Jan. 27, 2003 - 4:49 pm
i had been wanting to see some Fellini movies for a while now. this was one of them that i had seen mentioned over and over again for the past couple of years. it won Best Foreign Language Film for 1954 at the Oscars and is currently number 213 on the IMDb. it stars Anthony Quinn as Zampano, the tough and sometimes cruel circus performer and Giulietta Masina as Gelsomina, the innocent and very odd girl that he takes with him on his road trip doing performances.
at the beginning, Zampano actually buys Gelsomina from her poor mother in order to have a girl to help him with his act. she turns out to be a strange girl who seems to have remained a child all of her adult life. she likes to make up little poems about what she's feeling and doesn't seem to be able to care for herself. the movie is basically about a sort of tragic relationship between two people. Zampano is nearly totally emotionally closed off and the wide-eyed Gelsomina seems to need nothing more than his love, something that he can never really express.
this was an interesting film for me because there was so much on location shooting. something that just didn't happen enough in the 1950s in America. too many studio productions coming out. lots of great cinematography and great scenery in this film though, so that was awesome. also the Gelsomina character was fascinating. i've never seen anyone act like her, but it made complete sense when she was doing it. you'd really have to see the movie to understand her personality.
one thing that kind of threw me on this was the dubbing. i watched it in Italian with English subtitles. it seems to have pretty much always been in Italian from what i can tell, but the whole thing was still dubbed. and quite badly. like you hear them speaking Italian, but it doesn't match what their mouths are doing. it almost seems like some of the people were speaking English originally because even the words that were coming out of their mouths didn't remotely look like the Italian i was hearing. maybe it was another Sergio Leone type deal. i don't know for sure what was going on. but other than that it was a very good film.