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| Giulietta Masina sends us a look on the poster for Federico Fellini's Nights of Cabiria |
Cabiria is the Cannes' Grand Prix- and Best Foreign Film Oscar-winning film by Italian master director Federico Fellini (8½ (1963)). In it, we follow the street girl Cabiria, a prostitute, as she is betrayed by her boyfriend in the very beginning of the film: 'Her' Giorgio steals her purse and pushes her into the river. She gets saved and later continues her destitute life in search of other men that might save her, SPOILER visiting a church, other prostitutes, a vaudeville club, going home with a movie star, joining a magic act and finally, she thinks, finding the man she will marry.
Cabiria moves forward like a river; things happen, but there's never any sense of suspense, so that our entire involvement rests on our ability to identify with Cabiria.
She is played by Giulietta Masina (La Strada (1954)), and she is a mercurial, loud-mouthed, gullible soul. Masina has a magic to her way and that smile she gives to convince someone else of a human bond between her and him, even if he's a cop on the nightly streets of Rome trying to get her to conduct her business elsewhere. She's wonderful in La Strada, which is a masterpiece that hits so many more keys. Here I couldn't get past the distraction that co-writer/director Fellini cast her in the lead again, - Masina was Fellini's wife for 50 years (1943-93), until they both died shortly after one another, - and he seems to have created the whole film around his infatuation with her, which would have to carry on to the audiences for it to work, - which clearly it did, just not for me.
I think the story is pretty thin, and maybe there's too much Italian shouting going on for me to get very emotionally involved in the film. Also some of the Fellini-elements, (the magic act, the African dance act), seem forced into the film just for it to have some content. It didn't get magical for me in Cabiria; I didn't feel transported to another place as I did in La Strada, - instead it got dull, and I almost dozed off a few times.
The details:
Still, Cabiria is worth seeing for Masina's charismatic performance and some fine moments and light amusement. The film also has what is termed 'neorealistic elements' understood mostly as poor Romans of the time, as Italy was still financially drained after WWII; we see a woman that lives in a cave and witness poverty in other ways. Contradictorily, which annoyed me, we never really learn how Cabiria affords her house, or, more mysteriously, how she is able to gather so much money for her marriage dowry at the end of the film.
She is then, once again, SPOILER betrayed and ripped off by a scoundrel posing as a gentleman, and Cabiria is in tatters, having now lost everything, we assume. She goes crying to the streets, and the film ends with Masina's legendary move from despairing tears to an optimistic smile and even to look at us, the audience, as she walks the noisy, happy streets of Rome. A wonderful end to a film that is whimsical and rackety, a meager dalliance.
Cabiria was produced by legendary Italian producer Dino de Laurentiis, who showed his infamous daring here in producing a film about a prostitute heroine, something no-one else wanted to at the time. Fellini made it after The Swindle/The Swindlers/Il Bidone (1955) a mostly forgotten swindler drama between La Strada and the acclaimed Cabiria. Fellini was in the process of changing styles quite dramatically at this time, just as Italy was changing, as his next picture became the acclaimed, long comedy-drama La Dolce Vita (1960)
Related review:
Federico Fellini: 8½ (1963) or, Vive la Cinema!
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| One of the striking images in Federico Fellini's Nights of Cabiria |
A short trailer for the restored version of the film
Budget: Unknown
Box office: 0.7 mil. $ (US 1998 reissue only)
= Unknown
What do you think of Nights of Cabiria?
And of Fellini's other films?
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