The Three Cabirias

6:26 PM Tuesday, December 20, 2005

[Magic: the show-biz kind as well as the supernatural]

Now that I am a Netflix subscriber I am able to see a succession of films by specific directors, and lately I discovered how much I admire the work of Federico Fellini, the Italian auteur director who died in 2003. As a student I saw the much-vaunted La Dolce Vita and found it horribly depressing. Since then I have had a second look at many of Fellini's films and found them anything but depressing: they convey what Ayn Rand called the "benevolent universe" sense of life. No matter how desperate the plight of the leading character, there is always the ability to bounce back and come up smiling (La Dolce Vita and some later films are arguably exceptions). Fellini, also a cartoonist and a screenwriter, used and reused certain themes: magic (the show-biz kind as well as the supernatural kind), clowns and circus bands, dancing for joy, and the metaphysical equality of man, that is, nobody is too low to deserve happiness if he (or more often, she) makes an honest effort.

And that brings us to I Notte di Cabiria, the Nights of Cabiria, a film I saw last week after having seen it in the theater years ago. Cabiria is a spunky street prostitute, with a heart, not of gold, but rather of some indestructible material only known to science fiction. She takes good care of herself, has bought a house (a cinder-block shoebox), and does not shy away from one more shot at finding true love. The men, however, who court her do not simply lie, cheat, and steal, though they do plenty of all three. They try to kill her, and at the beginning of the film, one comes close to succeeding. Her loyal friend, Wanda, is more cynical and unwilling to trust anyone, including the Virgin Mary, whose support Cabiria seeks around the middle of the film.

It turns out that there was another Cabiria film, one made in 1914 about a young woman caught up in the Punic Wars between Rome and Carthage. Said to be an Italian classic film of the silent genre (I haven't seen it yet), the original Cabiria not only gave its name to the heroine of I Notte di Cabiria, it, or more likely other silent films like it, may have inspired Giuletta Masina, the Cannes Best Actress-winning leading lady, dubbed the "female Chaplin", whose range of facial expressions and body language can reach out and grab the tough, leathery heart of a Coffeeblogger. Masina, BTW, was also Mrs. Fellini.

There may have been a fourth Cabiria, a courtesan of Ancient Rome, but the Internet yielded no information about her beyond a brief mention. The third Cabiria was a minor character in an early Fellini film, The White Sheik, also a prostitute, who undoubtedly inspired Fellini's minor masterpiece, I Notte di Cabiria. (It was a minor masterpiece only because Fellini also made major masterpieces.) Go rent it.

| Technorati Tags: Fellini Cinema Rome Prostitute