The Fool Gets Hurt in Fellini’s “La Stra...

0:12 Wes: Fellini called his film La Strada a dangerous representation of his identity and had a nervous breakdown just before completing its shooting. Perhaps this identity and its vulnerability have something to do with the film's representation of a disappointed hope that love might vanquish pride if properly assisted by the forces of playfulness and creativity. The problem is that such forces are often themselves an offense to pride and become the target of its cruelty. And so, while the clown and tightrope walker Ilmato convinces tender hearted Gelsemina to stay with heartless Zampano, his murder severs their tenuous high wire connection. This is Wes Alwan. This is Erin O'Luanaigh, and you're listening to Subtext.

0:55 Erin: Okay, Wes, So this is our first Fellini movie, is that right? Yeah, this is our first one. Okay, great. So are you a Fellini fan? Have you seen a lot of his films? And late career, early career? What's your exposure to him?

1:09 Wes: My exposure to Fellini, it started in college. It's not a lot. Again, my friend John Lebeck, who just keeps coming up when we talk about this sort of thing, is the person responsible for me seeing a few Fellini films in college. The Dolce Vita, Eight and a Half, City of Women. And then the film I remember most is just Amercord because of the scene where the guy is in the tree saying I want a woman repeatedly, which sort of became a refrain among my friends quoting that I saw La Strada back then as well. This is like. God, this is like when I was 18 or something like 31 years ago.

And frankly, with La Strada in particular, I remember not being terribly enthusiastic about it, being a little bit bored by it. But that was not uncommon for my 18 year old self to be in the middle of college to have that kind of reaction to these movies. I wasn't terribly excited about Fellini back then, but I was taking my educational medicine. The same thing with jazz. Just getting an education from this one particular friend. But this time watching it, it was just a delight. But in your case, I'm sure you started watching Fellini films at a much younger age and that it had something to do with the influence of your

2:31 Erin: grandfather, My grandmother especially. But this is her favorite film, I think one of her favorites. This was a very important film to me as a kid, and my first real. This and Bicycle Thieves and a few other things I watched as a kid. And I saw Gelsomina, I think, before I even saw a Chaplin film. And a lot of Critics, pretty much every critic mentions the Chaplin esque quality. There are lots of esques.

2:55 Wes: And she's Chaplin's favorite actress, Right. Fellini's wife, Giulietta Messina.

3:00 Erin: Giulietta Messina.

3:02 Wes: From what I read, he said no one had ever affected him or something like that as strongly as she had.

3:07 Erin: She's incredible. And I mean, on the basis of just this film, she would have a place in history. But of course, then there's Knights of Kabiria, which is actually my favorite. This is a weird thing to say, but that's actually my favorite Fellini film. I mean, I definitely think the best is 8 and a half and then LA Dolce Vita. But in terms of my favorite, you know, there's a kind of guilty pleasure quality in that. And I love Knights of Kabedia. I loved Gelsomina. I connected with that character so intensely. And there's something like very childlike about the film too.

Seeing it at the age that I was, was really effective in winning me over to Italian films because I was so young. And I know that the character of Gelsemina Fellini, based on photographs that he saw of Giulietta Messina as a 10 year old, he was inspired by that, which I just think is so sweet and touching, that he was so sort of in love with her childlike spirit. And what he saw in these pictures of her as a little girl and wanted her to play it in that way. Like she had a certain way of smiling in these pictures when she was 10 where she kind of did this sort of like thin lipped smile.

And he really wanted her to reproduce that for the film. So she smiles in that incredibly childlike way, which is really sweet. Like when she's waving and covers her face with her cape, she has that particular kind of smile on. But this was my first Fellini e arrivato Federico. And I love it to this day. It's hard for me to watch sometimes because it does make me cry a lot.

4:31 Wes: Really?

4:32 Erin: Yeah.

4:32 Wes: Which are the crying parts?

4:34 Erin: Oh my gosh. When are there not crying parts? At the beginning when she doesn't want to go with him. The scene of the rape, when she gets upset that night in the convent, of course, when Ilmato dies and she has that reaction to him dying as he's in the process of dying. And then afterwards when she's on the side of the road and he leaves her. And then of course at the end when he's on the beach, which is just the most incredible moment. Yeah. Plus more. I'm sure I'M forgetting some, but it's just very, very emotional for me.

5:07 Wes: So why this before 8 and a half or LA Dolce Vita? Is it just your personal connection to the film?

5:13 Erin: Yeah, my personal connection. And I think I understand this in a more intimate way. For me, this is a very relatable movie. And Eight and a Half or Dolce Vita are. I mean, they're incredible masterpieces. But this speaks to me personally. I think this is very, very. I mean, this sounds kind of dumb to say, but this is a very Italian movie. I mean, they all are, of course. That's why it's dumb. But, you know, in terms of the sort of grammar of the film, working in these commedia dell' arte traditions and seeing each of these major characters as archetypes or these roles out of commedia dell' arte and acting out certain fates.

Fellini always works, I think, within these types of characters who are broad, physical types and who maybe represent different elements of personality. Or these commedia dell' arte characters, I think, grow out of these archetypes as well. But anyway, the simplicity of this, the childlike nature of it, and the fact that it's within this tradition, which for me, I grew up with seeing, like, Italian puppet shows. And there's this element of Punch and Judy routine, which also grew out of commedia dell'. Arte. I think the fact that it's so simplistic.

I think it's deceptively simplistic and not so much wrapped up in a particular man's. I mean, I love Mastroianni, but his particular sort of ennui and all these other things that I couldn't really understand as a kid or as a teenager or in college when I watched it. But this I could understand. And this seemed kind of like a fable or some story that I would have read about as a kid. I had a lot of Italian folktale type books. And this was like. That. This had that kind of appeal for me.

6:45 Wes: Of course, I thought of commedia dell' arte as well. How do you see the characters lining up? I guess, obviously, the fool lines up with Harlequin, right?

6:54 Erin: Yeah. I think that maybe Zampano is supposed to be il capitano, maybe blustering and takes himself too seriously. Can't joke with himself. And Gelsomina, maybe like a Columbina, but with a more childlike slant. And the performances, the lazzi that they do together, the stock comedic routines where you do the same thing over and over again. Growing up, I liked Abbott and Costello. Do, you know, sort of modernized version of these, of a lazzo, which is similar to the trifle joke in the film, or to when the fool has Gelsomina play the trombone behind him and scare him.

You know, just a little comic set piece. Those are associated with the harlequin, those types of recurring things. Which then makes me wonder if that's initially what turns Ilmato against Zampano in a way, is because Zampano is trying to appropriate the harlequin's comic routines, his own act, just a possibility, or one of several.

7:56 Wes: Yeah. It's interesting because the way he describes his teasing of Zampano is just that he can't help it, that there's something about him that induces him to do that. And it's not hard to see why. Right. Because Zampano is so rigid and full of himself. And also his act is really lame. So it's really interesting because it's not that she's just been whisked away to be a circus performer. She's been hooked up with this guy whose act is really pathetic. The whole bursting the chain with his chest routine. The first pleasurable thing that happens is that whole trifle performance that she's involved in.

I mean, in finding her. Right. He's found someone who's like a natural born clown, let's say. Right? So she brings something real to the performance. And you know, in the very beginning, when the mother says why she has to go, it's really all about desperation and need. But by the end of it, she's talking about how she's going to be an artist and she's going to dance and sing like Rosa. Rosa is this figure who supposedly is dead. Zambano's a former assistant who comes up repeatedly in the film at critical moments, plays a big part in Chelsea Mina's imagination.

So that interests me about the relationship, the fact that she's a dose of vitality, you know, whatever you want to say about her simplicity. She's a kind of vital principle that is being introduced into something that's quite lame. And it amazes me that Zampano makes any money.

9:19 Erin: I know. And he does keep getting hooked up with, I mean, a larger circus, though the circuses they are associated with are rather sad. It amazes me that he keeps getting absorbed into them, no matter how bad his routine is. There seems to be a market for it.

9:32 Wes: The first time that we see the performance on film. A lot of it, of course, is just about selling it, you know, talking about the danger of seeing blood, you know, if you have weak Nerves look away. But again, very routine and unconvincing. And his heart is obviously not in it. He's in it entirely for the money. It's not long before we get to see something actually much more exciting. Someone who's truly in danger. Right. So shortly after she escapes from him, we encounter the fool in his high wire act, which is really amazing because it's more than walking a tightrope. Right. It's eating spaghetti up on the tightrope. So then this really interesting mixture of dangerousness and funniness. But, yeah, there are performances that are actually exciting. So you wonder how Zampano fits into all that.

10:20 Erin: I don't know that he's totally in it for the money, though. I mean, I think he has a compulsion to perform and he does think of himself as an artist, which is kind of funny. I mean, it's supposed to be funny, but it's also kind of touching. I don't know, this is maybe his soft spot that Jasmina can see in him, that no one else can see, the potential sweetness that's there, which I think only works because this is Anthony Quinn, and so we kind of know him as an actor. But that entire scene, when we're first introduced to Ilmato on the tightrope, we see the better version of what Zampano could be, but we also see kind of the much savvier version of what Gelsomina could be.

Right. Because he has that assistant who narrates everything and then who passes around the hat, who's much more traditional of an associate for one of these acts. She's more commanding and she's on a microphone and she's savvy about the way she's describing it. She even has a kind of back and forth with the fool while he's

11:13 Wes: up there, too, after saying, be quiet, any distraction could lead to him falling to his death. And then she starts a conversation about

11:21 Erin: what's the weather like?

11:22 Wes: Yeah, does anyone want to go up there and have dinner with him?

11:26 Erin: And it's funny because we see someone who's far better than Zampano in the fool, but I don't know that the Fool's assistant in that scene is better than Gelsomina. Like, Gelsomina has that magical quality. I mean, everybody in the film kind of has a magical quality, but, you know, she has that spark that she can be an entertainer, too. And she does learn to play the trumpet eventually. I mean, would we characterize her as being Zampano's slave? Is that what this is? Psychologically or literally, in a way. I mean, she has opportunities to get away from him and doesn't. But just in terms of their artistic partnership is founded on this. So her mother sells her for 10,000 lira, right?

12:04 Wes: Yeah.

