287. The End of the Affair

Song - Sara (Fleetwood Mac)

Movie: The End of the Affair (Neil Jordan, 1999)

After playing IRA's dimmest sexualy confused soldier in The Crying Game, Stephen Rea is now back in a  Neil Jordan plot twister, playing a husband who is either disinterested, fearful or incapable of sex, and too naive to realise that his wife Sarah (Julianne Moore) is meeting her needs with his friend Maurice (Ralph Fiennes). In a conversation about his suspicions of Sarah's whereabouts, Jordan frames him as a pathetic wimp who seems to almost shrink in stature when the centre of attention is on him. And when he returns home one day just when Maurice is putting the final touch on Sarah, she tells her lover not to worry about her moaning: her husband wouldn't recognise the sound. Playing such types seems to come naturally to Rea; even in roles that don't specifically call for it, there is a hint that the world's complexities will eventually overwhelm him. As a result, despite being transparent about their weaknesses, both Fergus in The Crying Game and Henry here, both feel like real, specfic people ratther than metaphors for some pathology. I also found it quite amsuing that Fergus is an IRA recruit, while Henry is a minister in the British government - feebleness has no ideology. The End of the Affair shows it has no demeanour either. 

Maurice, a succesful writer whose books have been adapted for the screen, enjoys overshadowing his friend with his worldly sophistication as much as he enjoys parading his high culture bonafides over the working class detective he hires to find out if Sarah is having an affair he doesn't know about. But his refinement and education mostly serve to intellectualise his inability to put two and two together until the answer is staring him right in the face. When your motto is "to be is to be perceived' it's hard to accept that love exists when it's not right there in the room with you, much less God. It's no great insight that this attitude is detrimental to the relationhsip with the love of your life, but the film's most provocative point, if you follow its reasoning to its logical conclusion, is that jealousy and atheism result from the same weakness. Sarah and God both have to go to great lengths to respectively show their love and their existence to Henry, who simply doesn't have the force of faith to accept as true that which he can't see, feel or recognise. 

You can't go wrong giving Julianne Moore, Ralph Fiennes and Stephen Rea sharp, well-written dialogue veering into religious, romantic and ethical dilemma's. Jordan also handles the plot twist well; patiently building up to a tragic reveal by showing Sarah's point of view of an event he previously depicted. I always enjoy this kind of perspective reversal, and found it an additional nice touch here that we see Sarah's experience through the eyes of Maurice reading her diary. Unfortunately, the twist happens halfway through and ensures that there is really only one way for the movie to end, especially since Jordan had been ostentatiously highlighting Moore's cough long before that. This predictability would have been more palatable if the film had introduced a bit more doubt to either the question of God's existence or Maurice' fate. It's notable that he entire movie is filmed in the conventional style of a British World War 2 romantic drama, carefully ensuring it doesn't in any way deviate from this norm. The only exception is the incident that ultimately separates Maurice from Sarah, which creates a bit of a sense of the uncanny with its wobbly special effects. I don't know how intentional that was, but it did raise some hopes and expectations that the film would go in a more exietentally ambigous direction.

286. Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid

Song - Knockin' On Heaven's Door (Bob Dylan)

Movie: Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (Sam Peckinpah, 1973)

Pat Garrett (James Coburn) 'learned to code' and what did that get him? Sure, when the old ways are dying, and your expertise as an outlaw has diminshing currency, it's tempting to reskill. And make no mistake, getting yourself elected as sheriff has its benefits - a steady income, no jail time, a decent horse. All of that's great, but do you really want to abandon your calling, your trade you've spent your whole life perfecting, to please some men in suits who look down on your craft? These people, they want to create laws, enclosed communities and capitalism and they think that killing men in the service of those ideals is the same as killing men in the service of freedom. They see no dignity in marksmanship, and have developed a written code that makes binary decisions about good and evil for us. We are given the illusion of choice, but the only decision we can really make is when to pull the trigger. Just a matter of time before machines replace us. Pat knows, look at him, he's riding and gunnin' around New Mexico as he always did, but his heart just isn't in it. You can be good at capturing criminals, but if you don't find any meaning or pleasure in it, what's the point?

