NIGHTS OF CABIRIA – 6

Giulietta Masina (“La Strada”), wife of the famous Italian director Federico Fellini, won Best Actress at Cannes as the title character of one of Fellini's most haunting films, NIGHTS OF CABIRIA / Le Notti de Cabiria (1957, Italian – 118min. Black and white).

Based on a story by Fellini, the film is about a prostitute in Rome who searches for true love.

The film won the 1957 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. This was the second straight year Italy and Fellini won this Academy Award award, having won it in 1956 for La Strada, which also starred Giulietta Masina. NIGHTS OF CABIRIA also won numerous other awards, including best actress and best director. Initially, however, Fellini had a difficult time finding a producer to back the film because of the story line about a prostitute, an unsympathetic character in the eyes of most movie producers.

Fellini writes about NIGHTS OF CABIRIA: “The subject of loneliness and observation of the isolated person has always interested me. Even as a child, I couldn't help but notice those who didn't fit in for one reason or another – myself included. In life, and for my films, I have always been interested in the out-of-step.”

Fellini goes on to state that “the positive nature of Cabiria is so noble and wonderful.... Though she is a prostitute, her basic instinct is to search for happiness as best she can, as one who has not been dealt a good hand. She wants to change, but she has been typecast in life as a loser. Yet she is a loser who always goes on to look again for some happiness. Cabiria is a victim, and any of us can be a victim personality at one time or another...Yet there is also the survivor in her. This film doesn't have a resolution in the sense that there is a final scene in which the story reaches a conclusion so definitive that you no longer have to worry about Cabiria. I myself have worried about her fate ever since.”

In the words of a reviewer, “As Cabiria, the diminutive Masina gives a performance that is nothing less than superlative, filled with nuance and expression. She has a face and a manner that convey an unbelievable depth of emotion, and Fellini captures every bit of it with his camera to perfection. It sometimes seems that she is a sprite merely masquerading as a woman; she has a light, almost ethereal presence, though at the same time she exhibits an earthy quality that gives her character such complexity, which removes any semblance of stereotype one may assign to her character as a 'lady of the evening.'....

Fellini's film is a study of how good may succumb to evil, and yet still triumph in the end (though open to subjective interpretation). It's something of an examination of endurance; how many times can one be knocked down before finally being unable to stand back up again. At the same time, however, it's an example of how purity can prevail against cruelty. There is a humanity manifested in Cabiria that somehow gives absolution, not only to her lifestyle, but to those who would willingly do her harm. And it is in that very same absolution that we find a message of hope and redemption....

In Cabiria, Fellini somehow touches something eternal, for there is a lasting sense of innate goodness about her that simply cannot be forgotten. For seekers after wisdom and truth, this is definitely a film that must not be missed.”