NIGHTS OF CABIRIA - dir. federico fellini nights of cabiria is showing in a dazzling restored print at the film forum, so i went and saw it on saturday. i hesitate to call giuletta masina's performance one of the best comedic displays i've ever seen: no, not because it isn't good enough, but because i fear it's too limiting. she's certainly very funny, but the role of cabiria, the "night walker" who's looking for true love, demands a performance that is both hilarious and poignant, one that makes you laugh until you cry and then makes you cry until you can't anymore.
masina reminds me of an italian lucille ball, except good ol' lucy never lit up the big screen quite the same way. like her character in la strada, masina seems to be always attracted to loutish figures, beginning with giorgio, a beau who steals her purse and then pushes her into a lake. he's followed by alberto lazzati, a fading star, who picks her up for the night and seems genuine in his interest until his girlfriend pays him a visit and cabiria spends the night locked in the bathroom.
cabiria strikes you as someone who never really wanted to get into the "business," but ended up falling into it anyway. she desperately seems to want out of it, to find a good man to lead her out of it, to give herself over to religion, but both of these avenues fail. one fateful night at a hypnotist's show changes all of that, though. a fling with a man she meets after the show seems like it could be real love...but is it? the ending is incredibly emotional and the final two minutes of the film serve as a haunting conclusion to masina's masterful performance.
the film is very much what we'd expect from fellini, even though it is from his early period. many of his trademarks on are on parade here: the spectacle, the religious imagery, and the whole ethos of life as one big carnival. his direction is fluid and artful: the images he captures are quite amazing and the restoration process lets you see all of them in their full glory; rome remains, as ever, an incredible place to film. what does set this apart from his later works is the naivity of it: whereas his later films give off a cosmopolitan air, there is something just downright provincial about nights of cabiria.
cabiria, i believe, is an underrated film: it certainly deserves to be right up there in fellini's canon and it's definitely a better film than the overlong la dolce vita. cabiria is about faith and hope in the face of all odds, it's a tribute to the human spirit. above all, though, i believe it's a tribute to the director's wife, masina. he captures her with the eye of a loving husband and, thankfully, he also captured her for the whole world to see.
(c) 2000 - fred solinger -
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