La Strada

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At first it seemed too simple, too lacking in ironic perspective, but Fellini knew what he was doing.  As soon as the Fool, with his sense of life and of fun, enters, the movie gets deeper and deeper, almost by the gesture.  Gelsomina, who before seemed like a three-quarter wit, turns out to be someone who just needed a good teacher.  We ache for her to go off with the Fool, then to stay with the circus, then to stay with the nuns.  But she has figured out how to love Zampano in a deep way.  Posthumously, she succeeds in changing him from monster to someone capable of sorrow and anguish over his own monstrousness.  That sorrow is all he needs, as Dante, Fellini's fellow Italian-Catholic, teaches us, to go from hell to purgatory; to feel sorrow is to no longer be in the grasp of evil, psychologically speaking.  After Zampano leaves Gelsomina behind, I wonder why the movie is continuing--who cares about Zampano, the monster?  By the end, we know why the movie continued.  Gelsomina has redeemed Zampano by her own example of grieving, by her loving him, and by her dying the way, Zampano learns, she has died.