12:04 Erin: And they're never actually married. But I'm wondering about that as being the basis for this artistic partnership. The idea that she's his slave and doesn't really have any autonomy and learns to play the trumpet eventually. We don't really see it. We just see him being kind of a slave driver in trying to get her to become the proper associate for him, or the proper, whatever it is, the playmate of his character as they perform together. But his relationship to her is kind of a slavery and it's kind of an artistic training at the same time. And of course it's bad training because he's not very good.

But she transcends it. And he denies her being able to learn the trumpet, but she does end up learning how to play the trumpet. So she keeps transcending these expectations. And I'm just wondering about the nature of that really tenuous relationship between them, you know, in which he's bought her, but at the same time, she's presented with numerous opportunities to be able to run away. He does at one point go and find her and take her back, but at certain points he basically gives her her quote, unquote freedom and for psychological reasons doesn't take him up on that.

But I just wonder about the intersection between this idea of her being his slave and assistant and semi wife, his fake wife and his artistic partner. All of these things are very complicated and tied up together in that apprenticeship or whatever it might be.

13:26 Wes: Yeah, you had me thinking about the movie Whiplash while you were talking, which I haven't even seen, in part because I didn't want to see Crank. What's that actor's name? Cranky.

13:37 Erin: Oh, J.K. simmons.

13:39 Wes: Yeah. Being abusive towards a young kid. Play better. But yeah, in this case, of course, it's not. I mean, is he a master of anything? Maybe that's up for discussion, but it's certainly not of being a performer, as far as I can tell. But I think, yeah, I mean, slave, I think, is a good word for what she is. And keeping in mind that ultimately she has moments where she basically has to make a choice about whether or not to stay or to go. And ultimately it's the fool who convinces her to stay with Zampano in that great scene that we can discuss in.

And as you mentioned, I think that symbolically the trumpet plays a very important role in symbolizing her coming into her own, or perhaps her freedom, being her own person. So, you know, I think she sees the trumpet at first, when, after that first performance, and then they are camped out and he calls the soup she's made pig swill, and then makes this big thing about clothing her properly and then tries to get her to do the here comes Zampano announcement correctly. Yeah, I love that. I even wrote down the Italian for that, but, you know, and she can't do the drum properly.

He's using the switch on her. And it's at that point that she first sees the trumpet. And then it's at the wedding that after he's basically slept with the matron and she's upset and she says basically about the trumpet. Did you teach Rosa? Did she do my job, teach me to play the trumpet? Which he doesn't. There's no indication that he's ever the one who's taught her to play. Right. During the movie. And the first indication of her being able to play at all, really is doing a bit of the trombone for the Fool. Right. But by the time we get to the monastery, she's playing the trumpet for the sister and she's playing the theme that the fool was playing on the violin, on the trumpet, which the young nun is very excited about, telling her how beautiful it sounds and all of that.

So I see that moment as a climactic coming into her own. It's at that point where something significant has happened to her, even if she is going to turn down the offer from that nun to stay and continue on with him. And then, of course, he leaves her when he abandons her, he leaves her with the trumpet and it's the trumpet. He finds out that she had stopped talking and would be playing that theme on the trumpet before she finally dies. But, yeah, we don't see her learn to play it, but we know that her getting to the point where she can play it is very thematically important.

16:15 Erin: Yeah. The fact too, that Zampano comes across the woman hanging laundry who's singing that song, means that her artistic training has paid off, I think, because she's had an effect on her audience, like she's remembered after her death. So she's achieved a kind of, you know, not an immortality, say, but she's achieved a kind of artistic goal. So I do see what happens to her over the course of the film. Even though she does die, and even though the film isn't really about her, ultimately, it's really about Zampano.

16:45 Wes: And at that moment, too, Right. She gets through to Zampano at that point.

16:48 Erin: Right.

16:49 Wes: Emotionally, which she wasn't able to do when she was alive. That is what induces him to grieve.

16:54 Erin: Yeah. But from the very beginning we see that there's a strange kind of thing going on with his family, because Zampano knows that they're so poor that he could take advantage of them. And so he can keep going back to this well of all of these children. And I guess as he kills each one of them off, he can go back and get a younger version, a younger sister. And there are many children in this family, most of whom quite a bit younger than Gelsemina. But anyway, there's this mythology around Rosa and the fact that she left to start this apprenticeship and then Zampano comes back and like the hand of God pulls Gelsomina out of this terribly poor and starving existence and says, you're an artist now, you know, in so many words.

But even from the very beginning, when he puts that pig swill scene where she does see the trumpet and she becomes attracted to wanting to play the trumpet, that's also when he's putting the hats on her and she has that look of delight, you know, momentarily. It's so funny too, because he pulls out these clothes that are basically rags. He says, you know, he doesn't want her appearing in rags. And so he pulls out these clothes and is like, oh, you know, my women always look elegant and they're all these raggedy clothes, including a hat that's sort of like a top hat, but the top part is flapping as he puts it on her head.

And we see, you know, it's busted and we see her look of glee momentarily. And then he switches it out for a bowler hat and that she really loves. She sort of hops back and forth from one foot to the other in this really gleeful, very Chaplain esque kind of movement. And so we see that she likes playing dress up, she likes wearing these costumes, and then the trumpet and then the. The drum, which she also gets excited by. So, you know, she's being introduced to this life, but by the fact of Zampano coming in and just plucking her out of her former life.

It is kind of like she's been destined for this artistic career, at least in terms of the way that the narrative is working and destined to become an artist. And all she needed were the trappings of this to realize this vocation that she should have.

18:43 Wes: Even the lamest act for her is the beginning of something, right. And I love the whole metaphor later on of her planting some tomatoes. I mean, happens literally, but the metaphorical importance to it. But yeah, planting some tomatoes in that, I guess it's called a vegetable garden, but it looks pretty beat up field.

18:59 Erin: Bear fruit later.

19:00 Wes: That's a good way to describe what she's doing. She's trying to grow something out of some pretty meager beginning. But even in Zampano, there's something there to work with, a seed, so to speak.

19:13 Erin: Yeah, that's great. The beat up field reminds me too of something I should have mentioned earlier, which is the ugliness of Italy in this. It's incredible that this is in Italy and how the poverty and the rundown, the wretchedness of everything that they come across is of course part of their life and part of the poverty that the film is trying to express. But I think that also affected me very much as a kid and made Dolce Vita and Eight and a Half a little bit less relatable to me or personal to me. Because that kind of poverty, that level of poverty is why so many Italians came to America.

You know, that kind of sensibility is preserved or was preserved here for a long time. Whereas the bouncing back in Italy after the war to more success and then to decadence and stuff like that, that was not very relatable to me at all. So I love this too, because it's in this incredibly spare environment where there's, you know, there's even snow, which, you know, snow does come up again and again in Fellini. But the kind of countryside and the ruin and the degradation that we see in this is very suggestive to me of the kind of circumstances in which my own family was involved.

Not slavery and this level of degradation, but, you know, that incredibly dirt poor sense of Italy is very effective too. And it makes a perfect backdrop for this. Because they're so pathetic, the circuses, even the fool is pathetic and kicked out of the circus. And so it's a level of artistic vocation which is already so humble that the whole thing really takes on this parable like quality. It can just be pure idea because of the fact that we're not talking about real fame or real consequences for this, but just doing something for the love of it and no money involved whatsoever, except for just to be able to feed yourself.

20:53 Wes: Well, you were saying the fool is

20:56 Erin: part of the nature of the abject environment in which they're in is because of the fact that they're circus performers. Which is a ubiquitous form of entertainment in Italy, especially at this time. But it also means that every town had a little traveling circus go through it of various provincial and sort of run down natures. It's kind of like community theater. I mean, it's never going to achieve any level of success beyond what it takes to get from one town to the next. Hopefully, in the end, it looks like Zampano is hooked up with a slightly better circus in terms of the infrastructure and the location. So the fool, though he's obviously the most gifted of any of the artists in the film, is. Is still never going to achieve. You know, it's not like he's going to become a musical comedy star.

21:37 Wes: He has no aspirations to that. You know, he even says, I'm probably going to be dead pretty soon, my neck will be broken and no one will ever remember me. So it's not why he does what he does, but when we first see him in the film, for me it's an exciting moment because it's the first thing by someone who's genuinely talented to happen. When he does that tightrope walk. And the woman, his assistant you mentioned, who's collecting money and doing her job very well, you kind of feel the excitement of it and her being inspired by it. And that look that they give each other.

Him with his tear tattoo underside, there's an element of nihilism to him. He's willing to risk his life and possibly break his neck for this stuff. He doesn't think he's going to last that long. What puts him in much more danger than walking the tightrope is in teasing Zampano, which is the thing that he's best at. Right. Which is also I found to be really thrilling. Talking about the chain bursting performance being such a phenomenal thing. And then that whole interrupting Zampano to say that he has a phone call in the middle of his act and then of course almost gets himself killed there.

And eventually of course does get himself killed by Zampano. But there's a nihilism to him in that sense and a he's not doing this for fame. But he also probably doesn't take himself seriously enough to think of himself as an artist. Exactly. But he's a lynchman in the film in the sense that he's the one who convinces Gelsomina to stay with Zampano. Right. If you won't stay with him, who else will? And then that whole thing about everything having a purpose, even a pebble, where she becomes the pebble. I think she goes from talking about her identification with Rosa.

That's the big moment where she moves from being a potential Rosa to being this pebble. What's important about the fool is his ability to and we can think about this more generally, the role of Shakespearean fools and all the rest of it. But he has an important role in generating some kind of deeper link between Gelsomina and Zampano, basically getting her to commit, in a way, despite the fact that Zampano is such a horrible person who shows no interest in her as a person. I'd like to take a moment to talk about our sponsor for this episode, NYU Tisch.

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26:09 Erin: I'm sure you're familiar with the Pauline Kael assessment of the symbology of the three characters in the film.

26:15 Wes: I'm not.