Peckinpah directs as if he'll never again be allowed to make, or even see, a classic western, luxuriating in all the signposts we've come to associate with the genre, but above all in the freedom to roam and travel across the widespread landscapes. In one of the many lyrical moments, Pat Garrett is sitting by a river bank when a makeshift boat slowly passes by, its passengers shooting at objects they throw in the water. It's by our standards an entirely idiotic and dangerous activity that serves no purpose, but is saluted by Pat, who signs his approval by taking his own shot  It's of course on the mark, leading to Pat and his counterpart on the boat pointing guns at each other. The two men will likely never see each other again, going their own way in the wilderness, capturing exactly why the film repeatedly laments the rise of bordered settlements and towns where people have to act in ways that are compatible with the norms imposed by authorities. Pat Garrett has accepted that this transformation can't be stopped and has decided to adapt to it. As a result, he spends most of the film in misery, unlike Billy the Kid (Kris Kristofferson) who has decided to be an outlaw until the bitter end. He knows this might mean an early death, but he'd rather be happy, and Kristofferson's roguish smile never disappears. 

The movie is ostensibly about Pat Garrett's pursuit of Billy the Kid, but neither Pat nor Billy is too obsessed with the outcome of said pursuit.The sherriff only does the job out of obligation, while for Billy the action is the juice. He knows that his adventures will come to an end sooner rather than later anyway, and part of him would rather be killed by his old friend than by someone else. Peckinpah is above all interested in exploring these contrasting attitudes to the changing world, and all the various colorful characters we meet along the way. This approach does mean that the film sometimes becomes a bit too leisurely, but every time it risks dragging. it steers into a funny, tense and/or eccentric moment. It helps too that it is filled with great character actors (that doesn't include Bob Dylan. His soundtrack is wonderfully melancholic, but as an actor he seems completely out of place, unable to adapt to the film's tone, style or period) who need only very little time to create highly specific and distinct personalities, which allows Peckinpah to build the film's most iconic moment around Slim Pickens' who is barely 5 minutes on screen before knockin' on heaven's door. That scene is also one of the few instances where the film swaps its standard western imagery for a dreamier, painterly look underscoring how futile it is to sacrifice such beauty for the pursuit of Billy.

285. The Color Purple

Song - Papa Was A Rollin' Stone (The Temptations)

Movie: The Color Purple (Steven Spielberg, 1985)

I saw The Color Purple on the day Quincy Jones died, which makes you appreciate even more what a titanic figure he was. In addition to shaping the careers of Michael Jackson and Frank Sinatra, and the trajectories of some of the most popular music genres, Lee Daniels may also owe him a thank you. This is one of the few major Hollywood classics I've seen that fits Daniels' counterintuitive sensibilities and I think it's not that much of a stretch to see Precious as a subversive version of The Color Purple. Both films feature horrific abuse, filtered through an aestehtic that is often antithetical to realistically communicating grave seriousness. It's just that Daniels' filter is campy explootation, whtle The Color Purple feels always on the brink of magic realism, or even full blown fantasy. Quincy Jones played a major role in that by convincing Steven Spielberg to come on as a director, despite concerns that he is not the right guy for a film about poor black folks in the American South. Jones's score however highlights his reasons for choosing Spielberg. Scenes of Celie (Whoopi Goldberg) making breakfast or dressing Albert (Danny Glover) and his sons, are set to the kind of music that you'd more readily expect during the moment in a Christmas movie when a child is about to come down the stairs to see all the presents Santa brought. When you add Spielberg's characteristic childlike fairy-tale enchantment to that mix, Celie becomes something like a black Mary Poppins. 

Of course, Celie is not supposed to be a governess, but Albert's wife, sold by her dad at the age of 14. In of the film's more ruthless moments, just after Albert buys her, Spielberg cuts directly to him walking home with a leashed cow by his side. It's an apt metaphor and during these early scenes, the film is unflinching and straightforward in its depiction of the horrors inflicted upon Celie and her sister Nettie, and rather uncomfortably harrowing. As a result it's incredibly disorienting when we jump in time to a grown up Celie (the first time we see Whoopi Goldberg on screen) in the middle of a scene that borders on slapstick. When preparing for work, a clumsy awkward Albert keeps descending the stairs, only to remember that he has forgotten his watch, tie or collar. Every time he comes back upstairs, he finds Celie quietly waiting to give him the exact item he's been missing. It's funny, and very much directed with comedic intent, but it such a sudden and unexpected shift of tone you are unsure whether you are supposed to laugh. Soon enough, the arrival of Sofia (Oprah Winfrey), the fiancee of Albert's oldest son Harpo, and Shug Avery (Margaret Avery) the local blues star, and Albert's real true love, confrims that the film indeed has more on its mind than just solemnly depicting black misery.

