#49: Nights of Cabiria
Well, well, well. What are YOU doing here! JK what am I doing here, more like.
It’s been a minute! I was on vacation for two weeks and then I’ve just been very sweaty and sleepy and not interested in watching anything, let alone CCs, so I guess that’s a good enough reason why it’s been almost a month since I last z-mailed you!
But, I’m back, baby. Thanks for being here!
#49: Nights of Cabiria
Director: Federico Fellini
Country: Italy
Year: 1957
Runtime: 117 minutes
Language: Italian
CW: Attempted murder, domestic violence
“Follow the shoes.”
This is the only thing I remember from my Critical Approach to the Cinema class in college. I loved my professor at AU, Despina Kakoudaki (hey, girl), but my memory sucks and it has never had anything to do with love.
She told us to “follow the shoes” in Saturday Night Fever and figure out what they said about the characters and their developmental arcs. I won’t get INTO it in case Saturday Night Fever is one day part of the Criterion Collection and I have to write about it and then will have said everything interesting I have to say about it right NOW, but I’ll just say Bobby’s awkward white disco platforms were not a benign choice 😉.
That is all to remind you that I took a film class in college (actually two, OKAY) so that I can tell you I’ve seen Nights of Cabiria before. But, alas, my only memories of it are her haircut and a vague sense of heartbreak when it was over. Both were VERY present in this recent viewing.
The movie starts with Cabiria (Giulietta Masina) in an enviable black and white striped dress, ecstatic, frolicking near a river in rural Rome with her boyfriend, Giorgio (Franco Fabrizi). Her joy is extremely short-lived, though, because as they approach the river, he steals her purse and pushes her in. He runs away while she is fully drowning. Luckily, a group of boys pull her out. The children ARE our future, folks.
They bring her to shore, unconscious, where a few shirtless men try to save her by moving her arms around and shaking her upside down. My brain first files these actions away as That’s Bizarre, but because I have a true fear of not being able to help in an emergency, it then immediately copy + pastes into the But Remember It file.
This is where I remember Cabiria’s haircut is bonkers and also I kind of want it. Her bangs start halfway to the back of her head, behind her ears, and the cut is somehow both not a mullet and definitely a mullet.
Cabiria eventually wakes up and is pisssssed. She yells at everyone and runs away soaking wet and missing a shoe.
She goes to the empty one-bedroom home she shares with Giorgio. She is locked out and has to climb in through her window while her friend and neighbor, Wanda (Franca Marzi), asks her a bunch of questions. Cabiria mostly ignores her, changes into another enviable outfit, and takes a nap.
Later that night, Wanda is in Cabiria’s house trying to help take care of her, but a heartbroken and, again, very mad Cabiria is. Not. Having. It. She yells at Wanda, “Who says we’re friends! Get lost!” They fight about the drowning and Wanda tells her if it had been her, she’d have held Cabiria’s head under water lol damn
Cabiria is having a VERY hard time accepting that Giorgio tried to kill her because she thought they were in love even though she’d only known him a few months. I don’t want to have to keep repeating it, but I also want you to get the vibe: Cabiria is moody. She would be what we might call difficult and some worse people might call “hysterical.” Noting it because I want to talk about this later!
She sits on her stairs, strokes her pet chicken, and then decides “the party’s over.” She goes through Giorgio’s closet of fancy clothes and burns them all. Truly the least she could do to an attempted murderer.
The party’s over with Giorgio but the party is still on for Cabiria. She gets a ride to . . . a park? A parking lot? Hard to say, but I think it’s just a place where sex workers pick up clients. Cabiria is a sex worker! I don’t think I’ve mentioned that yet, but it’s important. There are lots of other sex workers and a few men in cool cars. Cabiria starts dancing to some music but is mocked by the other women for her “breakup” with Giorgio (reminder: he tried to kill her) and gets in a fight with one of them.
Her friends have to shove her in a tiny car and drive her away to end it because Cabiria is scrappy as hell.
Her friend Marisa and her boyfriend (or pimp?) drive her to another nightclub. The boyfriend encourages Cabiria to find a respectable man like him so she can be protected.
She’s dropped off outside the nightclub where she sees a famous actor, Alberto Lazzari (Amedeo Nazzari) get into a fight with his girlfriend, Jessy (Dorian Gray). Jessy is wearing a mink coat and he a white suit and they slap each other around as Cabiria watches. Jessy eventually walks away alone.
Alberto, who doesn’t look unlike an aged Seth Rogen, immediately yells for Cabiria to get in his car, which she does. She is equal parts starstruck by him and disgruntled at his ordering her around. They arrive at another nightclub where two women in bikini-esque outfits with horsetails are dancing and there are like 8 people sitting at tables watching. You don’t have to threaten me with a good time!
