To try and pick a single film from Federico Fellini’s oeuvre and label it ‘his greatest’ is an impossible, as well as somewhat pointless task. Nevertheless, the period between 1954 and 1963 contain some of his most intensely creative and expressive films: 8½ (1963), about a film director descending into a whirlpool of memories, dreams and artistic possibilities as he struggles to make a new film -- La Dolce Vita (1960), a decadent journey through modern-day Rome, and a film which gave rise to the term ‘Paparazzi’ after the character Paparazzo, an unscrupulous press photographer; though I saw this film at a young age I have never forgotten its imagery, which I suspect has as much to do with Swedish actress Anita Ekberg as it does with Fellini -- Nights of Cabiria (1957), the bittersweet tale of a prostitute whose faith in her fellow humans never wavers though she is always abused and let down by them -- The Swindle (1955), about a conman who steals from his closest friends in order to support his daughter in her studies -- and lastly, La Strada (1954), the story of Gelsomina, (Giulietta Masina) a child-like peasant sold by her mother to circus strongman Zampanò (Anthony Quinn), and who suffers his abuse and cruelty as they travel from town to town performing their act. But in a Fellini film, human relationships are not always as simple as they appear, and there is a moment in La Strada, where it dawns upon Gelsomina, and the audience, that Zampanò really does loves her, but that he merely can’t express it in any other way than through his brutish nature. Zampanò, however, is the kind of person who only realizes what they have once they have lost it. And when he does eventually realize too late how much Gelsomina means to him, how deeply he loves her, all he can do is ineffectually claw at the sand by the seashore. As the camera panned out on this scene, and I saw Zampanò alone on the beach with nothing but the sand, the sun and the waves, it struck me that this image encapsulated Fellini’s approach towards love, and in a more general sense, his approach towards human relationships. For Fellini there is always an element of tragedy in any relationship. His films seem to express the belief that humans are more capable at bestowing love than they are at receiving it. But though Gelsomina’s love is neither returned nor even noticed by Zampanò, (at least during her lifetime), this in no way diminishes her feelings. In fact, in the onscreen universe Fellini creates, love doesn’t need to be returned -- Fellini conceptualizes love as an emotion which so completely fills people with happiness that they need nothing else, not even its return.

Fellini made several films with actress Giulietta Masina, whom was also his wife, but the character of Gelsomina is the one which, over the years, has been most fondly spoken of and written about. One of Gelsomina’s most unusual traits is the way she registers impressions of the world around her, imitating what she sees, as if she was a blank canvass being painted upon. In one scene, Gelsomina walks down a road -- a young girl follows her, seemingly entranced by Gelsomina’s movements -- Gelsomina stands next to a bare tree, and imitates it, putting her arms in the same position as the branches. Fellini doesn’t linger on this, but it is a moment which explains why Gelsomina is so well-adjusted to coping with the world she finds herself in: she imitates and becomes part of her surroundings, not dissatisfied with her measly lot as Zampanò often seems to be, but accepting and making the most of even a difficult situation. But La Strada is full of many memorable and evocative moments from Gelsomina’s life, moments which capture with a mixture of beauty and sadness her innocent impressions of, and reactions to, the cruel world she wanders through. Fellini succeeds in creating more sympathy for Gelsomina than almost any other film character I can think of. He generates pathos of a kind found in the films of Chaplin. I can see in my mind the final scene from City Lights (1931) where Chaplin’s Little Tramp, with his tattered clothes and dirty face, leans over to pick up a discarded flower that lies in the gutter by the roadside. He sniffs in its fragrance, momentarily dreaming of a beauty which, for the most part, the world has not given him. Chaplin’s Tramp finds his beauty moments later in the form of a once-blind flower girl to whom he had given everything he had. For Gelsomina, this beauty never arrives -- something which Fellini makes all the more interesting because, though the audience empathizes with Gelsomina’s fate, Gelsomina herself doesn’t share the audiences’ felt sadness. There is a soft tune she plays on a flute Zampanò gave her, a tune which when hummed by a woman by the roadside towards the end of the film, allows Zampanò to learn of Gelsomina’s fate. In a sense, this tune also functions as Gelsomina’s trace, as a mark of her existence and time spent upon this Earth -- it is a small piece of beauty and sadness which she passes on to those who hear it, a piece of beauty and sadness which constitutes something of what the audience takes away from La Strada, and a beauty and sadness from a life full of meanings and emotions whose richness is impossible to articulate or untangle.