Roger Ebert, in his Great Films essay on La Strada, says:
"It is Quinn's performance that holds up best, because it is the simplest. Zamano is not much more intelligent than Gelsomina. Life has made him a brute and an outcast, with one dumb trick (breaking a chain by expanding his chest muscles), and a memorized line of patter that was perhaps supplied to him by a circus owner years before. His tragedy is that he loves Gelsomina and does not know it, and that is the central tragedy for many of Fellini's characters: They are always turning away from the warmth and safety of those who understand them, to seek restlessly in the barren world."
Fellini has given us a film about outcasts. How do the roles of these outcasts reflect on each other? Do you see any signs of redemption? Choose a character and examine how that character redeems him or herself and how that character is cinematically presented as an outcast by society. Be mindful of all of Fellini's symbolism! Do this in at least 3 hearty paragraphs.
Due: Monday, October 29
These outcasts each have specific roles. Zampano is the strength, Gelsomina is the love, and the Fool is the soul. These roles are very evident when these characters are together and are further supported through the conflict the characters have with each other. Zampano is very rugged, hot-headed, and grumpy. Gelsomina is clueless, loving, and has a face that looks very innocent and frail. The Fool is just that, a fool. He cracks jokes, pokes fun at people, but is also very deep and personal (which is evident when he tells Gelsomina to stay with Zampano). These roles are supported through the cinematic portrayal of the characters. When Zampano first appears, he has a dark shadow that stretches half of his face, smoking a cigarette, and has a very scruffy outfit on. Immediately we now that this man is not a very caring man, who is only focused on himself; people are expendable to him. Gelsomina, when she is asked to replace Rosa as Zampano's assistant, is the complete opposite, with a very loving and caring face with big ‘puppy-dog’ eyes. She looks extremely innocent and her hair almost looks like a halo. Her outfit is not flashy and shows that she is not of a wealthy background and her face looks of nothing but compassion and care. The fool, when he appears on the rope, is doing a very foolish act. He is very small on the screen with gives a sense of vulnerability due to his possible risk of falling. When he is shown going to his car, his face is half brightly lit and half slightly shadowed. This represents how he is both a comical man and a deep and personal man. Also, his costume includes wings and a painted tear on his face. He looks ridiculous in this outfit, which represents his joking side, and the tear represents his more serious side. There is much conflict between these outcasts, because their roles do not always see eye-to-eye. Gelsomina is very caring, while Zampano is not. He does not realize how he feels for her and treats her terribly, but she still cares for him. Zampano and the Fool did not get along at all, and it led to the Fool’s death when his jokes pushed Zampano too far. Gelsomina and the Fool got along quite well. Symbolically this represents how strength always pushing things away, especially love, because it is weak to have feelings, especially love. Strength and the Soul did not get along either, because Strength does not think and has a very short fuse, while Soul causes one to think more carefully. Love and Soul get along, because they work together.
ReplyDeleteThe Fool’s moment of redemption is when he convinces Gelsomina to stay with Zampano. He has messed with Zampano throughout his life (assumedly), but here he is trying to convince the one person who will put up with Zampano to stay with him. His outfit looks like a mixture of light and dark, and his facial lighting is a mix of light and dark. This represents how he can be mean, then nice, joking then serious. He is very sarcastic that some of his jokes seem very hurtful and spiteful, but then he tells Gelsomina how she has a purpose in life and that it is to stay with Zampano. If she won’t who will? Up to this point, the audience feels that the Fool is an annoying character who may not mean harm but causes it anyway, but they see here how he has a soft side and cares for people.
The Fool is presented as an outcast through his cinematic presentation. When he is shown playing violin in the empty circus tent, he is very small on screen. Also, he is all alone in this big empty tent and he plays a very sad song that seems appropriate for a person who is an outsider. Also, when he is first shown in the film, he is alone and small on screen walking on a rope. He is above everyone else, but he is still alone and is a very small size surrounded by a large area of empty space.
The roles of the outcasts in this film reflect on each other in that Gelsomina and Zampano are simultaneously foils to each others' characters, and they truly need each other as well. This becomes obvious by the end of the film, but it is apparent throughout. Although each character experiences great tragedies and is not able to completely redeem themselves, they each experience small redemptions.
ReplyDeleteGelsomina's redemption is when she realizes that Zampano needs her to survive. After Zampano is put in jail, Gelsomina seriously considers leaving town with the traveling circus. However, when she has a conversation with The Fool, and he asks her who would be able togo with Zampano if she does not, and tells her that her purpose in life could very well be to travel with Zampano. These ideas make Gelsomina seriously reconsider her relationship with Zampano, and she realizes that The Fool was right. Afterwards, the relationship between Gelsomina and Zampano is still very strained, but she is much happier with it now that she realizes that it is her purpose to be a part of it. Thus, realizing her purpose is Gelsomina's redemption.