26:16 Erin: Oh, okay. Well, I kind of feel like saying this. I think it's correct, but I think at the same time, it's also kind of. I don't want to totally shut down conversation after saying this, because it certainly sums things up, but it's also, I think, the starting place for further conversation. But Kael believed that you could take all three of them as being different parts of the body, if you will. So Zampano is like the pure flesh, the pure body. The fool is the mind, and Gelsomina is the soul. So together they all make one person. So we can take all of that to say that you can take Gelsomina and her role in the film as a purely symbolic one, and that this is really about Zampano and maybe the forces at work in Zampano trying to get him to become a redeemed human being.

But I think, of course, that's only one way to read this. I think it's a correct way, but I think there are many different readings that are within the film. And so what that leads me to ask is, is Gelsomina supposed to stay with Zampano? Like, is this part of her mission? And can we say that that's part of her mission, even if she's more than just some sort of symbolic linchpin for Zampano, or the part of Zampano that he's supposed to connect with, be it his softer, more spiritual side? Not to put these things in degraded terms, but could we see, even if we see her as being her own character and this as being less symbolic and more real, does she have a reason to stay with Zombano?

27:42 Wes: Yeah. So thinking about this more at a symbolic or thematic level. Right. For me, it makes it easier because the fool becomes a kind of linking. You can think of it intrapsychically. Right. And I like Kael's division. I was actually. I didn't have time, but I was trying to think, how do I do a tripartite division, like a Platonic division of the soul or Freudian or some other division. And I never worked it out, but I like hers. I think that works very well. So we can do that intrapsychically. We can also think about it in terms of relationships in general.

One of the refrains in the film, after he's been killed, is the fool has been hurt The Fool's been hurt, and that makes her relationship with Zampano impossible. After that, the fool kind of forged the possibility of an intimacy between them. And once he's killed off, that's it. And we could say that symbolically in our own lives as well. You can't kill off the fool psychologically. Part of it is just not about taking yourself too seriously or getting too caught up in status or one's own pride, one's own narcissism. Intimacy requires allowing that to be undermined.

We've talked about this in previous episodes, or maybe engaging in acts of self undermining. And part of what this represents is playfulness, the ability to play, to be the fool and to not take everything so seriously. So he forges the possibility of intimacy, and unfortunately, Zampano's reaction to that is to destroy it. You can see him as. At a thematic level, it's not just about revenge for being teased, it's about Zampano's need to destroy an actual relationship.

29:23 Erin: Right.

29:23 Wes: You know, he repeatedly says during the film, you know, I made her everything she is. She didn't even have any shoes before I met her. She could barely talk or whatever. He's got to be the one who's given her everything. And he doesn't need her. He doesn't need anybody, we'll say at the end of the film. So he needs to not need anyone and to have them need him in some very, very basic way on the reading that looks at this just as a story and just at the narrative of what's going on with the characters as real people. It's harder for me to make sense of her staying right. It's bad for her. He has been transformed in a sense, without knowing it, and he's not going to find that out. She has to die for him to grow, let's say. Really, when it comes down to it, there's nothing for her in this whole narrative. So I think your question was whether she should have stayed with him.

30:12 Erin: What reason would she have to stay with him?

30:14 Wes: I mean, the fool's reasons are that. Right? Let's look at what the fool himself says.

30:19 Erin: Yeah, that pebble scene is so great.

30:21 Wes: The Fool's reasons. In that pebble scene, the fool is kind of going back and forth, you know, offering her a chance to come with him, giving her a chance to consider going with the circus, because all the other circus performers have invited her as well. In a way, he's playing therapists instead of just saying, come with me, come with me, come with me. He notices how she's reacting and then he realizes that she wants to go with Zampano. So, you know, he talks about her letting him beat her like a donkey, but then he makes that remark about him being the dog who looks like he's trying to speak to you, but can only bark. And then if you won't stay with him, who else will? Everything exists for a purpose. And then he gives her that. What is he doing there to convince her to stay with him? What's the point of her staying with him?

31:11 Erin: I think that because everything has a purpose, he's trying to express to her that even, and I think she already kind of knows this, but that even Zampano deserves love. And that even she, the one who's been kicked from pillar to post throughout the film, even she can have a sense of agency in her own life. She could stay with him on purpose. As her purpose, she can choose to love him. So he calls Ampano an animal repeatedly. Like he says, you know what an animal. I've got nothing against him, but I can't help teasing him whenever I see him. I don't know why, an urge just comes over me.

So the fool is like the philosopher. I like this idea that he's a therapist too. He's the one who questions, and he's the one who has to continue to poke at things to understand them. Maybe he's that mind of the comic who doesn't know when to stop. I like that too. Later, where he says, you know that Zampano is like a dog. So he's an animal, he's a dog. And you know, when dogs look at you, they want to speak, all they can do is bark. So, you know, Zampano, he sees, has this love for Gelsomina, but it is mystery to Zampano, and it's not anything that he's consciously aware of, right?

And he wants to be able to cry out and talk to you, but he can't. So, poor guy, if you won't stay with him, who will? He's someone to be pitied. I think he's turning Zampano from an aggressor in the mind of Gelsemina, and someone who's scary and someone for whom she can have no tenderness. I think she already has a little bit of tenderness for him, but he rationalizes for her the fact that she can have tenderness for him and she should express that tenderness, because he's so pathetic, basically. So Gelsomina is not the pathetic one, Zompano is the pathetic One.

