Nights of Cabiria (The Criterion Collection)
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Actor: Aldo Silvani, Dorian Gray, François Périer, Franca Marzi, Giulietta MasinaBrand: Image Entertainment
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled); Italian (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Black & White, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Special Edition, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 110 minutes
DVD Release Date: 1999-09-07
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Criterion
DVD Reviews of Nights of Cabiria (The Criterion Collection)
DVD Review: Great
Summary: 4 Stars
Before Federico Fellini became the audacious and surrealistic film auteur of the 1960s he was a lauded and accomplished Italian Neorealistic film director of the 1950s, more in league with Vittorio De Sica and Lucchino Visconti, and no film better represents this era of Fellini's art than his sterling 1957 film Nights Of Cabiria (Le Notti Di Cabiria), written by Fellini, Tulio Pinelli, and Ennio Flaiano (with Pier Paolo Pasolini scripting the Roman street slang), and starring his wife Giulieta Masina. It won the 1957 film Oscar for Best Foreign Film, and deservedly so. The film deals with the trials and tribulations of the impoverished and downtrodden in a humorous but realistic way that Hollywood still does not dare to do. Yet, even in this film, one can see the filmmaker that Fellini was to become in a few years, for, despite its seeming realism, there are many neat touches of Absurdism, Symbolism, and Surrealism.... In many ways, the film is a picaresque of one of the oldest clichés: the hooker with the heart of gold, but such a generalization utterly disservices the `how' of how art affects one, and how it does its task. Masina's brilliant performance, which won the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival, is often compared to Chaplin's tramp character, even though it is more like Lucille Ball's tv character of Lucy Ricardo, from I Love Lucy, albeit with depth, delicacy, and heart; such a depth of a character that a lesser actress would have let descend into burlesque. Yet, Cabiria's expressiveness is more subtle and true than either Chaplin's or Ball's characters, for they exist only in comedies, and Nights Of Cabiria is not a comedy, despite some funny moments. Cabiria exists in a far more complex and realistic world than the Tramp or Lucy Ricardo. Her face contorts into twists of pain Lucy Ricardo never dreamt of, and which the Tramp simply shrugged off, or responded to with wild slapstick. Cabiria is wary, mistrusts, and does not seem to learn, frustrating both her and the audience she has gotten to root for her. I knew many such women in my New York neighborhood while growing up. And they can be tough, street smart, yet still gullible enough to fall for an Oscar. That said, critics have disagreed, over the years, over whether or not Oscar was conning Cabiria from the start. I think it's clear he was, for from her answers to the mesmerist he felt she was an independent woman of means, assuming a poor woman would never even go to such a show. One can even see from their scene of meeting at the train station that Oscar is putting on an act, changing his facial expressions the moment he sees her, dropping a toothpick from his mouth, after looking like the consummate con man, and then assuming a weak demeanor to lure Cabiria into his trap. That the woman who makes her living in sex is still so naïve to the ways of emotional sexual involvement says a lot of Fellini's prescience in parsing out realities of character development. Then, when he found out she was a prostitute, he felt a bit guilty, as if preying on someone from his own class, and thus wanted to not know of her `job'. A part of him, it seems, wants to not con her, at the cliff, and this was why his demeanor is so different. Yet, ultimately, he's a con, she's a whore, and reality dictates they act their parts. But, unlike Giorgio, he is no would be killer. The only question is what his initial con was to be- to marry a woman of means, and then, failing that, to just take Cabiria's money the moment he saw it, knowing his original plan was dead, for he could not sponge off of her. Such small ambiguities, even if not pertinent to Cabiria's ultimate unhappiness, nor the film's ending, makes Fellini an artist of the first rank, for only such artists pay attention to such things. These things, not the great things, are often the difference between greats and minor artists.
These sorts of subtleties in common folk are never even broached, much less dealt with, in modern Hollywood films. Such is the richness of this marvelous study in class and self-deception, where humans live in small concrete boxes they call homes, as if lab rats. That the film does not follow a conventional narrative format is a good thing, for it heightens the realistic sense of the film. It also subtly repudiates religion, although not so much in the overtly religious scenes, where Cabiria's spiritual entreaties go unheard, nor where she mocks the religiots as fools, but in those scenes where Cabiria reveals her most human side, the non-fantastic, which is ironic, since she works in a profession that deals with fantasy. The film also deals with survival, at its basest level, for Cabiria barely grows intellectually through the film. Yes, by film's end, one could argue that her latest user and abuser, Oscar, is a step up from Giorgio, whom she began the film with, but has Cabiria really ameliorated?
To close, Nights Of Cabiria owes much to City Lights for its focus on the poor, as well as to De Sica's The Bicycle Thief, for its realistic view of life at a certain time and place, especially its end, which simply ends, with no indication of whether or not Cabiria will be better off or not, and this helps viewers more strongly identify with her, because we all are unknowing and uncertain of our futures, and even though Cabiria's uncertainty is half a century removed, the tingle we get in our bellies, at the film's end is a recognition of our fears in her gaze toward us, and despite it's unsettling effect, such butterflies still flap their wings for the future.
Description of Nights of Cabiria (The Criterion Collection)
Giulietta Masina won Best Actress at Cannes as the title character of one of Fellini's most haunting films. Oscar® winner for Best Foreign Language Film, Nights of Cabiria (Le Notti di Cabiria) is the tragic story of a naive prostitute searching for true love in the seediest sections of Rome. Criterion proudly presents the restored director's cut in a breathtaking new transfer.Bestsellers in DVD
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