Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Marriages between geniuses are simply rare, 13 Nov 2007
I have entered into the world of Federico Fellini and I don't think I'm turning back. The story and the performance in here are wonderful in particular Guiletta Masina, who stars as Cabiria. She plays a tough talking, streetwise hooker with one weakness: she falls in love all too easy. The story opens with her latest boyfriend, a shifty character named Giorgio (after a month of living together she's never learned his last name), steals her purse for pocket change and dumps her in the river. Even confronted with the obvious, she wishfully worries about Giorgio's welfare until the reality of his crime finally sinks in, and she responds with a sudden, mad fit of destructive anger.
Out first impression of Cabiria presents not so much a complex character as a passionate one: Masina's moon face and bright eyes flash emotions with the quicksilver spontaneity of a child. She's a streetwalker-as-Mary Pickford, a waif whose years on the street has turned wary and cynical, but just short of jaded. She still has the capacity to show her delight in life, the trust to give her heart away, and the clear thinking to buy her own house and stock money away in the bank.
As if haunted by the experience, she stumbles along looking for some meaning in her life, which she most pointedly does not find in a disappointing pilgrimage to a Catholic shrine -- "Nothing's changed!" she cries after seeing salvation turned into a circus. But after a devastatingly poignant admission while under hypnosis at a magic show, where she opens her soul when she meets her dream lover and becomes the object of ridicule by a taunting audience, she finally meets a man who seems to appreciate her open heart and trusting soul. Oscar (Francois Perier) doesn't know who she is or what she does, but he sees what we see in her glowing face: hope shining through her pain, a woman ready to offer her unconditional love.
Cabiria, as clownish as she appears at times, is no passive gamine but a hearty, rambunctious woman full of the joy of life. At a high class nightclub with movie star Lazzari she jumps into a goofy dance of joy, completely out of synch with her surroundings but an honest expression of her character. No posing, no masks for Cabiria, she is what she is and makes no apologies and that's what holds the episodic film together. The plot essentially exists as bookends to the film; "Nights of Cabiria" dares lose itself in the wanderings of its hapless, hopeful heroine. Perhaps no actress other than Massina could have pulled this off, a soaring triumph of the human spirit. "Nights of Cabiria" is a great film that I highly recommend to those who appreciate Italian cinema.
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8 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
an excellent sad and optimistic movie, 17 Oct 2001
By A Customer
I don't know what Fellini was trying to say with this film except to expose the tragic life of a hopeful, downtrodden prostitute. The film has no sexually explicit scenes. I found myself rooting for the heroine who desparately wants to find respect in her life and every time she opens herself up to someone she trusts, she finds herself back into the same circle of hookers who share her plight. A well done film
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not exactly disappointing, but..., 23 Aug 2007
Nights of Cabiria doesn't live up to its formidable reputation but at the same time it doesn't exactly disappoint. Massina is not a good actress by any stretch of the imagination, too overreliant on volume and exaggeration for much of the film, but she is ultimately an affecting one when she stops yeling and just lets her face tell the story. It's Fellini at his most Chaplinesque and its when it harks back to silent cinema that it's at its best. Her boyfriend's sudden change of character at the end seems to come completely out of leftfield and doesn't altogether convince, but it does allow for a truly beautiful final sequence. And it's interesting that of all the things for the Catholic Church to object to about the film, the one that incensed them enough for the sequence to be removed was a man with a sack dispensing blankets and chocolates to derelicts, a touching scene that acts both as a harbinger of Cabiria's probable fate and an affirmation that there is still some good in the world.
Criterion's NTSC DVD is a good presentation, boasting the uncut version with the long-deleted 'man with the sack' sequence, interviews with Dominique Delouche and Dino De Laurentiis, an extract from Fellini's The White Sheik where Massina's character made her first brief appearance and the original Italian trailer plus the US reissue trailer.
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