Nights of Cabiria - Criterion Collection

Starring:Giulietta Masina, FranÃ§ois PÃ©rier, Franca Marzi, Dorian Gray, Aldo Silvani, Ennio Girolami, Mario Passante, Christian Tassou, Amedeo Nazzari, Ciccio Barbi, Leo Cattozzo, Dominique Delouche, Edda Evangelista, Riccardo Fellini, Mimmo Poli, Franco Fabrizi, Sergio Parlato, Gianni Baghino, Franco Balducci, Jusy Boncinelli
Director: Federico Fellini
Studio: Criterion
Product Type: DVD

Amazon.com essential video

A year after his international breakthrough film La Strada, Federico Fellini and his leading lady/wife Giulietta Masina collaborated on another masterpiece, a magical mix of neorealism and romantic optimism set on the streets of Rome. Masina's moon-faced and bright-eyed Cabiria is a passionate streetwalker with a heart as big as Italy and the emotional spontaneity of a child, a woman with a hearty passion for life whose constant weakness is falling in love with mercenary creeps. For a couple of hours we share the dreams and disillusionments of Cabiria as she rattles around Rome before once again losing her heart. The bittersweet heartbreak is tempered with a soaring celebration of the human spirit: no other Fellini film offers such honest hope in the face of such bitter devastation. Fellini left the poor and the working class to revel in the decadence of Rome's high society for his next film, La Dolce Vita, a film that could have sprung from Cabiria's hilarious chance interlude with a matinee idol (played by Amedeo Nazzari). Rambling and leisurely paced, Nights of Cabiria is a sweet film of warmth and simple grace. It became the basis of Neil Simon's American musical Sweet Charity, with Shirley Maclaine taking Masina's role in Bob Fosse's film version. --Sean Axmaker

Description

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.

Customer Reviews:

Nights of Cabiria.......2007-06-26

In this bittersweet, poignant early feature from Italian maestro Fellini, Giulietta Masina (who was married to the director) brings off another demanding role with finesse and charm. Her Cabiria is a spiritual innocent thrust into the least innocent of professions, making her desire for meaningful companionship seem unattainable. Through it all, Masina radiates a plucky dignity that makes us root for her. Note: "Cabiria" is more grounded in realism than Fellini's later works, but this hardly detracts from the film's sizable emotional impact.

Not exactly disappointing, but..........2007-06-15

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, with Masina's whore a right little tramp, 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 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.

Very long, but worth it.......2007-05-16

I finished it 30 minutes ago and still can't stop crying. This movie was so incredibly good, and the ending was perfect. All of a sudden, you feel it coming like a storm.

It was paced in such a way where you start to know something bad is going to happen and as it unfolds, your guts tie up in a knot. One of those films that stays with you forever. Sad, but somehow comforting at the same time.

Haunting.......2007-03-04

I saw this movie years ago and thought about it every so often.
I rented it again,and when the movie ended,I realized this is one of the best movies I have ever seen.

I came here immediately and bought it.It's not often that you can watch a movie and really,
really care about the character as if they were a real person. That,my friend is acting.

Cabiria is unforgettable and will stay with you forever.

A Landmark from a Genius.......2007-02-18

Here is a work of poetic and cinematic genius, released in 1957, and now re-released by Criterion in 1999, which, judging by all the reviews on Amazon, still creates awe, wonder, and gratitude in its lucky viewers. Nothing here has become dated because, like all great art, from Homer to Shakespeare to Tolstoy to Joyce and on and on, this work holds up a mirror to life itself. In fact, as time goes by, this movie becomes more precious. In "Nights of Cabiria," we find ourselves in the society of Rome's pimps and prostitutes as they haunt the evening plying their trade. Cabiria is an independent, refusing to fall under the sway of a pimp. As the film unwinds, almost randomly Cabiria's struggles to stay alive and to find some semblance of decency and sincerity in this inchoate world tumble before us like a dream. From the opening scene, where Cabiria, in thrall to love, is tossed into a river by her boyfriend and robbed of 40,000 lira, to the penultimate scene where again she is shocked into despair, we see the crazy juxtapositioning of eternal hope with bitter reality, exquisite beauty with hideous misery, and the joyful music of humanity with the sad tears of lost love. What resonates so truthfully is how terrible people and life can be but how ever-resilient and relentlessly hopeful the human heart remains. This true spiritual message is delivered even as these "sinners" search for a miracle from the Virgin Mary but find nothing but their own futile yearnings for a better life. Fellini, the creator, saw it all.

Giulietta Masina delivers an utterly brilliant performance as Cabiria. She embodies Cabiria's comic bravado and loving soul while at the same time giving full expression to her cynicism and despair. This performance is one of the greatest you will ever see on film. So many emotions pass through her in flashes and bursts that it is a wonder to behold. The extra features on the Criterion DVD permit the viewer to have a deeper understanding of Fellini's creative process, although a long interview with Dominique Delouche, Fellini's French assistant, is not as enlightening as I would have liked, nor is the sequence with Dino De Laurentiis. However, it's terrific to watch an excerpt from "The White Sheik," Fellini's first major movie (a flop), where Masina makes a brief appearance as Cabiria in a night-time sequence and, with another prostitute, attempts to comfort a jilted husband. Masina was wonderfully physical as an actress and does a lovely little dance in this scene. Her dancing in this movie too is fantastically comic and joyful, a lovely thing to behold.

No question that this movie will endure as long as there are people who are moved by true art. Its message is eternal, its vision rejuvenating.

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