Federico Fellini may have titled the film "The Nights of Cabiria" - a title that syntactically emphasizes the nights and events in relation and as "acted" on”, Cabiria. Yet perhaps more interesting than the escapades is the complexity of the feisty heroine herself. Giulietta Masina plays the crude, fire-breathing prostitute named Cabiria, who the camera follows through a difficult segment of her life. During her "nights", Cabiria is repeatedly subjected to the many cruelties and ironies of life. Masina portrays Cabiria with the same comedic façade as the film itself, a façade that ultimately makes the most tender moments even more effective and moving. Her performance has a courage that matches her physical energy: a fearless and vulnerable performance of pure heart and soul. Audiences come to see Cabiria as a contradiction in conventional ideas about female virtue and sexuality, and increasingly appreciate the sense of honesty with which she leads her life. Masina's performance highlights the dimensions of Cabiria's multifaceted personality and effectively provides insight into the background behind these layers. Her portrayal of the prostitute gradually transforms Cabiria from a joke of a caricature to a well-rounded character, sensitively etched with the deep, underlying implications of human pathos, full of modest ambitions for happiness that are constantly mired in the reality of her situation. Masina powerfully captures and conveys very real and palpable emotions, and legitimizes Cabiria as a character with depth and complexity towards the end of the film. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Masina's character is naive but tough; presents Cabiria through a typically hardened exterior (no doubt resulting from her lifestyle and occupation), a good-hearted, rather naive prostitute who takes herself seriously to an almost ridiculous degree. It is only as the film progresses that this same hypocrisy takes on a more poignant light, as the audience understands how such a protective measure could have developed. Cabiria sports an exaggeratedly guttural and low voice, rough and nasal, as if to draw further attention to her unsophisticated nature and abrasive personality. From her outrageous dancing to her rough and ready stride, from her physicality to her caricatural eyebrows, Masina paints Cabiria in a series of exaggerated, Chaplin-style character traits. She's impossible to ignore: vivacious, blissfully unaware, completely uninhibited, absurdly proud and almost unrealistically resilient. However, Cabiria is not immune to the harshness of life and its unhappy circumstances, although she is never broken by her tragic roles. It becomes part of his ironic and passive nature to take things as they come. It soon becomes apparent how necessary his inner strength is for his survival. Cabiria's pronounced pride in owning her little home is at first condescendingly funny, but later seems vital to ennobling her into a lifestyle defined by degradation. He's a character who needs something to believe in, and it suddenly seems natural that he would be sensitive to questions of dignity and self-respect. This internal strength is exaggerated to the same extent as its external victimization. Masina reveals Cabiria's optimism as essential armor against the reality of his occupation. The commodification of her sex work is so inherently dehumanizing and physically invasive that it necessitates her need to feel some sense of control over her life. It is notIt's hard to believe that, if Cabiria were to succumb to a sense of self-victimization and objective awareness of her surroundings, she would lose this vital ability to carry on relentlessly. The psychological effectsIt is soon understood that prostitution represents a very pertinent danger especially for her, as her inner romanticism is revealed, because then her softness and vulnerability become more evident and touching. When accountant Oscar professes his love and desire to lead a life with her, Cabiria's response is surprisingly open and nervously cautious: "Don't say it if it's not true." One wonders, after projecting his interpretation, how long this character had to build this resistance, this protective shell. Most likely our Cabiria has not always been like this. Masina's performance brings awareness to Cabiria's layers, her inner hopes and dreams, and makes the audience reflect on the underlying character development that has built the current spitting brow of Cabiria's personality. We realize that she is not, and has not been, a static character, rather she is dynamic and has all the potential in the world which is only compounded by her desperate desire for change. Cabiria clings eagerly and sincerely to religion and all kinds of men only to be continually disillusioned and harmed mercilessly. Masina makes Cabiria unique in its aspirations. The character could easily be marginalized as one full of sound and fury, but behind the negativity and shadow of his character and actions lies a wealth of hope, sensitivity, and desire for change. Cabiria proves to be a contradiction to conventional notions of female sexuality and female virtue; she is essentially the poor prostitute with the heart of gold. The film reveals Cabiria's anguish and ambitions in direct proportion and timing with the escalating humiliation in her experiences. The more