Federico Fellini
La Strada

THE REVIEW

If with Luci del Varietà he barely got noticed and with The White Sheik he came home with a half flop, despite the fact that the film was indeed good, Fellini said oh really? I’ll show you who I am…

And it was LA STRADA.

LA STRADA.

Yes, okay, before La Strada he made I Vitelloni, but only because at first no one wanted to believe in the project. The idea for La Strada, for instance, came before I Vitelloni.

And in any case, it was Dino De Laurentiis who eventually decided to produce the film.

La Strada won the Oscar for best foreign film and introduced Fellini to the whole world.

La Strada, for the writer, is his ABSOLUTE MASTERPIECE and one of the greatest films ever, ranking in the top 5 of my personal list.

Faced with such a film, I don’t want to—or maybe I cannot—write a “review,” even if amateurish.

I can tell you that ZAMPANO’ and GELSOMINA are the most fantastic and unlikely couple in cinema.

That their interpretation goes so far beyond that they are more real than real, so incredible that they are almost elevated to mythological figures.

That the little trumpet tune—the magic of Nino Rota—gets inside you and never leaves (and the opening reminds me of "Closing Time" by Tom Waits but oh well, they are just musical notes).

That there is THE FOOL whom you think hey but you are the best and there is his monologue to Gelsomina—Pinelli’s texts are to die for—that night when Zampanò was arrested, "...that everything has a meaning, Gelsomina, even this little stone"

Gelsomina: "But do you care about me a little?" … "It feels good here" …where here is a makeshift bed in a barn or a desolate, snow-covered plain struck by a cold wind.

That Zampanò was what he was, but "...I only gave him two punches, no one dies from two punches."

But do you care about me a little?

Sleep instead of thinking about these stupid things.