Because of La Strada's richness and broad openness to interpretation, religious writers found a message at the end of the film that compelled them to use words like atonement, absolution, and salvation. Zampanò, overwhelmed with remorse for his abandonment of the girl, prostrates himself on the silent beach. It is his "dark night of the soul," his moment of reckoning, or whatever other cliché you want to call it. It was because of this interpretation (which is narrow, but perfectly acceptable), that one of my teachers, who was a nun, at the Catholic parochial school I was attending in 1971, screened the film at a PTA meeting one evening. I mark it as my introduction to a world of film in which I have been lost ever since.
But the end of Zampanò in La Strada, as compelling as its Christian critics found it, is the film's least effective part. For all his supposed genius at invention, it was as an observer of the lives of his characters, characters drawn from life, that Fellini was at his best. The last ten minutes of La Strada (and it's precisely ten minutes), after Zampanò abandons Gelsomina in the mountains, are beautiful in their details. He has joined another travelling circus, but his performances - without an assistant - are perfunctory and mechanical, the strong man going through the tired old motions of an act that no longer even interests him. But the moment Fellini begins to impose a design - a plot, in other words - it feels out of place, imposed as a kind of afterthought. Zampanò washes his face in the surf, sits down in the sand and ... What? He looks up at the sky and out at the ocean and suddenly he begins to cry. I think it is pure invention to argue that Zampanò is overcome with remorse in the scene. This imposition of plot limits the film's boundless metaphysical implications.
The wintry mountains in which Zampanò abandons Gelsomina appear again at the end of Fellini's following film, Il Bidone. It's Fellini's most neglected film, and while I wouldn't dare claim it is as great as I Vitelloni or 8½, it's still my favorite of his films. Once again, as with I Vitelloni, Fellini's title is an idiomatic word, meaning a scam, con or fraud. Its English title, when a distributor finally got around to releasing the film in the U.S. nine years after it was shown to mixed reviews at Venice in 1955, is The Swindle or The Swindlers, referring to the trio of men, Augusto, Picasso, and Roberto, who specialize in elaborate scams to divest farmers of their life savings. The beginning of the film is borderline surreal, but Fellini shows us the men (one older man, two young ones) donning their costumes for the darkly comic pantomime that ensues. Vargas, the boss, is there directing them. Carefully scouted beforehand ("watch out for the vicious dogs"), they arrive dramatically in front of an old house. Roberto (Franco Fabrizi), the chauffeur, gets out and Carlo (Richard Basehart) asks a woman peering out of the door to call off her dogs. He gets out of the car and announces that "Monsignor De Filipis" has come on serious business. Augusto steps out of the car. A second woman approaches him to kiss his ring. He makes the sign of the cross at her and turns toward the first woman. "Is there somewhere we can talk in secrecy?" the monsignor asks. They go inside, the door is closed. Augusto launches into a long and sad story about a lifelong criminal's deathbed confession. Hoping for absolution, he confessed that he killed a man and buried him along with a chest full of stolen treasure on the woman's farm. We cut outside to a field in which a lone tree stands. Following the directions on a map, Carlo takes eight paces from the tree and announces that the chest of treasure is exactly beneath the spot where he stands. Roberto begins to dig. About three feet down, he hands the shovel to the woman, who jumps into the hole and digs with enthusiasm. She stops, however, when the shovel turns up a skull and some bones. Carlo solemnly takes the skull aside, places it on a handkerchief and he and Augusto make the sign of the cross and pray. Meantime the woman has hit pay dirt - the treasure chest is unearthed. Back inside the house, Carlo inventories the contents of the chest - faux jewels and fake gold ingots - and estimates its value at six million lira - "more or less." Finally, Augusto reads from a letter the dying criminal's last request that masses should be performed for the salvation of his soul. Augusto sets the number at 500 (the dead man was a great sinner). Carlo states that every mass costs 1,000 lira. So, in exchange for the treasure, the woman has to come up with 500,000 lira in cash. She consults with her sister and together they leave. By the time they return it is getting dark. The woman has come up with only 425,000 lira, but Augusto accepts it. The transaction complete, the pantomime is over, and away the unholy band of thieves drive into the night. (If this scam sounds too ridiculous to be believed, I recommend reading Tullio Kezich's invaluable book Federico Fellini: His Life and Work (2006) about the real swindlers whom Fellini befriended before becoming a filmmaker.)
Nino Rota's musical score is engaging, expansive, and jaunty, in accordance with a caper movie like Mario Monicelli's Big Deal on Madonna Street. But Augusto isn't enjoying himself. He goes through his motions like the old pro that he is, but he's getting tired of it all. In a later scene, a fellow criminal asks him how old he is. 48. He wants out of his line of work. Carlo has a wife (Giulietta Masina) and young child, but they don't know where he gets his money. He's a painter (his colleagues call him "Picasso"), and wants to make a respectable living. Augusto has a daughter, Patrizia, who is 18 and wants to be a teacher. Carlo saves himself in time, but Augusto is enlisted for one last caper. Nino Rota's music repeats the jaunty theme from the film's first scene, but it is somber now, almost lugubrious. Again organized by Vargas, who waits with a second car for his actors to carry out the swindle, Augusto and a different team act out the buried treasure scam on another poor farmer.
