The film starring Vivien Leigh as Libby, “Sidewalks of London” was a popular, mainstream film that was intended to entertain and which, even if unintended, served to present an image of a woman who was capable and competent, if ruthless, able to be independent, to dream of a career and a better future, and to exercise her skills and good looks in order to fulfill her dream. As the Italian film and cultural critic Bondanella has explained, “La Strada” was intended to be an altogether different sort of film. In “La Strada,” writes Bondanella, Fellini “moved away from the idea of a film character as a social type” (48) by promoting “self-consciously poetic images and personal symbols or myths” (48). “La Strada,” argues Bondanella, “is a fable about symbolic figures, and its plot structure reflects this origin in the fable or fairy tale” (52). Bondanella’s observations are certainly confirmed in a careful and close viewing of “La Strada.” Gelsomina rarely talks; she represents and symbolizes, she embodies and enacts. When she does talk, the viewer is almost surprised, as her voice, which is rather deep and throaty, seems to be so incongruent with her tender, retreating, and almost scared personality.
Bondanella insists that Gelsomina’s character was not intended, as Leigh’s character might have been in “Sidewalks of London” to inspire women. Gelsomina’s purpose in “La Strada,” Bondanella argues, is to serve much more than as a “social type” or a “dramatic character,” or even a “traditional cinematic character” whose life should “develop in significant psychological ways during the course of the film” (52). Gelsomina never really gets to develop at all. When she and Zampano part ways, Zampano later learns that Gelsomina slipped further and further into a strange interior world. Hearing a woman hum the haunting tune that Gelsomina had eventually mastered on her battered trumpet, Zampano stops to ask where the woman learned the song. The woman explains that she had learned it from Gelsomina, who had passed through the town years ago, had become sick, and who ultimately died.
The viewer has to understand Gelsomina, then, from a different perspective. If one thinks back to traditional Italian art forms, such as the commedia dell’arte, Bondanella says, Gelsomina, Zampano, The Fool, and the other street performers in “La Strada” are intended to serve as representations of different emotional capacities, represented through an emphasis on acting itself, rather than character development. Gelsomina and Libby are entirely different women, and their characters have entirely different functions. Gelsomina may lack the intelligence and beauty of Libby, but she has a deep expressive capacity in a profound way that Libby lacks. Gelsomina is deeply in touch with her own feelings, and because she is simple-minded, she is not afraid to show those feelings and to stay with them as long as she needs to do so, as evidenced by the ten day mourning period for The Fool.
Although Leigh as Libby in “Sidewalks of London” and Masina as Gelsomina in “La Strada” are entirely different actresses types embodying totally distinct characters and roles, both women ultimately offer alternatives for viewing women in the middle of the twentieth century. In “Sidewalks of London” Leigh as Libby promotes feminine wiles, through both intelligence and beauty, and encourages women to get ahead by any means necessary. Gelsomina, on the other hand, “possesses what might be called a Franciscan simplicity or a childish purity of spirit that more than makes up for her lack of normal intellectual skills, and this makes her the perfect protagonist for Fellini’s poetic ruminations on spiritual poverty” (Bondanella 56). Both movies exhibit the best acting skills of these seminal twentieth century actresses. Although those skills required different capacities of each actress, each woman fulfills the demands of the role effectively.
Other essays and articles in the Arts Archives related to this topic include : Film Comparison of “Gone with the Wind” and “Cold Mountain”
Works Cited
Bondanella, Peter. The Films of Federico Fellini. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Shafer, Stephen C. British Popular Films, 1929-1939: The Cinema of Reassurance. London: Routledge, 1997.