Perhaps it has too much on its mind, and its willingness to go into all kinds of improbable directions as long as it gets an interesting emotional reaction suggests that the musical adaptation may be the better fit for this story. The only truly consistent throughline is Spielberg's obsession with dysfunctional families. He gets to depict so many terrible parent-child relationships, all of them bad in distinctly different and uniquely perverted ways. Celie is continously raped by her dad and is forced to sell the babies she births to hide his crimes. Through a twist of fate these babies end up being raised by Celie's sister and her husband in Africa. Adolph Caesar is so aggressively hostile and hierarchical towards Danny Glover it took me a couple of scenes to realise that he is his dad rather than some sort of old foe/(business) partner out for humiliation. Sofia with her maturity and confidence becomes a mother figure to Celie, despite being her daughter-in-law. The same is true of Shug Avery, only she is bisexual and sleeping with both Celie and Albert, until she leaves them and returns with a husband. Shug herself has a complicated relationship with her dad, a priest who hates that she has abandoned church for a life of sin with blues musicians. This culminates in the film's absolute greatest scene, a musical duel between the church's choir and Shug's band that leads to a reconciliation of the two lifestyles.

284. Da 5 Bloods

Song - What's Going On (Marvin Gaye)

Movie: Da 5 Bloods (Spike Lee, 2020)

Firting with Hedy (Melanie Thierry), a white peace worker in Vietnam, David (Jonathan Majors) gets ironically ceremonial: "We plead innocent to all charges, claims, accusations, allegations, and associations connected to the Klansman in the Oval Office. so help me God." His attractive alliterations however can't conceal that his dad Paul (Delroy Lindo) is spending their entire trip with his red Make America Great Again hat on full display. Paul has come to the Vietnamese jungle with three other black war veterans to find the remains of their fallen squad leader, and the gold he buried. His son's romantic prospects have to take a backseat to that mission, and when his paranoia, resentment and long-buried memories result in the kidnapping of Hedy and her equally white colleagues, David has to choose between his blood and his conscience. Psychological battles lead to real ones, when the Americans end up in a gunfight with French mercenaries, destroying part of the Vietnamese jungle, and killing several Vietnamese on either side. 

On top of all this, the film ends with Black Lives Matter receiving a fortune that would have stayed in Vietnamese hands if it wasn't for the Americans' violent return to Vietnam, and yet when Da 5 Bloods came out certain corners of the internet accused Spike Lee of ignoring American imperalism and the role black Americans play in it. These criticisms are partly the result of people's continued misunderstanding of Spike Lee - the man loves America! Da 5 Bloods starts with a montage of 1960's upheaval approvingly citing Malcolm X, Angela Davis, Kwame Ture, Muhammad Ali, and their radical, communist ideals connecting the civil rights movement to the Vietnamese resistance, leaving no doubt that America's atrocities abroad and at home all result from the same vile ideologies inherent to American society. But Marvin Gaye is equally inherent to American society, And so are The Temptations, Stevie Wonder, Martin Luther King, Edwin Moses, Barack Obama and the classic Hollywood of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and Hedy Lamarr. Spike Lee loves all that, and as he has rightly pointed out in many interviews, aside from the USA, there are very few places where minorities have gotten so many opportunities to build a life on their own terms, and to express themselves, let alone to do so in ways that go against the dominant cultural narratives. Indeed, even now that Europe is becoming more diverse, and that we have more serious discussions about our colonial past it's hard to imagine any black filmmaker emerging here who wil be as honest, as influential and as beloved as Spike Lee. 