One example of Gelsomina's status as an outcast is in her costume and general appearance. She is seen in the same dirty coat throughout most of the film. As well, she is always seen in clown makeup in every one of Zampano's performances. Another example of her status as an outsider is in the way that people react to her (i.e. through diegetic sound). In one scene in the film wherein Gelsomina is wandering through a town after running away from Zampano. The audience can hear her singing a song as she walks. In the background, one can hear people on the street mocking her or saying that she is crazy.
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ReplyDeleteLa Strada is a film about outcasts, the street performers and "artists" who sever their homeward ties to entertain and make money. The outcasts are tied together through "la strada," the road. Zampano, Gelsomina, and the Fool are traveling performers, roaming the country in near-poverty to captivate audiences and make money. Their lives on the road contribute to their outsider status, leaving them with no stability or home. The three outcasts depicted have different kinds of social handicaps in addition to their lifestyles - Zampano is unable to express his emotions, quick to drink and lash out at those he cares for; Gelsomina is wide-eyed and naive, unequipped to handle with the suffering and loss of life on the road; and the Fool is inexplicably bitter and passive-aggressive, antagonizing Zampano and half-jokingly criticizing Gelsomina's looks.
ReplyDeleteSymbolism is also heavy in La Strada. Zampano is the male id unleashed, a self-conscious brute quick to drink his sorrows away, prove his physical strengths, bed whichever women will have him, fight whomever threatens his masculinity, and reject complex emotions like "love." Gelsomina embodies innocence and femininity, with endless passion and care and everlasting hope. The Fool, regardless of his actual emotional nuances, symbolizes hope to Gelsomina, and Zampano's murder of the Fool crushes hope and kills innocence. With her innocence lost, Gelsomina wastes away, and man's tendency to destroy that which it loves is perpetuated.
Zampano is portrayed cinematically as an outcast through mise-en-scene. He appears dirty throughout, with tattered clothes and a cap that he never takes off. The clothes, which are worn throughout with very little variation, imply the monotony of his lifestyle, and his unwillingness to change. He does the same routine in each location, complete with the same speeches and hackneyed phrasings, and he is unwilling to change anything about it. Gelsomina symbolizes a threat to his routine, and his clothing choices prove how attached he is.
In the end, Zampano redeems himself by coming to terms with his emotions. Throughout the film, Zampano refuses to see Gelsomina as his love, and even abandons her when he realizes he has crushed her spirit. For all his strength, Zampano is a weak man - he cannot come to terms with Gelsomina's love for him, and actively runs from it. By the end, drunken and pathetic, he sits in the sand and sobs. His tears are a physical manifestation of his anguish, and his crying is the first time he is willing to show his emotion. It represents the tearing down of the emotional barrier he has imposed, and it represents an inner emotional streak that the audience had not seen throughout.
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ReplyDeleteThe Fool’s last appearance in the film is a long shot of his corpse under the bridge. This anticipates the manner in which Gelsomina and Zampano will disappear from the rest of the film: in long, open shots that illustrate the characters complete aloneness in the world. For each, the only other significant people are the other two and they continue to find and lose each other as if they were the only other people in a big empty world.
ReplyDeleteThe scene opens with Zampano shutting off the guttural masculine growling of his bike and approaching the Fool’s car. His clothes-jacket, hat, facemask-are worn and “rough” looking. The scene cuts to a shot of the car and the Fool who appears from the trees like a cheery Rococo figure accompanied by the diegetic twittering of birds. A shot of Zampano shows Gelsomina standing far behind him by the bike. She is love/ego, the mediator between flesh/id and soul/super-ego, but here she is too afraid to intervene. As the Fool sets about replacing his tire he is shown in bright lighting which is replaced by Zampano’s shadow as he approaches the Fool and kicks the bottle standing next to him. The next shot is a high angle shot above the Fool-Zampano finally has the Fool in a vulnerable position. As he pushes the Fool against the car he is continually shown in low angle shots and the Fool in high angle shots.
Gelsomina’s voice is heard offscreen, begging Zampano to stop, but she is ignored. A cut shows her in the exact center of a long shot as the ineffectual mediator. Zampano hates the Fool because he interrupts him during his act and continually undermines other displays of his masculinity, turning his “rifle” to “trifle.” As the Fool walks away from the car he complains that Zampano has broken his watch, the implication being that the Fool’s life has ended.
The setting of each character’s “death” illustrates what has led them the point of death: Gelsomina dies of grief from the Fool’s death and Zampano’s cold indifference (which has caused the Fool’s death), Zampano “dies” on the beach, next to an ocean that represents loneliness and the tumultuousness of tragic love, and the Fool dies in a pastoral setting because his happiness infuriated Zampano. That the Fool dies calmly in this particular setting shows that he has not repented of what made him infuriating to Zampano. Zampano "dies" sobbing on the beach, hating himself for what he's done: Gelsomina and the Fool's deaths occur because Zampano's redemption comes too late.