Il Bidone turns out to be Augusto's story, and it's his tragedy. Returning to the farmhouse from the field with the "treasure chest," the group happen upon Susana, the farmer's daughter, afflicted with polio at age 9. Her father introduces her and she is led by her mother out of the room. Distracted, wearily reciting his lines for the divestment - certainly not the benefit - of the old farmer, who pulls all he's got in the world, 350,000 lira, out of his coat pocket, Augusto grabs the roll of cash. But before he can depart, the farmer's wife asks Augusto to come outside with her to bless her crippled daughter. And so we are subjected to one of the most painful scenes on film: a counterfeit priest's galling witness to a disabled girl's total devotion to her family, her patience, her strength, her truth, all of which mocks him in his fake finery, his empty holiness, his lies. She is 18 and has been paralyzed since she was 9. Dumbstruck by her terrifying goodness, Augusto wants to escape, but when he turns to go, the girl reaches for her crutches and pursues him, at last clutching his hand to kiss his ring. Filled with self-revulsion, he pulls his hand away from her and flees.
At their rendezvous with Vargas, the men remove their costumes and prepare to leave. But who has the money? Augusto has it, they agree. But Augusto says he doesn't have the money. He says he gave it back to the farmer's wife because he couldn't go through with it, that the crippled girl moved him to pity.
The release history of Il Bidone is unusual. It was first shown, on September 9, 1955, at the Venice Film Festival, where it was nominated for the Golden Lion, but didn't win. It was then released in Europe the following month, but it failed to attract an American distributor. It was only until nine years later, after the success of 8½ (an Oscar for Best Foreign-Language Film), that the film was finally released in New York. At 92 minutes, it was the version I first saw forty years ago, and the one released on DVD by Image Entertainment in 2000. I learned several years after I first saw it that it was twenty minutes shorter than the version shown at Venice. Not knowing who made the cuts or when, I assumed they were made by the U.S. distributor. I have recently seen the restored version that was shown in Venice and it's 108 minutes. A title at the beginning tells the story:
La presenta edizione de "Il bidone" ricostruisce il film nella versione presenta in occasione della "prima" del 9 settembre 1955 al Festival di Venezia, di circa venti minuti più lunga della versione successivamente distribuita in Italia.
Evidently, its cool reception at Venice prompted Fellini to make several minor cuts and one major cut in the final scene for the version released in Europe (it was an Italian-French co-production). The cuts, however, failed to satisfy either Fellini or any American distributors. So, we should hesitate to call the restored version of Il Bidone the "director's cut," especially since the additional 16 minutes doesn't exactly improve on the version I've been watching for 40 years. In the restored version the final caper and its aftermath are four minutes longer (23 minutes) and, if anything, is even more unendurable. Nobody believes Augusto's story about giving back the 350,000 lira, and they demand he come up with it. He fights them, and finally runs down a gravel hill from the highway. In pursuit, the men throw rocks at Augusto, until one hits him in the head and he falls backward against a large rock. Searching in his clothes for the missing money, they find it in his pockets and in his shoe. Relieved but still angry, Vargas tells him that he'll never find work again, and he kicks him. But Augusto is apparently hurt and can't stand up. The men abandon him in the gully. Lying on his broken back, his cries of "Vargas! Vargas!" reminded me of Orson Welles as the corrupt cop, Quinlan, shouting the same name in penultimate scene from Touch of Evil, made three years later. Welles even resembles jowly old Broderick Crawford.
Il Bidone's drawn-out ending expands, alarmingly, on the implications suggested by the ending of La Strada. "It wasn't supposed to end like this," Augusto says to himself as he lies there on his back, now as paralyzed as Susana. Eventually Augusto rolls onto his stomach and begins to crawl up the slope toward the highway. Growing delirious, he mutters "Patrizia, my child." The scene transitions from day to night and back to day. Fellini makes much - too much - of Augusto's hands trying to grip the stony ground, still wearing his fake ring - the one Susana tried to kiss. Finally, Augusto hears a group of children passing on the road and crawls as far as he can, calling out to them to "Wait! I'm coming with you!" His head slumps to the ground, and Fellini's camera steals away, as dead leaves are blown around him. We are left with the conclusion that Augusto is dead. I wasn't expecting an uplifting ending - the film had been heading toward some disaster for the last third of its duration, but the ending that Fellini chose goes beyond moralistic, much more than just desserts. It didn't have to end like that.
No comments:
Post a Comment