Themes: Prostitutes, Romantic Betrayal, Down on Their Luck
Main Cast: Giulietta Masina, Amedeo Nazzari, Franca Marzi, François Perier
Release Year: 1957
Country: IT/FR
Run Time: 111 minutes
MPAA Rating: NR
Plot
Nights of Cabiria opens with Cabiria (Giulietta Masina) and her boyfriend playfully embracing by the seaside -- and then he shoves her into the water and steals her purse. Cabiria is revived by some local boys and runs off by herself, shouting. What follows is a series of similarly humiliating episodes, in which the defiantly positive prostitute Cabiria is hurt, but never broken. She gets picked up by movie star Alberto Lazzati (Amedeo Nazzari, doing a self-parody) and taken to his palatial estate. However, his mistress shows up and Cabiria gets locked in the bathroom all night with the dog. She then joins her fellow prostitutes for a blessing from the Virgin Mary, and ends up getting drunk and wandering into a local show, where the hypnotist invites her to join him on-stage. The audience heckles her, and she toughly reminds them of her independence and that she owns her own house. There she meets Oscar (François Perier), an accountant who romantically pursues her. Despite the warnings of her fellow prostitute friend, Wanda (Franca Marzi), she prepares to sell all her belongings and accept Oscar's proposal of marriage. After being ruthlessly taken advantage of once again, Cabiria walks off alone with a smirk of hope. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide
Review
A touching tragi-comic portrait of a Roman prostitute, Nights of Cabiria is a showcase for the talents of Giulietta Masina, director Federico Fellini's wife. With movements that echo Chaplin's Little Tramp, the diminutive Masina is a tough-talking working girl, ready to start fighting the moment she is revived from a near-drowning incident at the hands of her boyfriend. She is not afraid to do dancehall moves in a crowd at a pretentious nightclub or join in fights with rival prostitutes. Yet she is fragile and vulnerable, seeking redemption from the Virgin Mary and always on a quest for love. The story is broken up into episodes, each where Cabiria is subjected to humiliation by several men, including a movie star and a hypnotist. She persists with her unique optimism and stubborn independence. Neither reformed nor condemned, Cabiria embodies the naïve bravado of a "hooker with the heart of gold." Elements of Fellini's later visual style seem to be developing here; the exotic dance routine in the nightclub and the circus-like processions reappear in his famed La Dolce Vita. Nights of Cabiria was reworked into the sentimentalized musical Sweet Charity by Bob Fosse. In 1998, Nights of Cabiria was restored and re-released with an additional scene. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide
