing for years now, and he repeats the same lines every time he performs; he uses his pectoral muscles to get by in life, but he doesn’t seem to have any purpose beyond expanding his chest for the crowd. Zampano is strong and kind of handsome, but he has no reason to live, except to travel where the money is. Guido in 8 ½ similarly has nothing to do but to make movies. He alienates himself from everyone else, and despite being surrounded by people all the time, he is rather alone in his mind.

These points about loneliness blur into another of Fellini’s recurring elements, the egotistical man. There isn’t much else needed to describe Zampano: He treats Gelsomina like she is his property and uses her for his own gain; he can’t overcome the embarrassment of one show and thus goes after The Fool and kills him. Guido is in some regards even more egotistical as he lives in his own mind. As a director, he is constantly the center of a mass of people, and everything that happens happens for him, and I don’t think he could ever imagine having to do something for anyone else. 8 ½ ends happily ever after in his mind and in his movie, but as MacDonald pointed out in his essay, Guido’s real life probably didn’t end as well (the best example being that his wife would probably never ho back to him like she did in his imagination).

Like 8 ½, La Strada contained Catholic presence. Zampano and Gelsomina stay in a convent during a rainy night, and the two ironies that occur here are that, despite being in a holy house, neither of them are saved, and the rain water is not a cleansing element but rather a “dirtying” one as Zampano attempts to steal a silver heart and Gelsomina decides to leave him the next day. I don’t know exactly what Fellini intends by using Catholic images and themes in both of these films, but there is definitely some sort of influence.

The biggest symbol I noticed in La Strada was that of the ocean. The film opens with Gelsomina carrying sticks on the beach, somewhere in between she and Zampano stop at the ocean, and in the end Zampano is left to cry alone on the shore. The vast expanse of the ocean connotes emptiness, and that interpretation works for Zampano in the end, but I don’t know if it quite works as an interpretation for every time Fellini shows a beach. In 8 ½ , La Saraghina lives on the beach, and the kids go see her, but I don’t know what significance this holds.

I don’t know yet if I liked La Strada, but what I did like was the Psycho-like plot twist-ish thing where the protagonist dies and the rest of the film is about someone else. In La Strada, it is more subtlety done as the main character shifts only in the last couple minutes from Gelsomina, who is dead, to Zampano. Gelsomina could be seen as “what the film is about,” but I think the film is more about Zampano because she seemed to provide more insight about him than the other way around. In any case, Hitchcock might have taken this plot technique and hyperbolized it for Psycho. Or I could just be making very loose connections.