Nights of Cabiria
Director: Federico Fellini
24 May 2023
See
Her: Le notti di Cabiria, 1957, directed by Feredico Fellini and starting Giulieta Masina. It’s a story of Cabiria - a prostitute living in post-war Rome, as independent as she can be in given circumstances: she owns a house (with mortgage), doesn’t have a male protector, instead she has a strong personality and survival skills. With her bottomless optimism, high energy and quirky character she really does not belong to that world but at the time there was no other.
Him: Cabiria (Guiletta Masina) is pushed into a river in rural Rome by a paramour who flees. Thus we are introduced to this working girl, who is looking for love, sells it, and keeps being disappointed but not discouraged in her striving by the vicissitudes of life in Italy in the 1950s.
Think
Her: Nights of Cabiria is not a Pretty woman. There was no place for a fairytale in Italy at the time. Neorealism movement was one of the first to juxtapose Hollywood strict rules of storytelling, in parallel with French New Wave, capturing only the real stories. I think Cabiria represents the whole of Italy as a country at the time: she struggles, falls, gets up, keeps going and dancing like no one is watching.
Him: I didn’t realise Cabiria was a prostitute for the majority of the film because it doesn’t focus on her sex work, but striving interactions, being in the right place and time to spend a night with movie star Alberto Lazzari (Amedeo Nazzari) just as he and his glamorous girlfriend break up, but that opportunity is soon squandered, as if it was ever more than a moonshot for upward class mobility. It reminds me of Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank.
Feel
Her: My heart broke when during the scene with Cabiria and Oscar at the restaurant, I realised he is going to betray her. I wanted to believe in the impossible, just like Cabiria did, and maybe it is hers and mine problem, but I don’t want any different. Besides, how can you cry and have regrets for longer than a minute when you’re in Italy and people just sing and dance on the streets all the time?
Him: The final third of the film where Cabiria gvoes to a magic show and is hypnotised into revealing her lot is a successful bait and switch when a suitor, Oscar D’Onofrio (Francoise Perier) shows up after the performance to state his intentions to court her. It all happens too fast, yet she has been too worn down to not want to believe in serendipity. What e3l;se was she to do? Where else had she to go. Except with the flow of the only interest that was shone on her. Is it schadenfreude to think ‘There but by the grace of God go I’? I feel it’s a fear we all have, that eventually, one last time we’ll find ourselves down and finally out. But Cabiria dusts herself off and tries again. It seems almost naive that I didn’t notice her occupation, perhaps because of the era, and concentrating on her heart of gold that’s repeatedly broken rather than that she was a hooker. Massina was married to Fellini. She won Cannes Best actress. He Oscar for foreign language film.
P.s Following this writing reflection She told me about the final paragraph of Roger Ebert’s review, which I had not finished reading:
“In 1992, when Fellini was given an honorary career Oscar, He looked down from the podium to Masina sitting in the front row and told her not to cry. The camera cut to her face showing her smiling bravely through her tears, and there was Cabiria.”
