An enormous international success and personal triumph for Masina, La Strada was awarded the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film of its year. (1954) Bought from her mother to assist the act of Anthony Quinn’s brutish strongman “Zampanò,” Giulietta Masina’s simple-minded peasant girl Gelsomina is taught a haunting tune by a dreamy aerialist (American actor Richard Basehart) and assured that she too has a place in the world. Starring Giulietta Masina, Anthony Quinn, Richard Basehart In elevating Fellini's film, the head of the Catholic Church expresses his solidarity with the female underdog.Directed by Federico Fellini | Written by Fellini & Tullio Pinelli with Ennio FlaianoĬinematography by Otello Martinelli | Music by Nino Rota Given that the interview articulates Pope Francis' vision for an inclusive church, La Strada suggests a vivid shape in the form of a big circus tent. "I see the holiness," he said, "in the patience of the people of God: a woman who is raising children, a man who works to bring home the bread, the sick, the elderly priests who have so many wounds but have a smile on their faces because they served the Lord, the sisters who work hard and live a hidden sanctity. In referring to his namesake, the pontiff brings to mind the Franciscan quality of compassion, a non-judgmental rather than dogmatic attitude toward human beings. I owe my film culture especially to my parents, who used to take us to the movies quite often." Another film that I loved is Rome, Open City.
"I also believe that I watched all of the Italian movies with Anna Magnani and Aldo Fabrizi when I was between 10 and 12 years old.
"I identify with this movie, in which there is an implicit reference to St. Born in Argentina, he would have been a teenager when it was first released. It is unclear when the pope saw La Strada.
But the movie is perhaps equally informed by personal heartbreak: Their son died in 1944, a few weeks after he was born. Later, he worked as a comic strip illustrator before marrying Masina. When he ran away from home at age 10, he joined a circus. La Strada reflects Fellini's love of spectacle. … Even Walt Disney wanted to make an animated cartoon about Gelsomina."
They saw her as someone halfway between St. "When I was in the States with her after La Strada," he recalled, "people didn't know whether to smile at her or kiss the hem of her garment. The director was bemused by the American reaction to his movie and its female star. As he once said, "our trouble, as modern human beings, is loneliness … No public celebration or political symphony can hope to be rid of it."Ĭonsequently, his movies needed little "translation." They were celebrated in the United States - where La Strada was the first recipient of the Foreign Language Film Oscar. But like Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp," her moments of comedy are inseparable from tragedy, particularly toward the film's end.įederico Fellini, left, his wife Giulietta Masina, and Dino De Laurentiis admire the Motion Picture Academy Oscars awarded at night on Main Hollywood for their picture, “La Strada,” adjudged the best foreign language film.įellini was more concerned with the individual than with politics. When he places a man's hat on this diminutive, uneducated woman, he makes her a Chaplinesque figure against a neorealist landscape of poverty. This wide-eyed waif - played by Giulietta Masina, the director's wife - follows the itinerant circus strongman Zampano (Anthony Quinn), despite his brutish treatment of her. The story was more of a fable, anchored in the character of Gelsomina. Indeed, when La Strada was shown at the 1954 Venice Film Festival, it was attacked by Marxist critics for lacking a political vision. While he also mentions it, the pontiff's favorite choice crystallizes his embrace of the fallible and the marginalized.Ĭonsistent with his refusal to speak out against traditional hot-button topics like abortion, contraception and homosexuality, Pope Francis reveals in this movie selection a humanism that links him to the Italian director of such other classics as 8 1/2, Nights of Cabiria, La Dolce Vita and Amarcord.įellini was never the darling of either clerics or ideologues.
Some might have expected a more church-friendly movie, like Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City - which Fellini c0-wrote - about a priest helping the Italian Resistance fight Nazi occupiers during World War Two.