Category Archives: 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Nights of Cabiria (“Le Notti di Cabiria”)
Directed by Federico Fellini
Written by Federico Fellini, Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli and Pier Paolo Pasolini based on a novel by Maria Molinari
1957/Italy/France
Dino de Laurentis Cinematografica/ Les Films Marceau
Repeat viewing; Criterion Collection DVD
#337 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die
IMDb users say 8.3/10; I say 10/10

<i>Maria ‘Cabiria’ Ceccarelli: There’s another girl, my friend Wanda, she lives there too, but I don’t bother with the others. The others all sleep under the arches in Caracalla. Mind you, I have my own house with water, electricity, bottled gas, I’ve got everything, even a thermometer. See this one here? She never ever slept under an arch. Well, maybe once… or twice. Of course, my house is nothing like this. But I like it.<i>

Right before Fellini got deep into Fellini-esque territory, he made this heartfelt masterpiece. I love Giulietta Masina and this film.

Cabiria (Masina) is a prostitute with a weakness for the wrong guys.  Despite supporting what seems to be a series of freeloaders, she has managed to buy her own little house and amass a small nest egg.  Things begin to go wrong when her latest boyfriend snatches her purse and pushes her in the river where she is only just saved from drowning.  She wonders why since she always gave him whatever he wanted.  (Favorite line from her rant: “Go back to selling balloons!”).

Cabiria pulls herself together and goes back to trading insults with her friends and plying her trade. One night, she heads for the Via Veneto, usually off limits for such as herself, where she chances a meeting with a famous movie star who takes her home.  She can’t believe her luck but ends up locked in a bathroom when the star’s lover appears to patch up a quarrel.

An encounter with a man distributing alms to the poor and the sight of a once well-off prostitute reduced to living in a cave inspires Cabiria to join friends on a pilgrimage to a holy site.  One of their group seeks a miracle cure but Cabiria prays only that the Virgin help her to change her life.  Later she takes the stage in a hypnotist’s show.  While under, she reveals her essential purity and dreams of marriage.  It looks like her prayers may have been answered when she meets an accountant afterwards who says he wants to marry her and doesn’t care about her past.

Everyone should see this movie so I won’t give away the ending.  Suffice it to say that it is among the most moving in film history.

This is a movie about hope and survival.  Maybe a bit like post-war Italy?  Cabiria makes more than her fair share of mistakes and takes many more than her fair share of lumps but always comes out smiling.  She is played with incredible delicacy by Giulietta Masina, who must have one of the greatest faces of any actress ever and who moves with the grace of Chaplin.  (Her mambo is outstanding!)  I love the combination of comedy and pathos and the ever-present social satire Fellini weaves in throughout.  Add to that the Nino Rota score and you certainly have a classic for the ages.

Nights of Cabiria won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.  Masina won the award for Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival.  Cabiria later became a New York dime-a-dance girl when the story was remade as the Broadway musical Sweet Charity and its 1969 screen adaptation directed by Bob Fosse and starring Shirley MacLaine.

Re-release trailer

Lost in Translation
Directed by Sofia Coppola
Written by Sofia Coppola
2003/USA
Focus Features/Tohokashinsha Film Company Ltd./ American Zoetrope/Elemental Films
Repeat viewing/Netflix Instant streaming
#1060 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die (2013 combined list)
IMDb users say 7.8/10; I say 8.5/10

[box] Lydia Harris: Do I need to worry about you, Bob?

Bob: Only if you want to.[/box]

This film perfectly captures the feeling of being a stranger in a strange land both literally and figuratively.

Bob Harris (Bill Murray) is an aging movie star who is in Tokyo raking in big bucks for making a whisky commercial.  Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) is a young college grad at loose ends in the city while her photographer husband is working.  Their paths cross several times because neither can sleep due to jet lag and possibly other factors. Gradually, they find that despite their superficial differences they are kindred spirits and they set out to navigate the unfamiliar waters of Japan together.

I love the way this movie captures the joy of discovering someone who sees the world as you do – that awesome proof that possibly you are not insane.  Bob and Charlotte really have nothing in common other than their nationality and their insomnia but they are both “lost” and that is enough.  Though the story is minimalist, it can also be hilarious.  The scene with the Premium Fantasy Woman alone is worth the price of admission.

I wonder what Bob was whispering to Charlotte at the end.  I hope he was saying thank you.

Lost in Translation won an Academy Award for Best Writing, Original Screenplay.  It was nominated in the categories of Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Director.

Trailer

Rebecca
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Written by Robert E. Sherwood et al based on the novel by Daphne Du Maurier
1940/USA
Selznick International Pictures
Repeat viewing; Netflix rental
#143 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die
IMDb users say 8.3/10; I say 9/10

[box] Jack Favell: I say, marriage with Max is not exactly a bed of roses, is it?[/box]

This, Hitchcock’s first American picture, was authored more by Selznick than the Master, but is nonetheless excellent.

An unnamed young paid companion (Joan Fontaine) finds wealthy widower Max De Winter (Laurence Olivier) apparently contemplating suicide on a rocky outcropping on the South of France.  He becomes interested in the awkward naive girl, marries her, and takes her home to Manderly, his palatial estate in England.  There, she finds she is unprepared for her social duties, her husband is moody and reserved, and the creepy housekeeper Mrs. Danvers (Dame Judith Anderson) constantly compares her to the former Mrs. De Winter, glamorous Rebecca.  With George Sanders as Jack Favell, Rebecca’s “favorite cousin”, Reginald Denny as Max’s overseer and friend, Gladys Cooper as Max’s sister, and Nigel Bruce as her husband.

The standout of this atmospheric Hitchcock dramatic melodrama is not Hitchcock but Judith Anderson’s admirably restrained performance as the icy Mrs. Danvers.  Joan Fontaine is also pitch perfect as the cowering second Mrs. De Winter, perhaps egged on off-screen by Olivier’s animosity and Hitchcock’s exploitation of the situation.  This is also an ideal role to show off the cynical side of George Sanders, which, of course, he pulls off admirably.  There is remarkably little wit for a Hitchcock film and the melodrama is laid on a bit thick at the end but it remains a beautiful and entertaining movie.  The Franz Waxman score is wonderful.

Rebecca won the Academy Award as Best Picture of 1940 and for its black-and-white cinematography (George Barnes).  It was nominated in the categories of Best Director, Best Actor (Olivier), Best Actress (Fontaine), Best Supporting Actress (Anderson), Best Screenplay, Best Art Direction, Best Editing, Best Special Effects, and Best Original Score (Franz Waxman).

Re-release trailer