Rating: 
Summary: Another classic that has left me COLD-but I warm easily
Review: "La Notti Di Cabriria" is a fine showcase for the goofball charm of Giulietta Masina. I have no doubt that it has reduced many a mighty soul to tears and trembling. The story is tight and conveyed with authority and conviction. I am certain that this is a "good" movie that most people enjoy thoroughly. I'm going to back and watch it again, but as it stands, it just didn't move me like I expected it to. I can't very well give it a higher rating until it impacts me emotionally. Still, I recognize that the film has an exceedingly dirty feel to it. Everything from Cabriria's occupation to the filthy beggars crying out for Grace from Maria --reek with a pestilence that cannot be washed off. The film is ugly--and Cabriria is presented like a little beacon of light to guide the viewer through the stinking pit of civilization. Masina does a fine job conveying the sufferings and triumphs of her character. I'm just not a big fan of these types of stories--I watched it because it is a Fellini film and I am trying to work my way through all his work. I will watch this again after I've made more of a dent in his output. I'll probably see it in an entirely different way and perhaps may even like it more. Ultimately, if you love rooting for the little gal, this film is for you. She is very much like Chaplin's "little tramp" and you will enjoy observing her gritty determination to climb every mountain with a song in her heart. Watch it when you are not cynical, open to sweetness, and not afraid of the tyranny of the sun.
Rating: 
Summary: Simpy mesmerizing!
Review: This film will stay with you long after you have watched, bringing up all kinds of questions, feelings and longings. I was a big Sweet Charity Fan (Amercian musical remake with Shirley McClaine) and although Sweet Charity is lite americano-censored I still enjoy it, however the orginal is simply a masterpiece. this is no "Pretty Woman." this shows the seedy underbelly of prostitution and a very angelic girl-woman that manages to maintain some bit of purity, naivete and most important faith for a better future in spite of it all. It transaltes to every country and age. And depending on the individual, one can find the heroine, easily missled and stupid or the keeper of the truth of life.
The Magician/mind reader scene is a nail-biter that adds little to the plot and everything thing to the meaning, suspense and feeling of the film.
I think that this is Fellini's best.
Rating:
Summary: Masina Might Be the Best Film Actress Ever
Review: I love Federico Fellini, but I dread his early works like La Strada because they are so sad. Poor Giulietta Masina, one of the greatest film actresses of all time, she always gets the short end of the stick and because the movie magic is so intense, our heart breaks right along with her.
Fellini is the Great Director Italian style. I don't mean he isn't the greatest director, better than Hitchcock, Welles, a modern like Scorcese. I'm looking at his work, have seen most of them, and I can't make up my mind. He might be the greatest that ever lived. His films in black and white, the Neo-Realism of Italian film after the war, the incredible original vision, the writing, and directing, it's as though Michelangelo came back as a director.
Masina is a prostitute, but her loves turn out to be pocketbook grabbers. Her physical well being is not high on her boyfriend's priority list. She's such a little women, frail, and in Nights she plays a tough, brawling, whimsical, and hopeless romantic. Her acting style is over the top, almost carnival character as she had played it in La Strada, but as Cabiria, she's older, but not necessarily wiser. The final revelation with French actor François Périer is so heart rendering because after an hour and a half of Cabiria's, laughter, trials, and disappointments, we identify with her completely. And then, in one last scene, the carnival returns with hope.
There is so much more to say about this film. You could write a book.
Rating:
Summary: Ah, Cabiria, how you come through your nights
Review: This early Fellini masterpiece stands among history's greatest films. Masina delivers a shattering performance as a tough-luck prostitute who refuses to let life let her down. This film tore me apart the first time I saw it (at the Quad Cinema on 12th Street in Manhattan, alone on a rainy afternoon sometime in the mid-90s) and subsequent viewings did subsequently tear me to shreds. It instills the most beautiful kind of melancholy; never has a film had such a tragic and uplifting ending. Cabiria is a model of blind hope, so rare in the human spirit. We need more people like her.
