It is hard not to grow attached to Maria ‘Cabiria’ Ceccarelli over the course of Federico Fellini‘s episodic (and cyclic) Nights of Cabiria. She is a fascinating, showy (nods to Charlie Chaplin abound) creature of a curiously dual nature. Pragmatic and cynical on one hand (as I am sure anyone who makes a living at being a prostitute has to be) yet romantic and naive on the other. The hooker with the heart of gold, and a comically charming arched eyebrow at the world. The nature of her character and how she is shown on screen invites at least a small form of ‘I can relate’ from nearly every audience member. Sometimes she is an observer of the stranger things about post-war Rome, sometimes a very active participant. She puts on her face, and goes to it without often letting her guard down, as police and degenerates are always just around the corner. She gets the occasional run of fortune, and also (as in the opening and penultimate scenes of the film) quite figuratively, screwed.

That second-to-last sequence is shown below. The sour conclusion of Cabiria’s life-long dream of ‘epic romance.’ She has found the man of her dreams by the strangest form of chance. He has courted her with dignity and grace. As a result, she has sold away all of her material comforts, and shed her defensive walls of cynicism and theatricality. He has made her a ‘woman’ in a way that is not sexual, but rather wholesome and optimistic for a future together. And, as it turns out, he fits the bill of shyster to the letter; no different from her pimp Tomas who flusher her down the toiled (figuratively) in the opening sequence, “Just imagine! I was pushed in!” The immediate dawning awareness of her own failure to realize his duplicity and the crushing acceptance of her own naivety and stupidity (again!) is too much for her to take, she asks to be put out of her misery, accepts the loss of her material wealth, and writhes around on the ground in agony.

Giulietta Masina’s multi-award winning performance is highly theatrical, maybe even over the top, in this sequence. Yet anyone – everyone – can relate to feeling epically foolish and likely will have some empathy for her plight and her desire to simply jump or be pushed off a cliff. It is a powerful sequence in which fantasy and reality and beauty (the backdrop, Cabiria’s joy) and horror (duplicity, dreams squashed) co-exist.

Although not exactly the remedy to get through the February blahs, it does confirm that yes, life stinks.