[The Film & its Double III] Fellini, [La Strada] & the Likes of Humanity

By Dontrell Lovet't
from, [PsychoNeuroFilmography]


 If one is to stop and look behind them, they may find similarities when their attention is returned forward; the cliche of the past having nothing for is timeless, though the artist, while anticipating establishing their immortality through the medium of art, must rely on the past, on memories, fortunes, misfortunes, adventures and misadventures all the same.


  Federico Fellini was a master of giving an audience a widen view of humanity within a session of his films. The Maestro's 1954 film, [La Strada], gives us an eartly feel of things most of us may have felt, and if not encountered, are bound to. Gelsomina, a woman whose intellect is nothing special to speak of, is purchase from her mother by Zampano, a primitive who takes her on the road in an almost mythical and harsh tale, where delays can be viewed as gifts, even in a ragtag traveling circus, which gives us the epitome of what we believe would be the Italian personality. Gelsomina becomes a percussionist alongside of Zampano street performing, giving little to the modest living they are making as a patchworked and purchase-couple, though Zampano wants nothing of a marriage with Gelsomina, who offers her hand out of the planted idea of a nun.

  Il Matto, a man who too is a member of the circus, appears and fixes himself as a tormentor of Zampano, though we never discover why and when Zampano is at his wit's end, he pulls a knife and chases Il Matto, which causes him to get arrested, where he is jailed soon after for the offense. When Zampano is released, he and Gelsomina sees Il Matto on side of the road changing a tire. Zampano stops the car, kills the clown Il Matto and attempts to conceal the body in the car, which goes into flames as Zampano pushes it off the road. But the killing of Il Matto causes Gelsomina to come apart and her coming apart causes Zampano to abandon her while she sleeps, awakening to her clothes, money and her trumpet, one of the other instruments she played on occassions when she and Zampano would perform in the streets to make their modest and almost meager living.

  The story only comes to a close when Zampano encounters Gelsomina year's later, having been taken in by her father, well-wasted away till the point she inevitably dies and Zampano finds a beach and breaks down in tears. Is his crying out of regret for never having loved Gelsomina or for not having taken care of her properly? Is it because he bought her from her mother who could have given her a bit more love then he had shown her? Or was it empathy for her having to have to witness and live with the haunting memory of watching him kill Il Matto?


  Any conclusion can be made by anyone who has the care to offer their perspective of [La Strada], but all we do know and what many can agree on, is the depiction of [La Strada] gives us an almost tragic-comedy of humanity, terrifying but not all the way, as smiles can be invoked from the views and scenes of performing clowns, and the chuckles we humans tend to take on when we observe misfortune familiar and unfamiliar to us.

  Fellini is the ultimate misfit of film, a true maestro of embracing this human condition for all it is, reserving judgement, forfeiting any such altruism for endeavors to shapeshift it, rather give human kindness, human darkness and human existence its benefit of a doubt for a due in proper.