"La Strada" - Masks & Identities
The original movement of Italian neo-realist cinema started after the Second World War. It was a cinema concerned with finding itself within a broader context; films that focused on working class Italians within their society, facing harsh new challenges inevitably brought on by the destruction of war. Naturally Italian cinema could not stay focused on communities in crisis forever. As the conventions of neo-realism took root, many of the filmmakers who either started in or were influenced by the movement found their own voices and went their separate ways.Frederico Fellini (1920-1993) made his start as a screenwriter on several neo-realist films before turning to directing in 1950. Fellini’s work had many influences – his dreams, the circus, cartoons, innocence, the sea, to name a few. Once he became a filmmaker he went inward and poured all the aspects of his life into his characters. In 1954 he completed his first commercial success, La Strada (The Road). The film follows the relationship of two very different characters: Zampano played by Anthony Quinn and Gelsomina played by Fellini’s wife, Giulietta Masina. Zampano is a circus strongman who rides around in a motorcycle-home performing his one and only act – breaking chains that are wrapped around his chest through his vaunted ‘superhuman strength’. Gelsomina is an innocent young girl whom he takes away and trains as his circus assistant. Another important character is ‘Il Matto’ or ‘the Fool’, played by Richard Basehart, a free spirited tight rope walker who helps to develop Gelsomina’s self awareness. The film is a simple yet complex psychological exploration of these characters’ search for truth, place and understanding, a quest for self-completion along the road of life, whether in the end consciously or unconsciously.
Italian film scholar, Peter Bondanella, calls Fellini’s early works “‘the trilogy of character’ … a modernist analysis of the very notion of character itself… His portraits of lovable but flawed provincials focus upon the clash between their social personae (their ‘mask’) and the more authentic feelings and emotions too often concealed underneath (their ‘face’)… an emotional or spiritual poverty that makes them symbols for a far more philosophical perspective on individual alienation.” (Bondanella, 74-76) Bondanella’s treatment can be applied to the character of Zampano. Clearly he is not lovable but past the brutish, primitive shell of his armoured exterior lies a cauldron of emotions and uncertainties that he consistently denies throughout the film. His final realisation, alone on the beach as he looks up at the overwhelming night sky, comes from the steady wearing away of his deluded sense of himself as he confronts the other characters in the film, whose effects on him slowly undermine his iron-man personae, exposing the true ‘face’ beneath. It could be said that Zampano’s final epiphany is brought on by the incorporation of a ‘trilogy of perspectives’ or a ‘trilogy of characters’ – Zampano, Gelsomina, and the Fool.
In order to embark on a ‘modernist analysis’ of Zampano one must first take a look at his mask, the act he projects throughout the film and the only self the viewer sees clearly. The mask is important to decode because it acts as the audience’s reference point for change. When we witness where Zampano ends up we realise that this mask has crumbled. Zampano’s appearance is constructed to mirror his behaviour: the leather jacket, the boots and the filter-less cigarettes match the barrel-chested, dirty, unshaven, ill-mannered, shifty-looking man of few words, who can turn on the charm to get what he wants at any cost. Yet most of these physical traits and blunt behaviours are overlooked in the moment by others in the film, seduced by the flash of his seeming wealth and cavalier extravagance with money. “That’s the way I am,” (Fellini, La Strada) he says as he hands Gelsomina’s younger siblings money for salami. With this act we see his need to uphold an expedient image of ‘generosity’ as a deflection while in reality he is a cut-throat, selfish entrepreneur who cares more about his meagre profits and basic survival than the lives of others. In company he needs to be the center of attention. Morose alone, he turns into a self-indulgent extrovert when he drinks and womanizes, and he is ready to fight anyone who laughs at him or so much as looks at him sideways. As Donald Costello writes, “Zampano defines himself by brute power. He breaks things –furniture, doors, people. Power is even his profession. He is a Strong Man…That is all he knows a man to be.” (Costello, 14)
Zampano’s true face is harder to see, however it lurks in the shadows. Automatic attitudes he possesses and overreactions to certain situations point to a lost past or hidden secrets. The most obvious clues are his lack of communication and his resistance to true human contact; he doesn’t let anybody get close to him. Whenever Gelsomina asks a question about his past, she is sharply cut off. She longs to identify with him yet he deflects her with sarcasm. “Where are you from?” she asks. “My home town,” (Fellini, La Strada) he replies with a self-satisfied laugh. Then there is the mystery of Rosa. Rosa is Gelsomina’s sister, who was picked up by Zampano, before she was, to be used as his circus assistant. In the beginning of the film we learn that Rosa has died somehow. Also the Fool seems to know Zampano from the past; he calls him “Gummy” and makes fun of him. What emerges, under the circuitous pressure of spoken and unspoken relationships, is that Zampano deals with events from the past by total denial – they never happened. Any reminder of that time or place in his life is a threat to him. Yet the viewer, like Gelsomina, can’t help but wonder what he is hiding – some buried truth about something he has lost or some betrayal he has committed against someone, causing him to shut out the painful intimations of an inner life. We get a strong sense that for Zampano the world is a cold place and whatever mistakes he has made in his life, they are inescapable. He is the alienated man who trusts no one and focuses only on his own survival; the easiest way to do this is to always be on the move. He has become a nomad on the run, never giving anything or anyone a moment’s thought, bound by eternal chains, inside and out, that he is struggling either to ignore or break. Costello writes, “Zampano’s circus act itself tells us about him. We see him as a chained animal bound by his own brutishness. His task is to break his chains, to find a human self within. Yet the climax of his act never brings a sense of escape or freedom; he has destroyed a link, but not freed himself. That becomes Gelsomina’s job.” (Costello, 8)