reprehensible the episodes she is subjected to, the more we come to feel empathy for her. This absurd character becomes a woman we come to know and take quite seriously, despite the fact that her modest ambitions are constantly crushed in the face of society. One of the most beautiful and moving scenes takes place during a carnival hypnotist show, in which Cabiria is exploited in front of a crowd of howling hooligans to reveal her innermost dreams and vain romantic hopes. Hypnotized, she is oblivious to the crowd's jeering and walks in a trance believing she is in a garden with a man. The haunting scene embodies the isolation and loneliness of her life, her struggles to find a good man, and the seeming futility of her efforts to make a lasting human connection. Like his reality, his dream state interactions are not real and are ultimately based on a system of exploitation and moral irresponsibility reflected in all of his other interactions as well. None of it lasts, none of it comes to fruition, and they more or less end up with her feeling like she's been deceived (and confused, which she quickly recovers from on stage once the hypnotist wakes her up). The ephemeral nature of his happiness and contentment on that stage points to the insincerity of what he experiences in life, and heartbreakingly so. Fellini gives Cabiria's life an element of adventure, following her as she encounters all the different aspects of life and gets a taste of them. of the ups and downs of humanity. The incorporation of these fantastical elements feels like, if not an escape, then a rather reassuring look at different life paths. A dream sequence introduces her to cave people who seem to wake up and emerge from nowhere to greet their supplieraltruistic weekly. Cabiria gets hitched with the Good Samaritan, during which she reveals her real name, Maria, which is perhaps as ironically virginal in its connotations as her stage name (Cabiria derives from an Italian historical epic of the same name , whose title character is rich and virginal). Fellini again incorporates his favorite spontaneity of life when he asks movie star Alberto Lazzati to take Cabiria in on a whim, seeking distraction after the lovers' quarrel. During the evening with Lazzati, Cabiria can barely contain her excitement at his fame. Luila takes her back to her sumptuous estate, where she comes across as almost painfully pathetic, needlessly legitimizing herself and proudly insisting, "I have everything, I have everything," when detailing her ownership of her little house to the somewhat confused but bored Lazzati. . . When his lover Jessi returns, she hastily pushes Cabiria into the bathroom, where she spends the entire night with the dog. With a few bills and a distracted farewell, Lazzati kicks out the reluctant Cabiria in the morning. The speed with which she recovers from this incredibly humiliating misfortune is almost instantaneous, showing the extent to which she has internalized and naturalized this type of treatment by men and humanity in general. Unfortunately it is used to being used and consequently discarded by society. Cabiria is disillusioned with all institutions of society, including religious ones. His willingness to seek the church illuminates his dissatisfaction and search for deeper meaning in life. However, Fellini presents the Church as zealous, inauthentic, and just as flawed and selfish as other institutions. Cabiria leaves the church no more spiritually equipped than when she arrived to reconcile her discontent and inner pain, even as the audience is shown that her desire for transformation on a spiritual level is very real. The picnic moments before the church rehearsal process bring a strong sense of urgency, anxiety, and frustration. Cabiria's disgust at the inertia of her state is palpable, and she is visibly anxious about remaining static. It is when we see her suffer the ultimate betrayal – that of love – that the extent and disadvantage with which she shows herself openly becomes more evident. The scenes leading up to Oscar's desertion and robbery consist of Cabiria brazenly pouring out her heart and soul to him, laying bare her hopes, her suffering, her years of financial savings. The intensity of his babbling excitement about their shared future shines like a child's, making his betrayal affect her as deeply as a loss of innocence. Furthermore, Oscar's betrayal is so laughably undignified (a soft-spoken accountant planning to push Cabiria off a cliff for the sake of a small sum!), that it demonstrates the ultimate debasement of Cabiria's worth and existence. As Oscar's intentions slowly dawn on her, Masina delivers an exquisite, heartbreaking performance that dissects the character's spirit. Oscar becomes conflicted and increasingly agitated as Cabiria literally crumples before our eyes, broken for the first time. He writhes on the ground, sobbing: “Kill me then! Please do it. I have nothing left to live for.” This graphically vivid scene depicts her at heart, almost animalistic in her grief, publicly displaying the ugly honesty and brutality of emotional loss. In fact, having placed the two characters far away, in the woods of nature, Fellini underlines how Cabiria and Oscar are equally distant from the values ​​of civilization and morality, submissive instead to the basest motivations of human behavior. Warning: this is just.