And to put him in the position of the pebble or to put her in the position of the pebble means that you just. You have an activity. You have a reason for being. And even if your reason is to help somebody else, like that's enough of a reason, which I think is really beautiful. It's just. It's sad, too, and kind of pathetic, but it's. You know, it's beautiful that because her frame of reference is already so sad, she doesn't think that she has any purpose at all than to tell her that maybe her purpose can be to be tender toward this guy who is terribly abusive to her.

It puts her actually in an exalted position, I think, because then she gets to be the one who has the power. She realizes that he's not that scary. You know, he gives her this terminology to be able to kick that sand in his direction and say, you're an animal. You don't think. You know. Or when she sort of play acts at sort of telling him off, you know, she's able to stand up for herself now because sort of, obviously, you know, he's still threatening to her. But she can sort of stand up for herself mentally and have a sense of her own worth. Because the fool has shown her he needs someone and she can be that person.

33:54 Wes: Yeah, very good. One of the interesting things about the scene is that she's sort of fantasizing about setting everything on fire. Right. And poisoning him at the end.

34:02 Erin: Yes. Yes.

34:03 Wes: Am I wrong about that? Even though really what's happening is she, the fool, has assisted her in deciding that she can stay with him. But she is also. I think he put it all very well. This is actually an assertion of independence and her coming into her own. And, you know, it's shortly after that. Right. That she. Right after she picks him up from jail. And there at the monastery, it's right after that that we learn that she can play the trumpet really well. And of course, she's playing the trumpet to the fool's sad song, to his theme, which I think in my notes, I say this.

It's really gets to the Fool's tune. But it's the theme of intimacy. I would say it's the sad song that can be interrupted by the trombone by some sort of comic or manic defense. But really, what all that sadness is about is about actual connection. And then we. In that conversation between her and the nun, there's a talk about how they have to change monasteries every two years so they don't get attached to the things of the earth. And so there's this comparison between Gelsemina following her husband and the nun following hers, which is Christ.

There's nothing more important than God. We could replace God with art in parallel, or however you want to think about it. So there's something about the dedication to another person, or to God, to others in general, that these things aren't simply a matter of subservience. And that's why I think the question of whether she's a slave is such an apt one, because in a way, it's about her psychology, not about her actual circumstances.

35:35 Erin: Right, right.

35:36 Wes: Is she a slave or is she not a slave? Well, at this point, she's no longer a slave, even though she's decided to stay with this not very nice person. But we can dedicate ourselves to others as a choice and have that be an ultimate act of freedom. It might seem like servitude, but often what's happening is we are allowing others to depend on us. Sometimes they don't even know it because they like Zampano. Being aware of that dependency is too dangerous, and he only tragically becomes aware of it when it's too late.

36:10 Erin: That's great. You perfectly summed that up for me and expressed what I'm like. I know there's something here to this idea of her dignity that she gets out of a relationship with Zampano that seems to have no dignity for her actually does. You know, I like the pebble, too, because this, of course, relates to the Franciscan spirituality of the film, in which, you know, every living thing or pebble is not a living thing, but every created thing has a purpose, every bug, you know, and we actually see Jessamina being tender even to a bug when she's sitting on the side of the road when Zombano has taken off with his first woman, that rather busty, voluptuous waitress, Red. Yeah. Who's a sort of like, bizarre counterpoint to Rosa.

36:50 Wes: You know, I was actually confused when I first watched the film. I thought she was Rosa. I didn't realize Rosa was a sister. It wasn't until I looked at the transcript a little bit while I was taking notes that I figured out that Rosa and Red are not the same person.

37:04 Erin: Right. Rosa, the sister is kind of a symbol of vitality, even though she's dead. Right. She's been dead from the beginning, but she sort of lives on in Gelsemina's mind as being the symbol of artistic promise or something, or maybe even promise realized. If Gelsemina's inflated her in her mind. And of course, Zampano, he's always on the make, and he's always looking for extensions of his own vitality in the form of having these sexual liaisons with women. So I think there's something to that sharing of a name and that they're both red, you know, this vital color.

And each representing something different. For Gelsomina and for Zampano, the moment when he goes off and sleeps with the second Rosa and leaves Gelsomina thinking probably that she's been abandoned as she's walking down that road. And then she sits down on the. Basically in the dirt on this bank on the side of the road and is looking at the insects crawling out of this hole, letting them go on her finger for a second and then putting them back down is a tremendously powerful moment for me. And the pebble, too, is part of this idea that everything has meaning.

Everything in the created world has this purpose, which the fool expresses really well. And it also makes me think of the fact that if Kael is correct, and I think she is, that all of these people together represent three elements of a single person. And it's kind of like the Trinity, oddly enough, which is this idea of the one God, who is also three people and therefore also his own community of people. The idea of people living in communion with each other and things having a purpose and fitting together like a puzzle. I think that's also an element of, you know, even of the commedia dell'.

Arte, right? Like the comedic ecosystem that is created by all of these different facets of humanity. Everything is ultimately resolved in this comedic twist where everybody had their role to play. The person antagonizing the lover ends up pushing the lovers into the chapel or something like that. Everything has a positive purpose in the end. Everything is redeemed in the end of these comedic routines, which ultimately makes them comic and not tragic. It makes me think that this whole thing is actually a comedy, not a tragedy. Because in the end, everything had its role to play.

