Exploring Character Development through Music in La Strada

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Music in film is normally either used to color the emotion of a scene and fitting the setting (Dyer 250), or to inform the audience about a character. In La Strada Fellini and Rota use the different musical themes to tell the audience about the characters, and their development (Van Order 53). Through the diegetic and nondiegetic playing Il Matto, they show characters transition from ignorance about their self importance, to a state of cognizance, and then to their eventually understanding their levels of importance in the world. The major and minor keys in music are used to represent and characterize different contrasting emotions. The major key is used to represent feelings of happiness and a completed event while the minor key is associated with sadness discord or lack or resolution of an event (Mansfield 516). Together, the two keys complement …show more content…

She plays the Il Matto in front of the nuns, before her and Zampanò to go sleep, and after Zampanò leaves her. By playing the song diegetically through her trumpet, Fellini is cueing the audience that she learned what The Fool told her. The diegetic aspect of the sound emphasizes this message because it shows how the song has become a part of her, and it forces the other characters to interact with in, and relish in its beauty. The only character who doesn’t enjoy it is Zampanò. By not responding to Il Matto, or responding negatively, Zampanò establishes himself as another incomplete character. His general ambivalence to the song establishes him as another character that misjudges his values in society because he over values his importance in society. While he overly confident that his life has meaning, he doesn’t understand the importance of others, their feelings, or know how to empathize with people, and instead he is focused on his singular goal of performing to

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