The actor Anthony Quinn died over the weekend. He was 86. All of the obituaries I’ve read online typically mention Quinn’s famous roles in Zorba the Greek and Lawrence of Arabia. Both of those are good films, but they don’t come close to touching the genius of Quinn’s best film: the Federico Fellini masterpiece La Strada.
Co-starring Giulietta Masina (who at the time was married to Fellini), La Strada follows Quinn’s character Zampano, a traveling circus performer, and Masina’s Gelsomina, who is given over to Zampano because her mother cannot afford to feed her. The movie simply follows their rather despairing adventures without judging the characters or using them as mere foils for some deeper political or social commentary. The film’s ending is rather depressing, and yet the film as a whole contains a very hopeful message about the potential of human action.
I first saw La Strada as part of a class on existentialism, and the film definitely captures what might be called the hopeful side of existentialists thought (and as many reviewers have noted, with a very religious twist since the movie is largely a commentary on the human potential for redemption and salvation).
I consider myself a movie fanatic. I have seen thousands of films. But I have never seen one that affected and inspired me as much as La Strada (including films that were far superior to it in any number of ways).