And Zampano was able to be redeemed in the end, not to jump ahead.

39:14 Wes: That whole question of her purpose comes up in part because of the fool's teasing. You look like an artichoke.

39:21 Erin: I know.

39:22 Wes: You're not good looking. It's then that she goes into, nobody needs me. What do I live for? And he's like, can you cook? She's like, a little bit. She's probably not even that good a cook. Or at least Zampano thinks her soup tastes like swill. And then why am I born into this world? That's when he is able to help her conceive of a purpose that doesn't have something to do with being good at something. Not even really being a good artist or trumpet player. Even though thematically. Right. The trumpet playing becomes important as something symbolic of again being able to play the tune of intimacy, but not just in the sad register of the violin, but to play it triumphantly on a trumpet.

To play it as something that transcends the sadness that's inevitably part of it. The other factor here, you know, this plays into the way in which the nature of comedy and the way in which it starts out looking like nihilism and a principle of breaking apart and chaos. Right. You're just in denial. You know, psychotherapists might call it a manic defense. You want to be in denial of sadness and you want to avoid intimacy. But really it actually serves the purpose of human connection. You're making me think about that with the connection to the divine as well.

So the fool I see as a linking principle and comedy in general, and the way it works is it helps us puncture our narcissism and our own pretensions. And the ability to explode those pretensions is directly related to the ability to relate to one another. Right. To escape our own narcissism. And just your mention of the connection to the divine. I think we might be able to think in terms of a parallel to which I haven't thought this through. I don't know if it's the Holy Spirit or something else, but what it is that connects the human to the divine and whether there's a kind of fool like element to that as well.

41:13 Erin: Sure. In terms of foolishness, broadly conceived. I wonder too about Jalsamena's intellect and the extent to which it's either impaired or if she's meant to be childlike entirely. I was reading the Roger Ebert review of this in which he wasn't. I think this was for the re release shortly after Fellini's death. This is a review in 94. He gives it three and a half out of four stars, which is compared to how much he loves Fellini's other films is almost a pan. He sort of questions whether or not Julietta Messina is actually playing Gelsemina correctly, which is like heresy to me. He says the character should never be aware of the effect she has. But we sometimes feel Gelsemina's innocence is calculated, which I do not find it that way.

41:55 Wes: No, I don't agree with that at all?

41:57 Erin: Yeah. You know, there's a suggestion at the beginning from her mother that there's something wrong with her. There's a sense that she might be mentally challenged. There's another sense in which she is, you know, the holy fool figure, or there's another sense in which she's had some sort of arrested development, that she's simply had no exposure to the outside world, perhaps, and therefore she relates to it like a child would, I guess. I wonder which of these is the most likely reading, which of these is the most symbolically fruitful reading of what she is. I think it must be just that she is like a child so that she can have this vocational training from Zampano on the one hand and the fool on the other. I think they're both important to her spiritual maturation.

42:39 Wes: It's also that the story can't really be told. It's only a person like her who can learn to. You know, maybe love is the right word. I think it's just the fact that he calls her his wife.

42:51 Erin: Yeah.

42:52 Wes: That gets to her and has her feeling jealous and has her comparing herself to Rosa and at some point talking about marrying him. And most other people in this position, they'd run away, or they might just meet him on his plane. Right. They might be similarly curmudgeonly and give him back his abuse, and they would have some kind of stable relationship that involved being abusive towards each other or something like that. Who knows? There are a lot of different ways it can go, but as far as someone who could actually genuinely relate to him and then ultimately get through to him, there's not many characters who can do that. And so you can't really tell the story without someone like her, I don't think. And so it's childlikeness in a way, but it's also part of that is just the capacity to love, basically.

43:38 Erin: I think that childlikeness is related to how superhuman she is in a way. When the circus leaves and kicks out Zampano and the fool, both, because of the fight that they get into and they both go to jail, they offer Jessamina the opportunity to leave and just come with them, in which case she would be able to be an artist on those terms without having to be abused by Zampano all the time. And then, of course, she's offered, too, a chance to stay at the convent. And it's almost like the Way of the Cross. I see those two moments as being what for?

I think you're right. If she was not this childlike character. Then for other people they would be moments of salvation, you know, where she's able to get away from an abuser for the symbolic reading or the childlike reading of someone trying to find their purpose. They function almost as temptations on her journey, in which case she becomes the Christlike figure. I think all three of them kind of take turns being this Christ like figure in which she is tempted to give up this metaphorical cross of having to deal with Zampano and be able to escape.

Ironically, you know, one of them is to escape into religion, really, and to escape into the convent and to become a sister or at least to live there in some capacity. So the fact that we could read them as temptations, I think is just a testament to what you're saying. The childlike element, the lack of reality and the symbology of the film working in that way.

45:01 Wes: Yeah.

45:01 Erin: You know, the temptation is to leave him and to escape the suffering, really.

45:05 Wes: Yeah.

45:06 Erin: But she has to keep suffering with him or at his hand in order to ultimately sow this fruit that's going to come out in him later.