Then a band plays a mambo and Alberto invites Cabiria to dance. Their vibes could not be more different. She cuts a rug while Alberto watches with his arms crossed and they occasionally dance together.
*It is at this point Josh says “I kind of look like that guy.” And I have to break it to him that not 5 minutes before, I typed that Alberto “doesn’t look unlike an aged Seth Rogen.” This is something I have to break to him because people tell Josh all the time that he looks like Seth Rogen and he hates it and what’s that thing Socrates said about knowing thyself and wisdom? OUCH*
Anyway, the dance doesn’t last long and he orders that they leave together, suggesting they eat supper at his house. As they drive away, she sees two women she presumably works with and yells from the car, “Look who I’m with! Up yours!” Which is just great and I hope I one day have the opportunity to do the same.
Alberto’s house is, of course, ridiculous. It’s huge and white and full of dogs and a small aviary.
He tells his butler that if his girlfriend Jessy calls, to tell her he’s asleep. He orders supper for two to his room.
The vibe is, again, weird. Alberto seems possibly depressed and Cabiria—I can’t tell if she’s working or just enjoying the dip into the rich and famous lifestyle or if she hates him or what.
She goes off about how she has her own house where most of the other sex workers sleep under the bridge. She oscillates between pride and shame about her situation. She’s also super starstruck and tells him she’s seen all his movies and is a big fan. She eventually starts crying because no one is going to believe this happened. So, she asks him for a signed photo where he writes “Cabiria Ceccarelli was at my house” on the back. He obliges.
And thennnn Alberto gets a call from his butler that Jessy is at his house. She comes to his door and he hides Cabiria in a bathroom with a plate of chicken and the signed photo.
Honestly, the Jessy stuff is very boring. She just cries and they argue about jealousy and then kiss while Cabiria listens intently in the bathroom. Also, there’s a tiny puppy in there with her for some reason. Cabiria sees them make up through a peephole and is seemingly heartbroken.
She ends up falling asleep in there, she’s left alone for so long. Alberto ends up sneaking her out past a nude and sleeping Jessy. He doesn’t even walk her out or get her a car! He just lets her out of his bedroom and she has to figure out how to get out of his enormous, awful house on her own.
Cabiria meets back up with her friends where she wears an adorable rain hat that has a hole for her ponytail. A procession of probably two dozen Catholics passes through, chanting and singing and holding candles, lanterns, and crucifixes. The rest of the group mocks them, but Cabiria begins following them, enchanted. Before she can get very far, a man picks her up in his truck.
Later that night, as she’s walking home, she comes upon a man giving food to houseless people near where she lives. She follows the mysterious man as he makes his rounds to all the people living in the caves, clearly touched by what he’s doing.
The man gives Cabiria a ride where she asks him a ton of questions about what he does. She tells him her name is Maria and her parents died when she was little; I’m still not sure if this is a lie. He tells her to get some sleep and lets her out. She thanks him before she walks away.
Later, she and her friends are in another church procession, this one much bigger that leads into a church. Cabiria and Wanda, holding candles, argue about what they will pray for and what they will confess to. Which honestly, might be the only thing worth arguing about in this life?
There are a ton of people in the church singing and holding candles, including Cabiria, whose candle keeps going out. This number of candles in one space makes me nervvvyyyyy. I don’t know the statistics of how many people, historically, have caught on fire in crowds due to candles, but I am surprised at how low it is.
People in the crowd yell out, “Heal me, Madonna!” and “Make me well, Madonna!” Cabiria is very moved by the whole thing, telling Wanda she feels “so strange.” She kneels and cries at the feet of the priest, asking the Madonna to heal and change her life.
The group of friends goes to a park for a picnic afterward, and Cabiria is in a mood. She just sits by herself and drinks. She’s super upset that no one has been miraculously changed from the church thing and yells at her friends that she’s going to sell her house and move away. She sees a small group of nuns in another procession and heckles them. Like I said, she’s having a time.
And then she does what any sane person in an existential crisis should do: she begrudgingly goes to a magic show alone.
Of course, the magician (Aldo Silvani) is also a hypnotist (he is actually billed in the credits as The Wizard)! He gets a group of men to believe they’re on a boat in a stormy sea and it feels like extremely cringey improv (or as I call it: improv).
Cabiria is talked into getting on stage as a volunteer. She is immediately hypnotized with a wave of a hand over her head. In her hypnosis, she admits that she wants to fall in love and get married. When she comes out of it, she denies it all and is mocked and jeered at by the crowd. The magician gets her into hypnosis again, this time introducing her to an imaginary man named Oscar.
She acts out picking flowers and dancing with Oscar (this whole scene gives me flashbacks to college acting class HOO BOY). “Is it really true? You’re not trying to fool me? You really love me?” She asks him.