And so Da 5 Bloods does not merely aim to criticise an immoral war and its exploitation of black American soldiers. It is also interested in using the Vietnam War to see how it could look like to reconcile the civil rights movements with mainstream American culture. The film ends with Martin Luther King quoting a rather wonderful poem by Langston Hughes: "I say it plain, America never was America to me, and yet I swear this oath, America will be." The poem lists all the great promises and opportunities America is offering, only to be constantly repudiated by members of various oppressed groups explaining why and how they have been excluded from America's riches. In the end the oppressed people all speak as one, expressing their intention to turn America into a country that fulfills its promise to all its people. America is not there yet, but how would an American war epic about the experiences of black soldiers look like if it were? It would definitely not speak exclusively the language of black leftist radicalism/pacifism, but it would also feature shots of helicopters descending against the backdrop of a romanticised sunset. It would feature epic gun battles with close ups of black soldiers heroically shooting machine guns, the camera slowly circling around their position on the battlefield showing us how they always have each others' backs. It would have scenes breaking the fourth wall in which the Vietnamese jungle becomes a mere theatrical backdrop for personal expressions through Shakespearean monologues. It would have shootouts in isolated outposts where wounded Rambo's summon their last remaining energy for one final heroic act that saves themselves and their comrades. And all of this would be surrounded by jabs, taunts, wisecracks and all kinds of other cool dialogue, and a soundtrack filled with Marvin Gaye songs. 

Though most of this is incredibly entertaining, a lot of the movie plays in the same register as Willem Dafoe's famous death scene in Platoon. That moment, bloated in heavyheanded grandiosity and symbolism was when I fully gave up on Stone's film, and especially on my first viewing of Da 5 Bloods I was actively annoyed by some of it. Yet, it can't be denied that there is a clear aesthetic purpose to this approach that contributes to the film's oddness, subversiveness and sheer ambition. Lee knows that America is not yet America to its black population, but this film is about how the country is on its path to become that, how it presents itself as being much further than it really is, how that shapes how the rest of the world looks at black Americans, and how black Americanse see themselves in the context of the rest of the world, and and how all of this adds a further complication to the struggle for black liberation and emancipation. More equality means more responsibility (sometimes unfairly so!) for America's sins. 

Kamala Harris will experience all of this soon enough, but much lighter contexts also showcase how far ahead of his time Spike Lee continues to be. One year after this film came out, England at long last reached the final of a major football championship, only to lose on penalties to Italy. The penalties were missed by Bukayo Saka, Marcus Rashford and Jaden Sancho, three of its black players. Especially the first two were instrumental in England's great tournament and the newfound joy surrounding the national team. England's mostly white fans responded to their team's successes by taking the dust off their hit single Football's Coming Home, which in the minds of many European football fans became a symbol of the broader English insularity and arrogance, especially in the context of Brexit. Many of these fans tried to reconcile their enjoyment of the exploits of Rashford and co by actively disconnecting them from these expressions of English identity, while the players themselves actively tried to present themselves as proud wearers of the shirt representing (a new, more progressive version of) Englishness. After the final this dynamic was turned on its head, when British racists issued death threaths and questioned the Englishness of the faulty penalty takers. The fact that the final was played in London at Wembley stadium, which has become one of the key symbols of the globalisation of international football, is almost as much on the nose as Da 5 Bloods' black veterans opening the film partying in an (apparently really existing) Apocalypse Now-themed bar in Ho Chi Minh City. Once they exit the bar, the first thing we see are the bright lights of McDonald's and other American multinationals. It'll be the only thing we'll see of Vietnam's capital.

283. In the Company of Men

Song - Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) (The Beatles)

Movie: In the Company of Men (Neil LaBute, 1997)

Chad (Aaron Eckhart) is a business graduate who can meet women coasting on his professional, cool look and his ability to fake charm and confidence, but it's easy to believe these relationships end sooner rather than later. He is selfish, egotistical, arrogant and willing to exploit any inkling of power for his own gain. Howard (Matt Malloy) is his schlubby college buddy and work colleague. We get the sense that he's always operated in Chad's shadow, picking up the breadcrumbs he leaves behind, without ever really thinking for himself or developing a real identity. Their work trip to Fort Wayne for a project supervised by Howard is an opportunity for change, but even before they set foot in the office they revert to their traditional ways. Chad proposes to amuse themselves by wooing the most vulnerable woman they can find, showering her with love and attention, and breaking up with her when she falls in love with them. He reasons it would be great revenge for their recent breakups. Of course, 'Howie' goes along. 

