A simple girl brings the instrument to her lips. His eyes are filled with wonder, his face with ridiculous, caricatured joy. In an instant the trumpet is snatched from her hand and a strong man harshly scolds her for the presumptuous gesture: "Just do what I tell you!". Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay A simple girl is presented with a trombone; she is encouraged by the Fool to give it a shot, and excitedly walks her Chaplin-style penguin walk while learning a tune. At night, the simple girl finds the Fool by following the sound of his haunting tune on the violin. With a few repetitions, the melody soon becomes indelibly associated with him. In subsequent scenes, the simple girl performs the haunting melody of The Fool for a Nun, her signature melody that she has made her own. When finished, his face clouds briefly with nostalgic longing. One scene later, it is the simple girl who will be indelibly haunted by this very melody, as she witnesses the climactic death of the Fool. A final scene with the simple girl: she has been irreparably damaged psychologically, she is abandoned by such a tormentor Zampano, left sleeping with money, clothes and, above all, the beloved trumpet that was once so forcefully denied to her. Years have passed when each of these scenes comes flooding back the instant a familiar tune is hummed: the final part of the film. use of this musical memory. An emotionally numb Zampano walks listlessly through the streets, cheerfully gulping down his carnival ice cream cone in two bites. A woman's lilting voice wafts through the carnival mix, echoing the Fool's (and Gelsomina's) long-forgotten melody. A pause, then a complete stop; a certain semblance of concern flashes across his rough features. “Where did you learn that song?” The gruff Zampano succeeds. “A girl who was here a long time ago…. He always played it on the trumpet and it stuck in my head,” he shrugs. Hesitantly, he asks, "Where is he now?" His response: "She's dead, poor thing." It is in this last scene that Fellini most powerfully demonstrates the effect of a musical motif on the collective unconscious of the audience. Listening to the melody sung by the woman's voice, one is intensely aware of the association that until that moment was unarticulated: the ability of a melody to capture and connect the experience of simple Gelsomina and all the characters around her during the entire film. This scene musically embodies the overwhelming loss of the film and simultaneously recalls all the other scenes in which the melody was played. While the woman recounts Gelsomina's fate after Zampano's desertion, the camera moves closer to her face. Zampano, previously lifeless, now seems troubled; his eyebrows furrowed together, his face an unmistakable expression of repressed pain. Her gaze is lower and lower as the woman absentmindedly continues to hang out the laundry, acting mercilessly, unaware of its intimate relevance. “Poor thing had a fever. We brought her to our house. But he wouldn't say anything. All she did was cry. He wouldn't eat. When he felt a little better he sat outside in the sun. He thanked us and blew the trumpet. Then, one morning, she never woke up." Zampano is greatly impressed by the merciless tale. He steps away from the fence, shakes his head absentmindedly in response to the woman's question (would he like to meet the mayor and identify the unknown girl?), turns around in a daze before remembering to give the woman a shy wave..
tags