Since the mid-1940s, Italian filmmakers have learned to use cameras to record the lives of the lower-class people in reality. The poor people's World War II aroused their pursuit of simple and pure happiness and their attention to the civilian world, thus far away from the pompous atmosphere that was too much involved in the previous films, with realism as the main tone. This period became known as the Italian Neorealist movement, best known for The Bicycle Thief. (Post-World War II cinema took on such a dominant style, as Birdwell put it, "The style of neorealism, the texture of the film's image and sound, chosen by the director in a particular historical situation." ) However, the films of this period had many drawbacks, that is, they paid too much attention to depicting reality and neglected to use actions and expressions to describe the inner world of the characters. They only paid attention to telling the story in one go from beginning to end without paying attention to the use of voice-over and interspersed flashback narration. Show the vividness of the story. The appearance of Fellini changed the defects in the film during this period, and on the premise of absorbing the documentary style of neo-realism, it gave the characters in the film more flesh-and-blood souls. And so the completion of his first independent film, The Great Road (1954), caused a sensation in Europe and the world with its nuanced portrayal of the tragic life of Gelsomina, a rigid and innocent busker, and her alleged love for two men. The deep thinking about the love and happiness of the lower class, which was drawn from the desperate pursuit of dreams, won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 1956. And Fellini's remarkable insight into reality is destined to make his film's success not a flash in the pan. In the following year, Fellini's "Night of Cabiria" (1957), which described the prostitute Cabiria in Rome, was eager to get rid of reality and achieve a dream of a beautiful love, but was cheated by three men. awards. As a result, Fellini has gradually moved from an obscure and talented director in Italy to the world film industry. The frequent awards at Oscar, Cannes, Venice and other film festivals are also the audience's best affirmation of his achievements. After Eight and One and a Half (8½, 1963) and Amarcord (Amarcord, 1963) 1973) also won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. The brainless director Guido in "8½" may be a microcosm of the end of Fellini's directorial career. After destined to become a monument in film history, his creations have gradually declined. Movies such as "Casanova" that directly reflect the extreme eroticism of the human spirit came out, just like the expansion and continuation of the dream of Guido's fantasy of wives and concubines above them in "8½". However, this flaw cannot hide Fellini's brilliance. "Night of Cabiria" surpasses the previous delicate depiction of psychology, which announces the complete end and elimination of neorealism, and "8½" creates a narrative in the way of stream of consciousness, digging deeper and more directly into people's inner spiritual world. For his pioneering contributions to the development of the film industry, Fellini was awarded the Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1993. At the moment of accepting the award, he and his wife, who is also the heroine of many of his films, Marcina, both had tears in their eyes, but still smiled and comforted his wife not to cry. Perhaps in Fellini's eyes, Marcina is not only his wife, but more like the innocent, kind and strong Cabiria.
Chapter 2: "The Great Road" - Everyone is everyone's passer-by. Everyone is everyone's thoughts.
Watching "The Road" for the first time. In the end, Zampano, who had been frozen for a long time, roared hoarsely and mournfully on the beach, which contrasted with the calm and joy of Jesomina kneeling and praying on the same beach when she was sent away by her mother's deal. At that time, the silly Jessomena was used as the price of the deal because of Rosa's death. There is nothing she can do about fate. She could only endure the pain of parting from her relatives silently and accept the stout and reckless man in front of her. Maybe a full meal wasn't that important to her. But facing the mere 10,000 real, she had no choice but to start her long wandering artist career with Zampano.
Everyone is a guest of everyone. Everyone is everyone's thoughts. Facing the desolate tragedy of life created by Fellini, I couldn't help but think of this lyric. Jesomina accepts the whole world that has left her out with naivety. Her man, her true love, and the love she gave her were all the same stingy. Everything is just like the 9-year-old Xiao Qiao's childish voice sang this "Gone Light Years". So simple, she obviously won't understand such vicissitudes of life lyrics written by her uncle who is over middle-aged. Behind the eloquence is Jesomina's immaturity. When you are immersed in light and shadow, you always use an inseparable childishness to interpret the huge and cold world that your own mind can't bear, and it will make people utter that chilling sigh.