Howard and Chad spend most of their time demeaning other colleagues and their job, taking personal calls, chiding their minions, having lunch, taking smoke breaks, playing golf and courting Christine (Stacy Edwards), the deaf typist in their office. Most of these activities border on the nihilistic and serve as nothing but fuel for their personal ego's and sense of superiority. However, sleeping with other women is easy, but when your objective is love, that takes work. Howard and Chad have never done that work, and their relationship with Christine forces them to adjust their behavior. They actually listen and respond to her emotional needs. They adjust to her speech impediment and make her feel good about herself. Chad becomes intrigued to know more about how deaf people communicate and how they watch movies, while Howard teaches himself the basics of sign language. Though they neither can't nor want to articulate it without layers upon layers of irony, they like the feelings of care and love their relationship with Christine evokes in them, and they like the opportunity to explore a different side of themselves. Chad is not entirely sure whether he wants to fully accept that side and tries to have his cake and eat it for as long as he can. When he is forced to drop the charade, he transforms in a split second from a caring lover into a raging mysoginist, providing Eckhart's best and most disturbing 'Two-Face' performance of his career. 

LaBute likes to explore to what extent character/psychology breeds behavior and whether people can become good and caring if they make a conscious effort to do so. Howard can't, despite trying real hard, and when he screams at Christine that she is "fucking handicapped", the film's suggestion is that she is not the only one.  It sees Howard's inability to choose a different kind of life, unaffected by the forces that have confined him, as a form of disability, especially emphasised during the final scenes showing his emotional impotence making him literally sick. In the Company of Men is a good film about mysoginist attitudes, male rage, abuse of power and how all of these are enabled by the patriarchal hierarchies of corporate culture. Many films have been made about abusive men though, What makes this one special is LaBute's willingness to explore what happens when men (or even people in general) choose to step outside of the norms and values of their culture, and how they can give themselves cover to do so. When people act against the expectations of their in-group, that raises all kinds of uncomfortable questions they prefer not to answer, risking both their self-identity and their social acceptance. So if you want to try out how it feels to be more sensitive and caring towards women, wouldn't you hide it in a mysoginistic game? Maybe these aren't Chad's intentions, but would it look any different if they were? The ending certainly allows for such an intepretation, and if you wanna have some fun going out on a limb you could also see these ideas reflected by some of LaBute's aesthetic choices. 

It would make sense for a film about the abuse of a deaf person to go the extra mile to be accessible to deaf people, but the crowd of 90's indie cool kids LaBute tried to make his name in would definitely look slightly down on such concerns.  However, as In the Company of Men is his debut feature and an adaptation of his own play it has a good excuse to mostly consist of statically filmed dialogue, set in/against deeply ordinary backgrounds. An added benefit is that this gives the impression that some of the most hateful shit you'll ever hear is nothing more than an unremarkable commonplace experience, giving the film the edgy appeal it seeks. 'Coincidentally', LaBute's approach also makes it easier for deaf people to follow the film, as in most scenes they can read the actors' lips. Maybe that's not LaBute's intention, but would it look any different if it were? Well, the scene in which Christine explains to Chad that she follows most films by reading lips is shot from high up, making it impossible for anyone to read the actors' lips, in the process reinforcing the film's core idea that caring about other people's needs is a choice you can or can not make. 

282. The Happy Ending

Song - Just A Little Bit Of Peace In My Heart (Golden Earring)

Movie: The Happy Ending (Richard Brooks, 1969)

I recently saw The Producers for the first time, and found it absolutely wonderful, for more than just the obvious reasons. It's no surprise that Gene Wilder can be hysterical (and wet!) or that Mel Brooks is capable of writing an absolutely brilliant parody of Nazi propaganda (the Oscars are cowards for not nominating Springtime for Hitler for Best Song), but I probably laughed most during Dick Shawn's audition scene. I had never heard of Shawn before, but he is fantastic as a hippie so oblivious to his ridiculousness that the audience misinterprets his earnest performance for a comedic one. Some of Shawn's stand up comedy is on YouTube and it's easy to see why when he collapsed and died on stage people thought it was part of his act. It's fun to see him in a small role in The Happy Ending, partly because he plays an almost equally oblivious character, though in an entirely different register. He is a married tax consultant who puts so much effort in conveying the sarcasm behind his constant self-deprecating jokes, he completly fails to realise that everything he says comes off as a confession of his (professional and personal) dishonesty. 

