Nights of Cabiria (Federico Fellini)

Nights of Cabiria (1957).

"Like La Strada and several other of the post-war Italian neo-realistic films, this one is aimed more surely toward the development of a theme than a plot. Its interest is not so much the conflicts that occur in the life of the heroine as the deep, underlying implications of human pathos that the pattern of her life shows...But there are two weaknesses in Cabiria. It has a sordid atmosphere and there is something elusive and insufficient about the character of the heroine. Her get-up is weird and illogical for the milieu in which she lives and her farcical mannerisms clash with the ugly realism of the theme."

Bosley Crowther, New York Times.

This is a very cool film too. There is about a prostitute, who endures life's tragedies and disappointments with both innocence and resilience. Giulietta Masina won the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival for this role. That wasn't her first work with Fellini, they had been married by that time and she was his muse. The name Cabiria is borrowed from the 1914 Italian film Cabiria, while the character of Cabiria herself is taken from a brief scene in Fellini's earlier film The White Sheik. It was Masina's performance in that earlier film that inspired Fellini to make this film. But no one in Italy was willing to finance a film which featured prostitutes as heroines. Finally, Dino de Laurentiis agreed to put up the money. Fellini based some of the characters on a real prostitute whom he had met while filming Il Bidone. For authenticity, he had Pier Paolo Pasolini, known for his familiarity with Rome's criminal underworld, help with the dialogue.

 This movie makes u feel at the same time sorrow and joy, but also, and that doesn't change during the whole film, unfairness of the whole situation! Because she deserve it so much, and when u think that this is over and there will be happy end, he's rubbing her and u just have a disappointment again. There is "open end", so u don't know what's the end of her life, but despite all situations in her life, she is smiling again. So, she'll be ok, I suppose;) I advise everybody to watch it, cause it's classic!

French director François Truffaut thought Cabiria was Fellini's best film to date when it came out in 1957. And as u know Truffaut was an influential figure in the cinema world.