Jesomina's search for true love is a theme that runs through the film. The death of the father left the mother unable to support several children by herself. Silly Jessomena's seemingly dull look does not appeal to buyers. If she lives with her mother all her life. Then the mother's love can prevent her from getting hurt, even if she lives in poverty, it is still a kind of happiness. But the transaction forced her to leave her familiar love.
It's not that she doesn't know how to try to love. when she was possessed by him. She looked at him in his sleep with so much love in her eyes. She simply thought that she was his person from now on. But when she pressed Zampano "can you sleep with her if you are a woman", she got such a rude response. Zampano didn't love her. He just covets her body and wants someone to accompany his loneliness. (Here Fellini uses two separate shots to start the conversation between the two, just like Guido and his wife in 8½, zoomed out to two beds. This also highlights Zampa Noh hates her emotions.) Although he kept claiming that Jesomina was his wife during the performance of the broken iron chain on his chest, it was just a trick to coax her and make her happy. Just finished the show. And Zampano never gave her the extra skill in acting. Even something as simple as playing the trumpet. He was too greedy and treated Jesomina with a servile mentality.
She understands that this is not her true love. He tried to escape, but was pulled back by Zampano. Trying to fall in love with someone else, like the tightrope walker. But her fidelity eventually overcame the desire in her heart to call for true love. What a painful choice to distort her will, only the moment she watched him go away with a puzzled face was the most unforgettable.
And Jesomina was powerless to stop the next tragedy. Again, the heart was ravaged again. She saw her husband Zampano accidentally kill the tightrope walker who loved her for a little grudge. She curled up in the depths of the carriage in fear, not allowing Zampano to approach. Maybe this is her way of making a clear line with her husband to pay homage to the person she really loves, defending the love she missed, even though she clearly knows that everything is gone.
Then Zampano abandoned his wife and left, and Jesomina died of madness to set the final tragic tone of the film. As stated at the beginning, Fellini's film has a strong integrity, and at the end it seems to bring the viewer's mind back to the transaction where the story began. Some people say that Zampano's final outburst of delicate feelings is regretting that he abandoned Jesomina's love at will, and some people say that Zampano's belief in survival is for the belief that Jesomina is still alive to the end. . But I don't think there's much difference in the nature of Rosa's departure or Jesomina's. After the match against Zampano, it doesn't matter anymore. For Zampano's life journey after wandering and wandering, they were just passersby who accompanied him in his struggling life, and the next Jesomina was about to come; for the difficult life, that share was right For him, some humble thoughts will not take up much weight, but they will be smashed in the fierce struggle mixed with the emotion of the good fortune. I guess that's just crazy. Rather than necessarily bemoaning his lost love.
Chapter 3: "Night of Cabiria" - Cabiria: a rose that never bows her head for love, Cabiria is
deceived again, she has nothing, and she looks blank and sluggish, and doesn't know where to go; and a group of young people Appearing once again allows Kabylia to return to her former free and uninhibited self. She laughed and danced with them, as if the joy at the moment drowned out the pain before. Far from being as brutal and thorough as "The Great Road", the ending of the film is like the last swaddling child in "Rashomon", where Kabylia's smile serves as a hint of hope for the future. She bravely pursues her love and escapes the inferior condition of being a prostitute; she gives everything to those she loves. I still remember Penny interpreting herself with "Wild Rose" in her 10-year-old concert. This is undoubtedly the best summary of her ten-year journey: a rose that never bows her head for love. Penny is my favorite singer, and some aspects of her personality, such as her honesty, her freedom after being beaten, and her dedication to love in her music, are very similar to the protagonist Cabiria.
