La Strada (1954)

After François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (there’s no way to tell from watching this film that it’s the director’s debut work), Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves (our Satyajit decided after seeing this film that he too would make movies), Majid Majidi’s Children of Heaven, Walter Salles’ The Motorcycle Diaries, Ritwik Ghatak’s Nagarik, Satyajit Ray’s Apu Trilogy—last night another neorealist gem joined my collection. “La Strada” is the love story of two marginalized souls who spend their entire lives searching for an answer to “Why was I born?”—people who live merely because death hasn’t yet arrived, for whom living means somehow sidestepping death at every turn. Zampanò performs on the streets and wanders from place to place; Rosa used to be with him. When Rosa died, he bought her younger sister Gelsomina from their impoverished mother for just 10,000 lire. Zampanò keeps Gelsomina with him out of necessity for his livelihood. “La Strada” means “The Road.” Gelsomina’s enchanting face, effortless expressions, loving petulance, innocent affection—above all these, the story of the road itself looms largest in this film. Like our Suchitra Sen, the film’s heroine Giulietta Masina expresses everything—her character’s simplicity, sorrow, joy, anguish, wounded pride—through the skilled expressions of her eyes and face alone. A woman who can convey everything with just a glance: “I love you,” “I don’t love you right now,” “I’m angry,” “I’m hurt”—all without saying a word. Without seeing the film, no one could imagine how perfectly she accomplished this task! When girls like someone, if they somehow discover that the boy once liked, or still likes, some other girl, they keep asking and asking: did that girl do this or that, what didn’t she do that the current girl does or doesn’t or can’t do; what does she think about that other girl—whether or not the boy thinks of her at all, what makes that other girl more or less beautiful than herself; and so much more. No matter how much the boy says “no” to all these questions, no matter how much he tries to avoid them, it doesn’t help at all; rather, the girl unknowingly makes the boy remember that other girl even more, even if he had forgotten her! We see this feminine psychology at play in this film too, when Gelsomina constantly asks Zampanò whether Rosa did this or said that, how she did certain things, what Zampanò did or didn’t do with Rosa, how he did it—everything. These very curiosities seem to keep women womanly, and then you simply cannot help but love them. Love will inevitably involve nagging, though this nagging isn’t as pronounced in men. But are men really behind when it comes to loving completely with everything they have? Is this indifference? Or detachment? Or apathy? Or an innate masculine reluctance toward incorporeal, platonic love? Well, that discussion doesn’t belong here. We see the same thing in this film. Il Matto, another performer in the circus where Zampanò and Gelsomina worked, would often provoke Zampanò under some pretext or another, and one day an enraged Zampanò killed him in a fit of temper. The irony is that when Gelsomina, disgusted and frustrated with Zampanò’s mistreatment, his attraction to other women, physical abuse, indifference and much more, had decided to leave him, it was this very Il Matto who told Gelsomina that nothing in this world happens without reason—she was with Zampanò, let her stay; she should never leave Zampanò; even though he himself loved Gelsomina and as a token of his love, he had taken the chain from his own neck and put it around Gelsomina’s. Il Matto’s way of living life easily, with laughter and play, would appeal even to career-driven people. In Life Is Beautiful, Bicycle Thieves, Children of Heaven, Amélie, Ikiru and several other such films, this way of living life simply, without regret, is worth noting with admiration. That impulsive murder deeply wounded Gelsomina’s mind. She simply couldn’t forget this incident, and kept talking about Il Matto again and again, without realizing it. Zampanò leaves this mentally devastated, wounded woman sleeping by the roadside and moves on. He returns to his bohemian lifestyle. Years later, he hears a stranger singing a song whose tune he had taught Gelsomina. Speaking with this woman, he learns that after he abandoned her, the helpless Gelsomina had found temporary shelter in their home, and later died. She had learned the song from Gelsomina. This news awakens old melodies and old memories in Zampanò’s heart! Did the tune of Wordsworth’s Solitary Reaper move the poet in just this way? Zampanò’s indifference, apathy, and irritation toward all of Gelsomina’s emotions, feelings, expressions, and sentimentality had once forced Gelsomina to consider leaving him, but when Zampanò wanted to leave her at someone’s home, by then she had fallen in love with him; so much so that she thought, if she left Zampanò, who would he live with? (If I don’t live with you, who will?) We feel intense contempt for the masculine practical intellect defeated by this eternal feminine love when we see that, leaving behind his accustomed life for the allure of an unaccustomed, apparently free existence, Zampanò thinks like Kundera’s novel: perhaps life is elsewhere. We keep feeling that this is the cruel defeat of life at the hands of livelihood! In the film’s final scene, we see the protagonist Anthony Quinn, having lost all of life’s melodies, collapsing and weeping by the seashore; ahead of him lies a prosperous, meaningless, unbearable existence. Does the director here hint at how an overly careerist mentality sometimes renders life so lifeless and tragic? Footnote: A Serbian band chose the name “La Strada” for their group after this very film. Bob Dylan created his famous “Mr. Tambourine Man” under the influence of this film. This movie’s extraordinary heroine Giulietta Masina was director Fellini’s wife.