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Part of Charlie on an Italian Road/ Polska Sztuka Ludowa - Konteksty 2014 Special Issue
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T
he name of Chaplin is constantly mentioned
in connection with Fellini’s La Strada (1954).
Behind the flaxen head of Gelsomina and her
face of an old child there emerges Charlie’s mourn
ful countenance despite the fact that La Strada is not
Chaplinesque. On the contrary, it is a polemic with
Chaplin.
Charlie and Gelsomina. In both cases, a small fig
ure with a funny gait. A face showing limited expres
sion, with the exception of the twitching eyebrows
and evocative eyes. In the first case, the white make
up stresses the expressive eyes, and in the other the
eyebrows are painted on together with the make-up
of a clown and an equally pale complexion. Charlie
displays repeatedly identical make-up and is always a
clown or a puppet, but Gelsomina puts on make-up
only during her circus performances, and in the man
ner of Baptiste in Marcel Carne’s Les Enfants du Par
adis sometimes wears it after the performance while
experiencing problems that are not make-belief or a
part learnt by heart. Here, I perceive the first stage of
a polemic with Chaplin: Gelsomina is not a puppet or
a metaphor and her story is not a contemporary fairy
tale.
Further on everything resembles the author of The
Kid. In his case: a bowler hat, a tight topcoat and bag
gy trousers, in hers: a well-worn cape or an ill-fitting
coat with a moth-eaten fur piece. Gelsomina, just like
Charlie, is fond of life. When she is sad she is extreme
ly mournful, but when she is happy she expresses joy
with her whole face and body. She carries happiness
within. Both are content as long as no one hurts them;
when wind or anger cease for a moment and the Sun
starts to shine - they immediately start adjusting their
pitiful clothes. Charlie rubs his hands gleefully and pats
his narrow chest. Gelsomina smoothes her flaxen hair,
blinks and smiles to herself. Along a wide highway, far
from other people, Charlie regains his good mood and
his normal gait ends with a joyful leap. Left all alone in
a field Gelsomina smells the flowers, stands in front of
a scrawny tree and waves her arms to emulate the mo
tion of the bare branches. She wanders in the empty
landscape in the manner of a playful puppy and over
joyed listens closely to a resounding telephone pole.
Both are not of this world, although Charlie is a
guest and Gelsomina a permanent resident. This dif
ference becomes most conspicuous in the love life of
the two characters. Both love lyrically, but Charlie
is capable of renouncing emotions and resigning for
the sake of a moral; after all, he is part of a fairy tale.
Gelsomina’s love is difficult, human and tragic. She
has nowhere to seek refuge from it and is familiar with
only one world.
Charlie’s loves are sweet girls from children’s text
books, and his enemies are foolish and strong brutes
whom he can easily deceive because reality in Charlie’s
243
ALEKSANDER JACKIEWICZ
Charlie on
an Italian Road*
films is greatly amended. The land in which Gelsomina
lives is modern Italy. The drama of La Strada is not a
metaphor, as in the case of Charlie; it is real, cruel and
irreversible, treated seriously and unfeelingly.
Fellini replaced Charlie’s sweet maidens with a
Chaplinesque brute, but this is a living brute whom
Gelsomina loves; the blows are painful and aimed not
at the body of a puppet but at human feelings. Fellini
introduced his Charlie not into Chaplin’s convention
al reality but into the real world. In this film hunger is
real and he who feeds the hungry demands to be paid
in return. Here, a friend does not render help, but will
perish from blows dealt by the stronger. The lifeless,
cloudy autumn landscape offers no joy. Winter brings
death. It is not true that the processions, the nuns,
the wedding, Nature, Gelsomina, Zampano, and the
embittered philosopher “Il M atto” are mere symbols,
as some would have it. If La Strada were a symbolic
film it would not speak to us in such a heartrending
manner. La Strada is not even Chaplin’s Monsieur
Verdoux, whose conventional and allegorical form is a
challenge for good old Charlie. La Strada seems to be
saying: here is Charlie facing contemporary life, con
temporary art, and contemporary philosophy. Here is
your lyrical tramp ambling down an Italian road of the
mid-twentieth century!
* Aleksander Jackiewicz, Moja Filmoteka. Kino na
świecie, Warszawa 1983, pp. 30-33.
OBRAZ
ZREMASTERYZOWANY
ien film jest dowodem na to,
że Fellini to geniusz"
im iiom N oiit
"Bezkonkurencyjny"
n i omit m iE R iP i
FELLINI
LA
STrADA
Q U IN N
i& c/y zn /
BASEH ART