When Kabylia was pushed into the river for the first time, she saw clearly the true face of such people's greed for money, and she should have chosen more mates. But later, it happened to be Dofirio again. She also pretended to ignore him to test him. But Nai's own desire for happiness is too strong, Nai's own vanity once again crowded out his reason, Nai Nai, the other party's rhetoric is too real. When Kabylia saw everything about him, she did not struggle, but chose to pray and give up resistance, and let him take the wallet she handed over and flee. Poor Kabylia was still praying for mercy in such a "selfless" way in the end. The long lingering cry on the cliff also announced the shatter of Kabylia's fantasy. Like "The Road", "Nights of Cabiria" seems to be a movie that is a bit abruptly straight to the theme, but it clarifies the situation at the beginning over and over again in the development of the plot. This has to be said to be Fellini's tried-and-true skill. Here, Fellini cleverly uses long shots and montages to make the close-up scenes of Cabiria more realistic, and to cut unnecessary information to make the development of the story more reasonable.
The other side of Kabylia is her inferiority complex and vanity. From her one-night adventure with the male star, she naively imagined that the story of Cinderella still existed in that era. So she accepted an invitation from a male star on a whim. What's even sadder is that her vanity and inferiority are haunted, she sees male stars as extremely tall and always fantasizes about clinging to each other, even if male stars can't even give her a fair one-night stand, it doesn't matter, because she understands that her capital is not worthy of men. Celebrities share love on the same conditions. Eventually his girlfriend came back, and Kabylia seemed to ignore her presence just now, seeing their incomparable intimacy. But she could only sob in a low voice in the bathroom. The inferiority and vain personality is destined to prevent her from usurping the initiative of this love.
Aside from her background and occupation, the Kabylia who was hypnotized by the magician was undeniably the most real her. (Similarly, like the mind-reading technique performed by the Joker on Guido in "8½", it restores the essential spiritual characteristics of the protagonist through the function of the external supernormal ability, so as to achieve a different comparison with the real person.) That she is innocent, kind, and unscrupulous personality. She will also become as polite as in a conversation with a hitchhiker. But after abandoning the tempering of so many tragic encounters, she will no longer be Kabylia who will smile after being played by men, and will never be Kabylia who is always thinking about her house. At the end of the film, it can be seen that Fellini is still full of hope for the future of Kabylia, so is the simple she who has passed by in a flash, is the ideal appearance of the Kabylia he was looking forward to?
Chapter 4: When Gelsomina meets Cabiria
Gelsomina and Cabiria. They are like twin sisters placed against different backgrounds under Fellini's lens. One is dull, the other is flamboyant, but also has a naive and kind disposition, and also yearns for his true love and happiness. They have been teased again and again by the paralysis and deserving of this era. The tragedies of their lives may not be entirely attributable to the stubborn nature of Zampano and Dofirio, but more because the impetuous and dirty thinking of this era caused them to use a distorted concept of happiness to examine this poisonous life. world.
I have never thought of human nature with malice. So I think Zampano and Dofirio will be in love with someone who loves them so much. But Zampano has to fight for his own livelihood and exile to save himself; Dofirio is poisoned by society, and he follows the trend and plays tricks. It was an era when individuals could not live according to their wishes, and it was an era when the lower class people in reality had no intention of clinging to true love. Suppose Dofirio and Kabylia really tied the knot. Will society re-identify Kabylia's role as a prostitute? Could Dolfilio bear the banter that became a gossip? Apart from the shady skills they have formed since childhood, what capital do they have for them to gain a foothold in society? The answer may be no. Without exception, they want to defraud other people's capital to seek a better life, because they are unable to create their own happiness except in such a society. Maybe we shouldn't blame them too much, a person who can't even secure his own life will not expect true love for himself. And deceived, revenge, down and down, and then deceived (revenge) seems to have become the fixed pattern of that era. If the special ideological and social conditions cultivated in a specific era deviate from our goal of seeking the ultimate happiness, a series of tragedies are doomed.