45:13 Wes: The nun herself makes this direct parallel between Gelsomina's relationship to Zampana and the nun's relationship to Christ. I think it was Christ or God.

45:21 Erin: Yeah.

45:21 Wes: So that's a parallel we should take seriously. Even though it's not a flattering one to God. It's not a flattering comparison, but it's not like there are not Zampano like aspects to the divinity, at least from a human perspective. Right. So seeming indifference and harshness and I love you, but you don't love me or I don't really hear from you that often, even though I pray. It doesn't seem like there are that many miracles.

45:45 Erin: Yes.

45:46 Wes: Or we could even describe that. That's our relationship to the real or reality in some sense, because there's a seeming indifference in harshness.

45:55 Erin: It's funny that you should mention miracles, because that moment at the convent, he's stealing X photos off the wall when he's sticking his hand through that sort of portcullis or the gate over that little chapel. So he's stealing the symbol of a miracle that has actually occurred.

46:10 Wes: I see. I didn't know that. Yeah.

46:12 Erin: So those ex votos are in thanksgiving for a prayer that has been answered more often than not. They're just made of tin, not silver, so they wouldn't be worth very much. But he is trying to get his hands on them and steal them away, trying to take the miracles that he can get and Turn them into money. But it is a funny comparison.

46:29 Wes: It's a road film, and you could see it as a series of adventures in a way, or an odyssey type thing, but really it boils down to a series of betrayals. Betraying her with Red, with the matron at the wedding. And these are things that are both very upsetting to her. But by the time we get to the monastery, this is a much more devastating betrayal. She's already made this decision to stay with him and he's gone from. Even though she's seen him attack, chase the fool around with a knife. The criminal component of all this is escalating and the sociopathic quality is intensifying to him. So we get that betrayal of trying to steal from the convent, which seems to her pretty devastating. And then it's right after that that of course he kills the fool. And then the final betrayal is just the abandonment.

47:22 Erin: I love the fact that you're phrasing these things as betrayals, because you would think, especially after being at the convent and being in that sort of holy environment, and he pays a lot of lip service to being kind to the sisters and everything, ultimately he rejects the grace that's offered to him. Right. So symbolically, he's trying to steal the miracles. And then, rather than being affected by the convent atmosphere, he continues to be hardened and kills the fool.

47:47 Wes: It's like killing the goose that laid the golden egg. As far as. Like stealing miracles.

47:51 Erin: Yeah, right. But it's also this idea too, that there's something of a betrayal of God in him, that he's even rejecting the grace that's continually offered to him. So he could just let the fool go and he rejects it. So that rejection of grace, those graces come to fruition, are physicalized in the X photos that he's trying to steal. Those are promises fulfilled instead. The betrayal of that extended hand is what ultimately ends up killing Gelsomina, because he can't accept that grace and just let the fool go.

48:21 Wes: I think that works well with some of our other readings, including thinking about Zampano and the position of the divine from the standpoint of humanity, the indifference or harshness or whatever. But you can flip that, of course, right? And you can look at it in terms of an inappropriate human relationship to the divine. And those two things are mirror images of each other, Right. It's our fantasy of the divine that determines our reaction to it. For Zambano, it's just. I think it's meaningless and it's empty. If you think of it that way you become that to some extent.

48:54 Erin: Right. That's great. I wanted to say, too, that the metaphorical road that they're on could also be. I don't know how well this plays out throughout the entire film. It might drop off a bit halfway through. But the journey, too, could be a representation of the life of the artist and Gelsomino's artistic training, because I do think that it's significant that he calls her his wife and that they perform at this wedding. So there are mirror images of their situation happening at these episodic stops along the way. And I think the suggestion is, at least in the first half of the film, that these kinds of comforts or these kinds of milestones in life are not available to the artist, who stands apart almost in a way that the convent, you know, is standing apart from the way the world is working.

So you have people who are sequestered from that, from the life of ordinary people because of their special vocation, be it a religious vocation or an artistic one, and that all of these scenes that they move through at the beginning of the film or in the first half of the film are sort of like sad reminders of their special relationship to the world, which is set apart, obviously, not by necessity. I mean, he could marry Gelsemina if he wanted to. But the idea of the loneliness of the life of an artist and the sense in which you are set apart, you know, that Zampano comes in like God and chooses Gelsemina for this life in spite of what she may want, which is not to go with him and not to leave her mother.

So that, too, I think, is part of it.

50:24 Wes: Okay, so I think we can leave it there for the main episode. What are we gonna talk about in Postscript?

50:29 Erin: Well, in Postscript, I'd like to talk about my favorite scene, which we haven't even touched on in the main episode. So we'll talk about that. I'll talk about some fun trivia that you may not know about, including a Broadway musical that they were gonna make out of this film. Ooh, yes. And some other things maybe. We'll see.

50:48 Wes: Good. So this is us passing the hat around, unfortunately.

50:53 Erin: There we go.

50:54 Wes: You're gonna have to put some money in the hat if you want to listen to the rest of the episode. All right, thank you.

51:00 Erin: Thank you.

51:07 Wes: Postscript. subscribe@patreon.com subtext Also, this podcast is part of the airwave media podcast network. airwavemedia.com AirwaveMedia.com.