There is a certain point in Federico Fellini’s film career that is historically seen as a “transitional” period for the director where he moves away from the Italian Neo-realism of his roots (in filmmaking) and continues on to establish a style of boundless multi-textual poetic realism. There are five films made within this section of transition for the director, the initial break from certain neorealist tendencies in La Strada (1954), Il Bidone (1955), Nights of Cabiria (1957), the international smash hit La Dolce Vita (1960), and the culmination of these poetic realism tendencies in 8 ½ (1963), often seen as the directors best work. Now the question is: what defines poetic realism and how did he use these sensibilities and aesthetic techniques to veer away from neo-realism in 1954’s La Strada?
The main thematic separation between classical neo-realism and poetic realism is the socioeconomic tendencies of the films and their makers, as neo-realism utilizes documentary aesthetics to further accentuate their point of urban decay and hardships after WWII, Fellini’s poetic realism, along with the poetic realism of France in the 1930’s wasn’t too concerned with that, rather turning their visions inwards to explore the individual and their thought process in expressed and augmented aesthetic realities. The acceptance of a transcendental and dream like state of both narrative structure and aesthetic composition that formulated in La Strada and was taken to its full potential in 8 ½ is another unique tendency in Fellini’s work to further separate from a concise socioeconomic or political message/context to film and push the viewer deeper into an alternate cinematic reality.
What I would argue is the main strand of Fellini’s break from neo-realism in La Strada is the separation between image of content. Rather than using the backdrop of characters on the road in post-WWII rural Italy, he uses the road and all the images of urban decay in Italy as a metaphysical aesthetic representation of the road ones own mind travels throughout their lifetime, specifically in reference to Fellini’s own thought process and troubles. As Philip Booth states in “Fellini’s La Strada as Transitional Film: The Road From Classical Neorealism to Poetic Realism”, “The movie’s title suggests another journey, one taken by the director: the film, in several aspects, represents Fellini’s movement away from the classical neorealism of the 1940’s, which he had had a hand in creating, toward a different brand of neorealism, a kind of poetic realism, as scholars such as Peter Bondanella and others have suggested,” (p. 704). This break from direct criticism of Italian society from a Marxist stand point was seen as a betrayal by the neorealist’s and one of the most prominent signifiers of not only Fellini distancing himself from the movement but also foreshadowing of the directors work to come.
There are various interpretations of the metaphorical breakdown of the road in La Strada and its various contexts to the transcendence of the film above a neorealist genre piece but another main component linked both aesthetically and thematically to the films poetic realism tendencies are the three main characters. Zampano, Gelsomina, and The Fool all inhabit a cinematic world extremely personal to them and many of the actions all three characters take in the film are a direct result of one of the other two characters. Whether it be The Fool taunting Gelsomina because Zampano is a brute and got arrested due to the actions of The Fool or Zampano leaving Gelsomina on the side of the road because he inadvertently killed The Fool and she can’t cope with it, serving more as a transcendental moral conscience that an individual at this point in the story, the characters don’t receive much influence from Italian culture or the world directly outside their own. As Edward Murray states in “La Strada”, “Convinced now that her purpose in life is to remain with Zampano – to teach him how to love, to teach him how to be a human being – Gelsomina, the next morning bids farewell to The Fool as she waits outside the jail (…) Separating from Il Matto is painful for Gelsomina, insomuch as a spiritual affinity exists between the two…” (p. 49). This quote highlights the interconnectedness of feelings, decisions, actions, and consequences the three main characters share throughout the course of the film and how a persons individual actions and close companions have more effect not only on the individual but the process of cinema than an entire nation does.
When discussing actors in La Strada it is very important to denote the role of Gelsomina and the performance by Masina Giulietta. As a woman who the viewer assumes is mentally handicapped in some regard, Gelsomina begins to transcend the brutish groundings of Zampano and flighty existentialism of The Fool to reach a purer and more spiritual state. Throughout the film she is shown being able to relate to children more than adults in the world even from the very first time the viewer sees her on the beach as her sisters run up and play around her. Once with Zampano she adopts the moniker of a clown who plays the drums and trumpet, a key piece to her self-expression. Time and again she is seen fancifully playing with children and finding physical ways of expressing herself and her personality rather than through words, a true aesthetic representation of ones self. The culmination of this transcendence and ultimately the biggest metaphysical break from neorealism presented on screen in La Strada is when, after Zampano kills The Fool and disposes of his body, Gelsomina breaks down. She does nothing but sleep and morn, continually pushing herself away from Zamapano and reminding him that he killed The Fool and she either doesn’t understand or can’t bare the thought. She is at this point in the film not only serving as a moral conscience for Zampano but a key story element that turns the tides of the third act of the film and the viewer impressions of Zampano.
La Strada still holds many principal aesthetic tendencies of neorealism from the use of nonactors, to on-site locations, use of realistic lighting, and basic mis-en-scene. As discussed above Fellini utilized many of these tendencies he knew so well to create a break from neorealism, but there are also key instances in which he breaks these tendencies in favor of what would come to be known as a more “Fellini-esque” approach. There is one scene in particular where these aesthetic tendencies shine through and offer more than a glimpse of what was to come in Fellini’s career. When Zampano and Gelsomina are playing a wedding reception in the countryside, the children pull Gelsomina away and take her up to a room away from the party where a young boy who is presumably mental and/or physically handicapped. The lighting changes drastically in this scene to accentuate not the boys face but the starkly angled walls around him and the spinning mobile above his bed. On the contrary, the lighting for the reverse of Gelsomina accentuates her face with the cinematography places her directly in the foreground with a dimly light background accentuating the vast difference between Gelsomina and this young boy from the rest of the children, they aren’t quite like the rest of them. This moment of clarity and realization is presented with no music, something Fellini would continue to use throughout his films, a mark of a revelation for one of the characters and a changing of thought process in the film. This scene, which stands out as its own episode of the film, was a vast break from the aesthetic principals held by Italian neorealism and established an unwavering foundation of exploration and poetic realism throughout Fellini’s work that made his films some of the most complex and multi-textual yet thoroughly engaging and entertaining films in cinema’s history.
ianlcahoon 