When Gelsomina, a naïve young woman, is purchased from her impoverished mother by brutish circus strongman Zampanò to be his wife and partner, she loyally endures her husband's coldness and abuse as they travel the Italian countryside performing together. Soon Zampanò must deal with his jealousy and conflicted feelings about Gelsomina when she finds a kindred spirit in Il Matto, the carefree circus fool, and contemplates leaving Zampanò.
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Venice Film Festival
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Italian Film Week, London
Poland
ERA New Horizons Film Festival
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Absolutely savage how the men in this movie keep telling Fellini's wife she looks like various vegetables.
Sometimes in life we meet someone special even if we don't realize it until we've moved past them. Someone you find who is kind, curious, maybe a little bit innocent and maybe a little bit naive, but nonetheless someone you can take in under your wing. It's a favor you're doing them, showing them the ropes of life and teaching them things they never knew about before.
Though you were strangers at one point you grow closer to each other, closer to their eyes and their smile until you can see them in your sleep. You start to look forward to the presence of their company until you start to miss them when you're away. No matter, you always come…
After having two Fellini hits in a row, Nights of Cabiria and 81/2, then tripping up on his well-regarded masterpiece, Le Dolce Vita, my wife and I were a bit cautious going into La Strada. Working in La Strada’s favour is Fellini’s wife, the marvelous Giulietta Masina. I loved her completely in Nights of Cabiria. I saw a hint of The Little Tramp there.
Wow, The Little Tramp is in full view here, and it evoked a wide grin. I’m not a big Chaplin aficionado, but of the few that I’ve seen, it’s the simple expression and soulful eyes that tell so much without a word. As the first act progressed, though, I have to admit thinking the story a…
Giulietta Masina's performance here is perhaps one of the most touching and beautiful performances I've seen in recent memory. Her allegedly simple-minded character has an unspoken depth to her that is moving to watch. She portrays devotion, a sort of spiritual curiosity, emotional complexity, and naivete not so much through the words she speaks as the expressions on her face and the movement of her body. The way her face morphs in the wake of her master's blunt statements conveys more than all the speeches you can muster.
The story here meanders, but that seems to be a large part of the point. It's about the characters, not the plot. Rendered beautifully, it captures the journey of these two ill-fated people in black-and-white, but every moment suggests a sort of brightness. The circus performances, the odd people met along the way, and the scenery all seem like they are painted technicolor despite the greyscale.
December count: 59/100.
Picked by: aprilxiong.
A film of unfinished meanings. Fellini did not see reality as the rest of us do, and La Strada straddles neorealism with weatherbeaten, mythological metaphors. It is elegant in its simplicity as a film, but deeply powerful in its soul. We witness fantasies of poverty and innocence, born into a world of guilt and the rash men who possess it. La Strada is about misfortune and despair, and the paradox of their stability making them difficult to abandon. La Strada is about living a life without attachment to anything but ourselves. It tells us that it is commendable to imagine, for it is the world that is cruel. Fellini's film is impeccably made, paced…
***One of the best 150 films I have ever seen.***
Federico Fellini is a cinema legend for several followers of his direction style, his always controversial subject matter and his vision towards the world. Before embracing the passionately antibourgeois filmmaking style (La Dolce Vita [1960], 8½ [1963]), Fellini managed to obtain worldwide recognition and great popularity thanks to what are nowadays two of the most heartbreaking neorealist films of the Italian cinema: La Strada and Le Notti di Cabiria (1957). It is clear that the positivism and optimism of the times were most likely to reject such a crude reality. Nevertheless, Fellini followed the footsteps that Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio de Sica had left behind a decade ago. Despite that…
Undeniably an artistic masterpiece, but man this is melodramatic. I wonder if they handed out boxes of tissues on the way into the theatres back in '54, as this is so very clearly a film that targets the tear-ducts.
Giulietta Masina is like a teeny-tiny Italiano version of Chaplin here with her awkward two-step and 'follow you everywhere' eyes. What an amazing talent she was. In La Strada she plays Gelsomina, a young woman sold into a life as partner to travelling strongman Zampanò, who turns out to be a bit of an emotionally draining pig.
A rollercoaster of a film, this is classic Fellini: smart storyline, courageous and colourful characters, lively soundtrack and a love angle that'll have the audience reaching for a cuddle from their nearest and dearest. For me, Nights of Cabiria pips La Strada at the post, but this is certainly a beautiful piece of Italian cinematic history.
Criterion Challenge 2021
27. Directed by Federico Fellini
With this breakthrough film, Federico Fellini launched both himself and his wife and collaborator Giulietta Masina to international stardom, breaking with the neorealism of his early career in favor of a personal, poetic vision of life as a bittersweet carnival. The infinitely expressive Masina registers both childlike wonder and heartbreaking despair as Gelsomina, loyal companion to the traveling strongman Zampanò (Anthony Quinn, in a toweringly physical performance), whose callousness and brutality gradually wear down her gentle spirit.
This edition arrives on November 2, 2021. To learn more or pre-order, visit Criterion.com.
Gelsomina is sold by her very economically unfortunate mother to the crude & wandering Zampanò. They roam through different Italian roads ( strade ), through different places they encounter - performing live ‘circus-like’ shows.
An extravagant canvas devoted to love. A melancholy voyage through the metaphorical Italian roads. A heartfelt & heartbreaking journey through what art is to us. A bittersweet expedition through what can only be described as life. Although the film occurs nearly a decade after World War II devastated so much of Italy in so many ways, the bleakness and imperishable state of the country’s landscapes serve as a perpetual backdrop to the tragic events that befall the three central characters. In fact - the more significant aspect of…
As paths out of the Italian neorealist movement diverged, “La Strada” is Fellini’s ebullient declaration of his singular career intent.
Going the opposite tonal route as his contemporaries Rossellini and Antonioni, “La Strada” is Fellini’s averment that his own silences would not be filled with reflection and preponderance, but with passionate declarations on the complicated and invigorating joys of living.
“La Strada” is a vivacious ode to the craft of learning how to invent yourself. Giulietta Masina’s comically naïve peasant girl Gelsomina looks at every aspect of the world as if for the first time. And in a way - her enchantment echoes that of her husband, Federico Fellini.
In his own interpretation of Italian melodrama, Fellini heightens emotion…
