Federico Fellini (How good was 'La Dolce Vita'? One of the greatest films we have seen this year) made this highly lauded piece in 1954. It has a something, a power to it, we would not call it a great piece of work, but it is above your run of the mill.
It is a story very well told, Fellini is simply an impressive storyteller, he knows how to pace his montage and movements. The ending is perhaps a mite overheated, but it is an interesting dialectic at the same time.
Visually, Fellini is keen to use the space towards and away from the camera. Again, he mixes in straight, close to mid shots with the longer ones where he reveals his ability to balance. As far as we are concerned, the more of the latter the better. The natural lighting and settings evoke neo-realism, the crumbling towns and the naturalism.
The most interesting thing in this film is the game of narrative identification. The first shot is terribly important; were it not for that, we may belive this is a film focussing our identification (and more empathy?) on Zampano, rather than Gelsomino. The first shot allows Gelsomina to be at once the centre of attention (to be fair, we follow her in the montage, just not with the camera) while in the scenes themselves she flitters about the edges, she is in the background. Indeed, this occurs to such an extent that we rather wonder if the emotional heart of this film is not Zampano, is the end rather leads us to. Is Gelsomino just a mythic figure, Zampano is us, fated?
The story is a condemnation of men's treatment of women, the ending unexpected in its harshness, which we appreciated as following the 'obvious' route would have been disastorous. This difference makes it a film above average.
It is not a masterpiece, it does not have enough visually, or the ambition thematically, to quite take us there. Worth a look, perhaps.
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