|
Nights of Cabiria - Criterion Collection | 
 enlarge | Director: Federico Fellini
Actors: Giulietta Masina, François Périer, Franca Marzi, Dorian Gray, Aldo Silvani
Studio: Criterion
Category: DVD
List Price: $39.95
Buy New: $23.95
You Save: $16.00 (40%)
New (38) Used (8) Collectible (1) from $21.99
Rating:  82 reviews
Sales Rank: 11465
Format: Black & White, Color, Dolby, Dvd-video, Special Edition, Subtitled, Ntsc
Languages: Italian (Original Language), English (Subtitled), English (Dubbed)
Rating: Unrated
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
DVD Layers: 1
DVD Sides: 1
Picture Format: Academy Ratio
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 110 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.7 x 0.7
MPN: PMIDNIG040D
ISBN: 078002222X
UPC: 037429138427
EAN: 9780780022225
ASIN: B00000IOKV
Theatrical Release Date: 1957
Release Date: September 7, 1999
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
| |
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
The tragic story of an irrepressible but naive prostitute searching for true love in the seediest sections of rome. Studio: Image Entertainment Release Date: 09/07/1999 Starring: Giulietta Masina Run time: 118 minutes Rating: Nr
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
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 77 more reviews...
 Great September 15, 2008
Cosmoetica (New York, USA)
Before Federico Fellini became the audacious and surrealistic film auteur of the 1960s he was a lauded and accomplished Italian Neorealistic film director of the 1950s, more in league with Vittorio De Sica and Lucchino Visconti, and no film better represents this era of Fellini's art than his sterling 1957 film Nights Of Cabiria (Le Notti Di Cabiria), written by Fellini, Tulio Pinelli, and Ennio Flaiano (with Pier Paolo Pasolini scripting the Roman street slang), and starring his wife Giulieta Masina. It won the 1957 film Oscar for Best Foreign Film, and deservedly so. The film deals with the trials and tribulations of the impoverished and downtrodden in a humorous but realistic way that Hollywood still does not dare to do. Yet, even in this film, one can see the filmmaker that Fellini was to become in a few years, for, despite its seeming realism, there are many neat touches of Absurdism, Symbolism, and Surrealism.... In many ways, the film is a picaresque of one of the oldest clichés: the hooker with the heart of gold, but such a generalization utterly disservices the `how' of how art affects one, and how it does its task. Masina's brilliant performance, which won the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival, is often compared to Chaplin's tramp character, even though it is more like Lucille Ball's tv character of Lucy Ricardo, from I Love Lucy, albeit with depth, delicacy, and heart; such a depth of a character that a lesser actress would have let descend into burlesque. Yet, Cabiria's expressiveness is more subtle and true than either Chaplin's or Ball's characters, for they exist only in comedies, and Nights Of Cabiria is not a comedy, despite some funny moments. Cabiria exists in a far more complex and realistic world than the Tramp or Lucy Ricardo. Her face contorts into twists of pain Lucy Ricardo never dreamt of, and which the Tramp simply shrugged off, or responded to with wild slapstick. Cabiria is wary, mistrusts, and does not seem to learn, frustrating both her and the audience she has gotten to root for her. I knew many such women in my New York neighborhood while growing up. And they can be tough, street smart, yet still gullible enough to fall for an Oscar. That said, critics have disagreed, over the years, over whether or not Oscar was conning Cabiria from the start. I think it's clear he was, for from her answers to the mesmerist he felt she was an independent woman of means, assuming a poor woman would never even go to such a show. One can even see from their scene of meeting at the train station that Oscar is putting on an act, changing his facial expressions the moment he sees her, dropping a toothpick from his mouth, after looking like the consummate con man, and then assuming a weak demeanor to lure Cabiria into his trap. That the woman who makes her living in sex is still so naïve to the ways of emotional sexual involvement says a lot of Fellini's prescience in parsing out realities of character development. Then, when he found out she was a prostitute, he felt a bit guilty, as if preying on someone from his own class, and thus wanted to not know of her `job'. A part of him, it seems, wants to not con her, at the cliff, and this was why his demeanor is so different. Yet, ultimately, he's a con, she's a whore, and reality dictates they act their parts. But, unlike Giorgio, he is no would be killer. The only question is what his initial con was to be- to marry a woman of means, and then, failing that, to just take Cabiria's money the moment he saw it, knowing his original plan was dead, for he could not sponge off of her. Such small ambiguities, even if not pertinent to Cabiria's ultimate unhappiness, nor the film's ending, makes Fellini an artist of the first rank, for only such artists pay attention to such things. These things, not the great things, are often the difference between greats and minor artists.
These sorts of subtleties in common folk are never even broached, much less dealt with, in modern Hollywood films. Such is the richness of this marvelous study in class and self-deception, where humans live in small concrete boxes they call homes, as if lab rats. That the film does not follow a conventional narrative format is a good thing, for it heightens the realistic sense of the film. It also subtly repudiates religion, although not so much in the overtly religious scenes, where Cabiria's spiritual entreaties go unheard, nor where she mocks the religiots as fools, but in those scenes where Cabiria reveals her most human side, the non-fantastic, which is ironic, since she works in a profession that deals with fantasy. The film also deals with survival, at its basest level, for Cabiria barely grows intellectually through the film. Yes, by film's end, one could argue that her latest user and abuser, Oscar, is a step up from Giorgio, whom she began the film with, but has Cabiria really ameliorated?