To Gelsomina the world is a very different place – it is infinite. This innocent young girl leaves her home on the beach and starts a new life hoping to experience all the joys and wonders of life on the road. She is following her sister but she doesn’t know what that means. With the playful nature of a child fascinated by her surroundings and intrigued by everything she sees, she is willing to follow Zampano with an open, trusting heart. She is excited to become a dancer, a singer, an actress, as she possesses the true gift of a nature that lives to express itself. “Fellini has described her as “a little creature who wants to give love.”” (Costello, 14) She turns to Zampano in curiosity as a big brother figure, mimicking his actions with the toothpick, dressing up and experimenting with his trumpet. She longs to grow organically in a natural environment like the tomatoes she plants. As Costello points out, “the circus seems to be the natural place for the mystical Gelsomina, surely more natural for her than it is for the plodding, unchanging, and earthbound Zampano.” (Costello, 10)
Sadly, it is Zampano’s road she has chosen to follow. Soon her freedom, her exuberant self-expression and her love of all things become dominated by repression, frustration and fear. He confines her, controls her, uses her, “She works with nobody but me” (Fellini, La Strada). His inhumanity towards her becomes a reflection of his own amputated spirit. His circus act is made to revolve around him; she is instructed to proclaim “Zampano has arrived”, but it breaks her heart that he won’t give her credit for anything. Yet, though he finds her a drag and takes her for granted, he does need her. When she runs away he quickly tracks her down; he really can’t bear the thought of being alone. When Gelsomina wonders off with the circus, “the side-by-side linear Gelsomina-Zampano structure that has held the film together up to this point is broken. Gelsomina’s education has progressed as far as it can with only Zampano. A new structural and thematic element is needed. It is time for the Fool.” (Costello, 15) The Fool’s philosophy of life consoles Gelsomina. He assures her that everything in life has a purpose, a reason for being. He comes into her life at the perfect moment, when she is completely disillusioned and fed up with life; he shines a flashlight in her face as if to reveal a universal truth. He questions her, tries to find out what she is passionate about and also to examine the reasons behind what she accepts; for instance he asks her the simply question, “why do you think he didn’t let you go?” (Fellini, La Strada) They come to the conclusion that maybe love is involved and that her current path might not be so grim. That Gelsomina’s purpose could really be to stay with Zampano –to try and enlighten him. A sudden sense of sympathy is incorporated, as the Fool helps to explain the nature of Zampano. “He’s like a dog…a dog looks at you, wants to talk and only barks.” (Fellini, La Strada) After their exchange it is evident that Gelsomina takes this new found purpose to heart and this vision becomes the single thing she holds closer than anything else for the duration of the film. As the Fool says, “If anyone is to get through to him, it’s you.” (Fellini, La Strada)
Zampano on the other hand feels mainly hostility towards the Fool. “Zampano feels threatened by the Fool. To Zampano, the Fool represents the magic and hence powerful characteristics of the clown-artist…Gelsomina and the Clown carry with them the aura of the marvellous, which baffles and annoys Zampano” (Costello, 25). For one reason or another, whether it is the threat the Fool poses to Gelsomina, or his shame in being mocked, Zampano beats the Fool to death. After which Gelsomina is never the same. “I wanted to run away, but he said I should stay with you.” (Fellini, La Strada) In her shock and confusion her connection with the higher principle – with the heavens – is broken, and she is driven mad. Zampano is intimidated by her sudden unexplained illness and through this he becomes more human. “The Fool’s special power increases after his death. Zampano begins to show human characteristics of fear and need, and perhaps of even more…now, for the first time, we see Zampano sitting down in Gelsomina’s characteristic position, huddled against a wall as if he would like to disappear, to blend into the background.” (Costello, 27-28)
In the end, Zampano abandons Gelsomina; the dark vehicle that engulfs the innocence drives away. The state he leaves her in was unconscionable. Years later Zampano wanders through a town only to learn that Gelsomina has died a tragic and lonely death. More than ever the burden of memory comes down; he finally awakens to the magnitude of his actions but by then it is too late. He is alone, haunted by the past. Destiny leads him to the beach, “It is a sharp reminder of the opening of the film, but now it is Zampano, instead of Gelsomina, who walks home to the sea. There is a note of completion here, yet a feeling of beginning as well as ending. The film began when Zampano came to the sea only to take Gelsomina away from it; the film is now ending when Gelsomina, in spirit, brings Zampano back to the sea.” (Costello, 29) He looks up and realises how small he really is in relation to the heavens; his one act is up. We can’t help but wonder what Zampano’s redemption will be. Fellini, in knowing the true inner qualities of human nature, is “more suggestive than definitive” (Costello, 31) in this closing scene, which is the real magic of it. And yet after everything he has been through Zampano still convinces himself he needs no one; “I want to be alone,” he shouts. The biggest thing to remember is that Zampano has been exposed to others characters that have no need for a mask. If anything the characters they play in the circus mirror who they are. Their face in a sense reveals their true emotions – like any true performer their act is an expression of themselves. Zampano lives by a false code his whole life, for what? He blindly drives the people he fails to love away and is stuck with himself. For Gelsomina and for the audience, “her life is beginning again at her death. And indeed, it is after her death that she completes her self by bringing Zampano to his self.” (Costello, 30)
Works Cited
Bondanella, Peter. "La Strada." The Cinema of Italy. Ed.Giorgio Bertellini. London: Wallflower Press, 2004. 73-82. Print.
Costello, Donald P. Fellini's Road. Indiana: U of Notre Dame P, 1983. Print.
La Strada. Dir. Frederico Fellini. Perfs. Anthony Quinn, Giulietta Masina. Ponti-De Laurentiis Cinematografica, 1954.
