La Strada, directed by Federico Fellini (1954)

The Sea, the Road, the Sky. Fire, Earth and Water. The Simpleton, the Brute, and the Holy Fool. Departure, Initiation and Return, Beauty and the Beast – all the archetypal suspects are summoned in Fellini’s La Strada (The Road) from 1954.
The Little Tramp returns as Gelsomina. This young waif is taken from her seaside Italian village to become the traveling companion and virtual slave to the wandering strongman, Zampano, who pleases crowds by breaking a chain across his heart. She is the child archetype of innocence, poetry and music who dances with trees and plays her trumpet. Like the Gamin, she lives ‘no place anywhere’ and is destined to follow the beast from sea to sea.
“I don’t know what purpose this pebble serves, but it must serve some purpose. Because if it useless, then everything is useless.” The parable of the pebble is passed on to Gelsomina by the Holy Fool who provides her the means to find her ‘raison d’être’. She asks the question of Zampono, “If I don’t stay with him… Who will stay?” What if her function is to teach the strongman how to love? Gelsomina is the feminine spirit in search of meaning. The classic quest for self-knowledge. In the end we learn that you can’t amount to anything without others and that everyone, everything, has a purpose.
The final scene in La Strada signals the emergence of civilization and provides one of the great finales in cinematic history. We witness the agony of birth as the beast enters consciousness. Fear, guilt, shame, realization of lost love…all the human values are introduced as Zampono rips at the ocean’s sand and screams at the night sky. He is lonely before eternity as he recognizes for the first time what he has lost.
Along with his films La Dolce Vita (1960) and 8 ½ (1963), La Strada ranks as one of cinema’s greatest art works and provides us with a fully constructed mythological world where in the heroine is a saviour and there are no defenses against art, music, and humour. The Little Tramp lives on.