To close, Nights Of Cabiria owes much to City Lights for its focus on the poor, as well as to De Sica's The Bicycle Thief, for its realistic view of life at a certain time and place, especially its end, which simply ends, with no indication of whether or not Cabiria will be better off or not, and this helps viewers more strongly identify with her, because we all are unknowing and uncertain of our futures, and even though Cabiria's uncertainty is half a century removed, the tingle we get in our bellies, at the film's end is a recognition of our fears in her gaze toward us, and despite it's unsettling effect, such butterflies still flap their wings for the future.
What Pretty Woman Should Have Been July 10, 2008
SORE EYES (Oamaru)
I hated Pretty Woman (15th Anniversary Special Edition)-a whore on Hollywood Boulevard meets Prince Charming! Ughh. So when I read the description of Nights of Cabiria, I wasn't keen. But I like Fellini, so decided to give Nights of Cabiria a chance.
This is a wonderful film. Fellini's wife, Giulietta Masina stars as Cabiria, an older woman who "lives the life" in Rome. She lives in Rome's poorest neighborhood, Ostia, but is fiercely proud of being very close to paying off her mortgage. One day she goes with friends to make a pilgrimage to the Virgin Mary and asks for her life to change. Shortly thereafter she meets Oscar and believes the Virgin has blessed her with true love. Like Richard Gere in Pretty Woman, Oscar has his own ideas about how to set Cabiria up for life!
Giulietta Masina is remarkable in this film. She delivers one of the best female performances I've seen in my life. This script is excellent. And Fellini's direction brilliant.
The Criterion restoration of this film is very good-among the best I've seen Criterion produce. The extras, including original previews and shorts from another film with Giulietta playing a much younger prostitute are excellent. Puts "modern classics" like Pretty Woman to shame.
See also Criterions release of other Fellini classics like 8 1/2 - Criterion Collection, La Dolce Vita (2-Disc Collector's Edition), and other lesser known Fellini films like Il Bidone and La Strada - Criterion Collection.
My most favorite movie in 45 years of watching films May 21, 2008
Avocadess (Austin, TX United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I first saw this film many years ago, but the funny thing is that I love it only more as the decades go by.
This is especially a good film for people to watch who have a lot of pain in their lives, because Cabiria shows us how she got that too, and how she always gets up, dusts herself off and gets back in the game -- nay, joins the parade.
There are many things I love about this film. It tells us so much of the world and Cabiria shows us a glimpse of the Divine coming through the personae. (How fitting that even her name, Cabiria, is a form of a word representing ancient divine deities.)
Falling in love with Cabiria helped me also to fall in love with me.
I would also like to mention how grateful I am that this film is still in black and white. It is true art.
I have called other films my favorite, but in the end -- as of 2008 -- this is THE favorite. (Other contenders are very different though very good, such as TRUE ROMANCE which was written but not directed by Quentin Tarantino.)
lovely and disturbing April 6, 2008
A. Szemkus (Texas)
One of my fave movies of all time. Enough said. Original in plot, characters, and conflict. Watch it, and then be prepared to own it and love it.
Surprisingly, a powerful emotional experience... March 15, 2008
David M. Belote (Minneapolis, MN United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Fellini's most powerful films actually PRECEDE the (in my opinion) over-praised '8 1/2' for the simple reason that the heart is more powerful than the head (for me at least). There are few movies with this kind of enduring emotional appeal - and I must stress this is not cheap, sentimental emotion. Movies are products of their time and often age quickly; 'Cabiria' is an extraordinary film experience, but perhaps one must see it twice to fully enter a world created by Fellini a half-century ago. In any event, most people who enjoy movies are unfamiliar with 'Cabiria', which is stunning to realize after fully experiencing it.
I am almost ashamed to admit that I did not appreciate this movie the first time I saw it (only the second time, and then even more the third time, the fourth, etc....)
Fellini in the 1950's with 'La Strada' and 'Cabiria' created at least two films that will always affect viewers emotionally for one simple reason: Fellini's ability to explore and ultimately celebrate our humanity within the hell life can often be for many of us. The power of 'La Strada' is the complex humanity of the two main characters (though Quinn's character only understands how horrible it is emotionally to be fully human in the final minute of the movie; Giulietta Masini's character denies none of her humanity at any point in 'La Strada' and is brutally punished for her inability to edit-out life horrors).
Because 'Cabiria' is now 50 years old it is best watched twice (minimum!) Only then can one overcome any resistance to how different it is from movies made today. Only then can one fully appreciate how perfectly melancholy, yearning and integrated the music is by Nino Rota. More important, what at first may appear to some viewers as mugging and overacting by Masini is revealed as a fully-realized character: the inimitable Cabiria.
No movie in my experience has a more powerful, hopeful, bittersweet ending than 'Cabiria'; few equal it...
With all great cinematic or theatrical experiences there is always the mystery of how such emotional power is achieved. Fellini crafted the movie with a talented team of actors and technicians so there should be no mystery. But the experience of this movie is so powerful that it cannot be put into words.
'8 1/2' is a bon-bon for the intellect. 'Cabiria' is an emotional experience on the highest level. I know of few movies that equal 'Cabiria' other than 'La Strada'. These are the best of Fellini's movies, along with the transitional film 'La Dolce Vita'.
So, watch this one (perhaps twice!) and enjoy one of THE great movies...
|
|
|
Copyright 2008 DVDonsale.com | |
