Nights of Cabiria (1957) on Netflix
Cabiria, a streetwalker in Rome, stands with her boyfriend Giorgio on a riverbank. He pushes her into the water and leaves with her purse. Boys nearby bring adults who pull her out.
- Netflix4.5/5
- IMDb8.1/1057,659 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes100%
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Plot summary
Cabiria lives in Rome and earns her living on the street, and she keeps expecting that love will bring her something better. Her boyfriend Giorgio pushes her into a river while they are out walking together and makes off with the purse she carries. She cannot swim. A boy who hears her calls brings children and grown-ups, and they drag her from the water. Back at home Giorgio is nowhere to be found, and when her neighbor Wanda offers comfort she turns her away and goes back to work. One night she watches the movie star Alberto Lazzari quarrel with his girlfriend outside a nightclub, and he takes her dancing and then to his lavish home. When a church procession passes her street, she is drawn to it and prays in church for a better life.
Cast
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Nights of Cabiria (1957)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- No one in Italy was willing to finance a film that made sex workers its heroines, so producer Dino de Laurentiis finally agreed to put up the money for Fellini's Nights of Cabiria.
- Censors cut a seven-minute sequence showing a man giving food to poor people living in caves after the premiere; it was restored when the film was re-released in 1998.
- Nights of Cabiria won the 1958 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, the second consecutive year that both Italy and Fellini won it, after the previous year's win for La Strada, which also featured Giulietta Masina.
- Fellini based some of the characters in Nights of Cabiria on a real sex worker he had met while filming Il Bidone.
- In 2008 the film was placed on the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage's list of 100 Italian films to be saved, films said to have changed the collective memory of the country between 1942 and 1978.
- Fellini's screenplay for Nights of Cabiria became the basis for the American musical Sweet Charity and its later film adaptation.