The magician takes her out of the hypnosis and she collapses as the crowd goes wild. She runs off stage, humiliated and confused.
Sidebar Alert: This part reminds me so much of a part in this essay in Nylon by Chelsea Martin. The essay itself is incredible and about having a baby when the world is a dystopian nightmare, but this part in particular hit home so hard for me personally and all I could think about seeing Cabiria on a stage, spilling all her desires all over it:
“I've never been good at admitting I want things. Wanting things is stressful, and admitting you want things exposes that stress. You never want to show your feelings to the outside world. It makes you vulnerable to other people's responses, which can run from kindness to ridicule, and every awful thing in between.”
More on that LATER.
As Cabiria exits the theater, a man who introduces himself as D’onofrio (François Périer) approaches her.
He says he saw her on stage and was moved by her desire. He thanks her for her purity and vulnerability. She is nottt having it, but agrees to go for a drink with him. He lays the praise on super thick. They take a walk where he tells her that actually his first name is Oscar, like the man the magician invented. She is NOT into it even though he insists they see each other again. He asks her to meet him on Sunday, but she gets on a bus and leaves.
The next day, she shows up to their date hesitantly, but he spots her and gives her flowers. (Flowers look terrrrible in black and white, BTW). Later that night, she brags to her friends about her new beau because he pays for pizza and has black eyes.
Even later that night, Cabiria is at home when she sees a friar outside. I was distracted from this scene because Josh said, “I saw a friar today.”
Me: “I’m sorry, what?”
Josh: “I saw a friar. On Butler Street. There’s a friary.”
Me: “Huh.”
Josh: “He had on the rope and everything. I was confused. Then I took a nap in my car.”
Anyway, Cabiria and Oscar are still dating when she asks him what he wants from her. His response: I want to marry you. Cabiria knows this is sort of nuts because they’ve only been out 10 times. She is suspicious but I have to say, Oscar is very convincing and seems sincere! Cabiria runs home to tell Wanda the good news.
Wanda sees her running and says, “What is it, you nut?” Have I mentioned that I absolutely love this friendship?
She tells Wanda that she’s selling her house and they’re moving in together and opening a shop together. “He loves me!” She cries.
Wanda helps her pack all of her stuff. Cabiria is ecstatic, puts on a little hat, tells Wanda how much she paid for it, and Wanda tells her she paid too much. Again: ❤️ They have a very emotional goodbye before Cabiria gets on the bus. “You’ll have a miracle like me,” she tells Wanda.
She and Oscar have a romantic meal at a restaurant on a hill. For some reason, she took out all of her money from the bank and shows it all to him. This is, apparently, her dowry. He asks her to put it away. She gets emotional, saying what an angel he is and how she hates how she had to make all of her money. Oscar immediately starts acting weird and suggests they take a walk through the woods.
Cabiria is in good spirits, picking flowers and flirting with Oscar.
They stand on a cliff where Oscar is extremely sweaty. While she’s looking at the water far, far, below, Oscar asks her if she can swim. It is now that she realizes he plans to push her off the cliff. She, of course, has a meltdown. She lays her purse at his feet and begs him to kill her. She says she doesn’t want to live anymore. He tries to silence her, afraid people will hear her, but quickly takes off with her purse full of cash as she writhes around in the leaves, wailing.
She eventually gets up and finds herself on a road where there’s a parade of people singing, dancing, and playing instruments. In the iconic ending, Cabiria, with a single black tear and leaves in her hair, starts to smile.
THE END.
Woof. Devastation central, of course. But what struck me hardest this time is that Cabiria’s moodiness (by which I mean, being ecstatic and hopeful one moment to angry and devastated the next) is actually a very logical response to her circumstances. Sure, she cannot seem to win (she endures rejection after rejection), but she also is not even allowed to want. Not one of her desires for love, for salvation, for piety, for respect, is ever met. The Madonna cannot provide for her, men cannot provide for her, her community at large cannot provide for her; in fact, everyone seems to mock her for her desires. And yet, she always says yes.
At first, I wondered why she was always so open to do whatever everyone else wanted because she seems so cynical and obstinate. But I eventually saw that she was incredibly hopeful and optimistic, always believing the next thing might save her. Of course there are these ups and downs of elation and devastation: she is riding the waves of experience with unbridled hope. I guess this makes her hysterical or volatile, but I like to think of her more like a wind chime: a passive vessel with a big voice, easily moved.
Next up is one more Fellini, and our 50th film! It is one of his later works from 1983: And the Ship Sails On. There is a ship and a dead opera singer and a bunch of friends mourning her, apparently. Let’s get into it!
XOXO,
Steph
Hello😊