Rating:
Summary: A humble depiction of postwar Italy and its people
Review: This is a must see movie that gives the viewer a taste of Italy that is now long gone. In the years after WWII, a lonely wind blew throught the countries that lost the war. Nights of Cabiria is a depiction of a woman who is an orphan of war, cast on the wind and yet remains hopeful and true in the spirit of all Italians. Bravo for Fellini for capturing this special time and having an incredible actress as the movie's heroine.
Rating:
Summary: Grew on me like a Fungus
Review: I am no big fan of foreign films. Ive seen probably under five of them my entire 42 years living on this planet. I'm a beer and Dirty Harry VHS tape kind of guy. HOWEVER.. I just happened to watch Nights of Cabiria the other day. This is easily the best foreign and one of the best films Ive seen period.
Basically, its about a hooker working the streets in Rome who yearns for a prince charming. Giuletta Masina (who i never even heard of until i watched this movie) gives an incredible performance of this prostitute. In some of the funny parts of the movie she reminds me of an Italian Lucille Ball. In other parts, she is extremely dramatic and/or contemplative. Her range and depth is so incredible in this one movie, it makes it absolutely so compelling to watch.
The ending kind of stunned me at first which made the movie all the more fantastic. In any event, if you cant relate to the sorrow this person goes through in terms of finding "the one", you are either extremely lucky, or not human in my opinion.
Easily an A+. I'll never forget it.
Rating:
Summary: Wisdom does not beget happiness, merely peace
Review: ...and Giulietta Masina's taste of "peace" at the end is one of the most sublime moments ever to grace celluloid. And that scene on the cliff with François "Oscar" Périer is so agonizing I still have to watch it through my fingers.
Rating: 
Summary: Early Fellini
Review: Writer/director Federico Fellini's film follows the life of a prostitute (Giulietta Masina) whose tough exterior conceals a soul that is longing to surrender itself to someone that she can love and trust. Unfortunately, her occupation doesn't present her with many likely candidates, and the men she gives her heart to inevitably betray her. She bounces back sad, angry, bitter, but also resilient and determined to forge ahead. We know that she will give her heart away again and again, no matter how badly she is hurt, and we can only hope that the next man will treat her as she deserves.
This film really needs an actress of Masina's ability to make it succeed. It meanders along, following Cabiria from situation to situation, and not all of it held my attention. I sometimes found myself growing bored, only to be confronted with a riveting scene such as the sequence at the hypnotist's show, where Cabiria is cruelly manipulated into revealing her vulnerability on stage before a rowdy crowd, setting her up for yet more tragedy. The film's final sequence is remarkable.
Rating:
Summary: Another classic that has left me COLD-but I warm easily
Review: "La Notti Di Cabriria" is a fine showcase for the goofball charm of Giulietta Masina. I have no doubt that it has reduced many a mighty soul to tears and trembling. The story is tight and conveyed with authority and conviction. I am certain that this is a "good" movie that most people enjoy thoroughly. I'm going to back and watch it again, but as it stands, it just didn't move me like I expected it to. I can't very well give it a higher rating until it impacts me emotionally. Still, I recognize that the film has an exceedingly dirty feel to it. Everything from Cabriria's occupation to the filthy beggars crying out for Grace from Maria --reek with a pestilence that cannot be washed off. The film is ugly--and Cabriria is presented like a little beacon of light to guide the viewer through the stinking pit of civilization. Masina does a fine job conveying the sufferings and triumphs of her character. I'm just not a big fan of these types of stories--I watched it because it is a Fellini film and I am trying to work my way through all his work. I will watch this again after I've made more of a dent in his output. I'll probably see it in an entirely different way and perhaps may even like it more. Ultimately, if you love rooting for the little gal, this film is for you. She is very much like Chaplin's "little tramp" and you will enjoy observing her gritty determination to climb every mountain with a song in her heart. Watch it when you are not cynical, open to sweetness, and not afraid of the tyranny of the sun.
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