FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Federico Fellini - La Strada

Sitting at home for a month, playing through Amazon & Netflix, all those oh so smart series and then again a superhero. And at some point you realize you haven't seen a real movie in years. Like La Strada.

Compared to Fellini's later films, La Strada seems simple. A fable, but which already celebrates the desire for obsessive visual games, if you look closer: There is the circus, a parade and a figure floating between heaven and earth. One woman is a child of the street, another a monster. And of course La Strada plays not only on the country roads, but also on the sea coast. If I were a film critic, I would probably write about a bridge film from Neorealism to Fellini's later extravagances. But I am only a video store owner. For the first time, at any rate, you can see what will later be christened "Felliniesque". Performance of the powerhouse Zampano (Anthony Quinn). Zampano lives in a run-down caravan, which he pulls with a motorcycle. From a poor widow he buys her daughter Gelsomina (Giulietta Masina), to whom he is very cruel. Nevertheless Gelsomina admires him, because Zampano can play the trumpet. Zampano joins a travelling circus, is mocked by a fool, freaks out and ends up in prison. The fool seems to like Gelsomina, but recognizes very well her strong bond to Zampano. The fool retreats, grants Gelsomina and Zampano a common happiness. But Zampano, in raging jealousy, kills the fool. What kind of an end threatens Zampano? A typical Fellini ending: The desperate man turns to the sea. But the sea has no answers. And Giulietta Masina? Actually, in all later Fellini movies she always played Gelsomina. The purest embodiment of innocence. Zampano is not more intelligent than Gelsomina. He's an outcast, too. A libertine. His tragedy is, that he loves her. But Zampano doesn't realize it. He instinctively turns away from love and warmth. Most of Fellini's characters do that! He's the strong man, caught between heaven and earth. I almost wrote hell. Torn between the spiritual and the carnal. Fellini will always return to this circus world. Like a second home, this world will become for the real Fellini geek. And the master's films? Like old, good friends who are always happy to be invited back.