What follows is a discussion of why Jessomina and Kabylia replaced an innate self-identity with a form of self-deception. They are all just women who lack practical skills to make a living. Their fragile bodies could not survive all kinds of hardships. So they chose to find a man to rely on. When Jesomina's mother gives her to a strange busker, Kabylia struggles to find true love and escape from her long-weary life of prostitutes. But they look down on themselves the most. When the circus retained Jesomina, she did not choose to escape Zampano to support herself, but waited for the man she once relied on. Perhaps she did not expect Zampano to give her love, but naively thought that life would be complete with a man by her side, just to be stable and not destroy the bitter life she had already adapted to; Jesomina's love was frustrated again and again but still Perseverance, only she feels that the appearance of a good man can save her destiny. In this patriarchal society, women are inevitably dominated, and their success in challenging this irrational reality is minimal. What is even more tragic is that their resignation after suffering misfortune completely gave up the possibility of striving for happiness. A play that doesn't belong to them, a cheerful tune, can make them laugh out of tears, and all their troubles disappear like a sunny day. So they only want to rely on men instead of eager to cultivate their own skills to earn a living, seeking happiness in a form similar to self-deception. This may be a realistic shortcut for them who are accustomed to cowardice.
The above shows that the innocence and numbness of Jessomina and Kabylia contributed to the tragedy to a certain extent, but we can look at this issue from a different angle. Must the Jesomina cultivated under this character be a so-called "idiot"? The answer is not yes. Just imagine, in such a gloomy society, how could a weak woman be able to reverse her humble situation by herself? Perhaps they are also the most sensible: they choose to give up their pursuit after deciding that they can't get the happiness of their dreams for a while, and just wait like a rabbit. This way, you don't have to mourn for not being able to achieve your ideals. Maybe we will criticize Jessomena for being too negative. But instead of struggling to resist, it is better to settle down after a period of loss, and leave worldly troubles behind for a while, even if it is just to quietly smell the fragrance of a flower, it is also unparalleled happiness for itself. Although this kind of Ah Q-like spirit makes Jesomina, who we observe more, feel sorry for her, but her big twinkling eyes always show pure joy without any pretense, so do we still need to continue to watch on the sidelines? Planning for Jesomina's true happiness?
In the same way, Kabylia, as the opposite extreme of Jesomina, does not give up the pursuit of happiness but keeps trying every opportunity worthy of happiness. Why does Kabylia make the same mistakes in love one after another? It's just because she is always too eager for the next man's desire for a good life. She was not as content with the little happiness in front of her as Jesomina was. Although she's always showing off her hard-earned house, she's not satisfied, she's just trying to prove that she's better than other prostitutes (and other inferiors) in exchange for even being hypocritical to her praise. One of these two people's desire for happiness is not as good as the other, and inappropriate pursuit will not lead to true happiness after all. At the end of the film, Kabylia is still looking forward to happiness. She doesn't really realize that she is undefended. Too simple thinking has made mistakes caused by scams. Kabylia, who is immersed in fantasy happiness like Jesomina, maybe we don't need to think too much about her happiness.
Chapter 5: Afterword
Fellini has explained why he doesn't make movies that people can understand - "That's because I'm making the truth. The truth is always ambiguous, and the lie can be understood very quickly." The plot of Cabiria Nights is not as complex and intertwined as that of "8½", but is dominated by a tiled narrative, which is easy to understand. It can be seen that the tragedies described in these two films may be all lies of that era, a superficial illusion, that is, the ignorance of the protagonists caused their own tragedies. What the film itself requires us to think about is to trace the origin of the cause through the surface impression. When we dig into the root of the evil in that society, we suddenly find that Fellini's film does not just allow us to criticize the evil that does not conform to the current reality, but evokes the encounters between Jessomina and Kabylia. We have the same childish enthusiasm as them, and we embrace all the obstacles and challenges in the journey of life with a broad mind. This may be the essence of Fellini, the greatest Italian director of all time, infuses his films.
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