Unlike those sexy stunners who are famous in history, Fellini's low-level prostitute Cabiria does not look beautiful or coquettish. It is also unconventional and wild.
Generations of film critics and researchers have focused on the various screen details of "Nights of Kabylia": sunglasses, shawls, photos, bouquets, teardrops from the corners of eyes, and the dilapidated cabin that Kabylia bought herself. caged bird.
People pay attention to the relationship between Kabylia and the streets of Rome, the relationship with love, and the relationship with the fate of post-war Italy, but they seem to ignore the relationship between her as an individual and the cigarette in her hand.
We followed Kabylia all the way through the mysterious hustle and bustle of the night, and along the way, we inadvertently saw those "correct" postures that we are accustomed to lighting a cigarette: from the sensual place, the exquisite beauty looked at the male movie star with a cigarette and raised his head and chuckled. Sexual innuendo, to the boredom of the men smoking cigarettes in the auditorium of the Magic Theater.
The various typical shapes of cigarettes actually represent the opposite of Kabylia's identity and destiny, regional, class, and gender. The most touching thing about Kabylia's way of getting along with cigarettes is that when she was waiting for business on the street, she naturally lit a cigarette and laughed and scolded her companions.
She tilted her head, smiled savagely, and kept the smoke in her hands. A series of small movements were both sophisticated and playful. If it weren't for the cheap fur on her body and her conversations revealing her self-evident professional identity, so would the loud voice next door girl with a little temper. Echoing it is how Kabria, who later fell in love for the second time, slowly "jumped" from her cabin to the outside in the time of a cigarette.
Smoke, it seems, is no longer only the standard attributes of the dusty woman, but more like a medium to communicate the heavy bottom layer and the bright daily life. Cigarettes can be a consolation after a living, and a warm invitation: Hey, at least I'm still doing something that I can control and choose relatively freely.
Another pivotal moment is the return to the first acquaintances of con artists Oscar and Kabylia.
If you freeze a screenshot, you can find a scene with great non-narrative aesthetic power. A woman who is hesitant and full of distrust, holding a cigarette and walking with strangers in the back light in the smoke - as if replacing the dark secret conversation between men and men under the atmospheric perspective often seen in film noir - but changing the gender of one of them . The low-level lighting makes the cigarette in the hands of the woman in the dark a source of a certain sense of security in the composition, but it also expresses the tragic ending of this unexplained love in a contradictory way.
Forget about the magical scheduling in this "walking movie" for a while, just watching the girl walk and laugh all the way, the distance between Kabylia and Maria is just a cigarette.
Chai Ruth, Originally from Deep Focus Films Special "A Little Flirty, A Little Lazy: The Women Who Smoke in These Movies" April 2016
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