Shawn's performance is mucb more subtle than the movie itself, which finds Mary (Jean Simmons) and Fred (John Forsythe) Wilson on the brink of a failed marriage. She is younger than him and has turned to pills, alcohol and cosmetic interventions to ease her sorrows. On the day of their 16th anniversary she spontaneously books a one-way ticket to the Bahamas, leaving Fred, their daughter and her mom (Teresa Wright) in despair.  Simmons and Forsythe are quite good and affecting as people who genuinely love each other, and can't understand, despite their best efforts, why they are unhappy together. The movie should have been on their level, but it acts as if it knows exactly what's ailing them: marriage is a form of consumerism devised by American capitalists to sell houses and beauty products, that is incompatible with human desires and behaviour. While it's true that contemporary western societies have a lot of incentives in place that put some pressure on people to marry, there is plenty to argue with the film's reasoning, even aside from marriage being highly valued in communist societies as well. 

A film can overcome making a bad argument though. What it can't overcome is pounding you over the head with it. Almost every line serves to drive the same point home, leading to completely unnatural dialogue and to de-individualised characters. Brooks finds that all people respond in exactly the same way to marriage and have the exact same problems, and that individual behavior or psychology don't play any role here.  Aside from being unfair to Simmons and Forsythe who do their utmost best to create specific characters, this approach also renders moot the film's non-linearity. It doesn't matter how when, or from which perspective facts are revealed, if all facts lead to the same conclusions anyway. Rumors may be more revealing. Allegedly, the much older Brooks made the film because Simmons' alcohol issues had put a strain on their marriage. With that in mind, The Happy Ending can be seen as Brooks' equivalent of Robin Williams telling Matt Damon it's not his fault in Good WIll Hunting, which makes it a rather nice gesture. As Joan Didion's famous quote puts it, we tell ourselves stories in order to live. 

Besides, the film is only tedioius when people open their mouths. Its prologue, set almost entirely to Michel Legrand's score, detailing the courtship of Mary and Fred is rather beautiful and extremely romantic. It lets Forsythe and Simmons express their love for each other purely thorugh their body language and their gestures. It ends with a touch I've never seen before. Once it reaches their wedding, it shows that on just one half of the screen, with the other half being reserved for a montage of wedding scenes from classic Hollywood movies. One of those scenes is followed by a title card stating 'The End' which then occupies the entire half of the screen next to Mary and Fred giving each other their wedding vows. It's the first hint of the film's blunt messaging, but on a purely cinematic level it works incredibly well, as a slightly disorienting jolt that makes you pay attention. 

281. Nights of Cabiria

Song - Another Day In Paradise (Phil Collins)

Movie: Nights of Cabiria - Le notti di Cabiria (Federico Fellini, 1957)

Casting Shirley MacLaine in Sweet Charity must have been one of the most self-evident decisions in Hollywood history. Nights of Cabiria plays like a Chaplin movie with MacLaine at her most irascible in the role of the Tramp. The film, and Gulietta Masina's great performance in it, works so well because of its sparseness, making the choice to turn its American remake into a lavishly produced Hollywood musical much less self-evident. Masina is free to overwhelm the screen with her incessantly earnest emotionality, without being distracted by anything that doesn't belong there. More importantly, her Cabiria's angry, proudly disagreaable attitude is a necessity, and an entirely understandable response to her surroundings. She lives in a traveller's encampment on the outskirts of Rome in a barely functional cabin that is still preferable to living in the surrounding caves. As a prostitute she's earned enough to be able to own her shelter, but still has to spend most of her life on the streets, where she is constantly exploited by men, both clients and not. 

The film essentially presents several episodes in Cabiria's life that mostly follow the same pattern. Circumstances beyond her control create an opportunity for her to improve her financial or romantic prospects, she puts her entire being into trying to make the most of it, only for other circumstances beyond her control to put an end to her hopes and dreams, sometimes in deeply humiliating ways. Though Chaplin movies have similar structures, the Tramp usually responds to his misfortunes with an open-hearted, gracefully self--effacing, humanity, while Cabiria doesn't let you look away from her hurt, anger and irrationality while turning combative. In either case, both characters defiantly will not let life bring them down, whatever happens. For this reason, the ending doesn't entirely work for me. For the most part, whatever challenges Cabiria faces, they feel like they flow organically out of the film's milieu and its characters. That is not the case for Oscar's (Francois Perier) final act, that feels forced by Fellini to create the ultimate tragedy in which Cabiria is doomed forever in a perpetual cycle of misery, rather than as an honest expression of Oscar's feelings towards Cabiria. 

The opening half hour however gives the impression that this is going to be one of the great masterpieces, with Fellini translating Masina's unpent energy and outlook to his depiction of the streets of Rome. The city is her workplace, but also a not entirely comprehensible world that exists outside her ordinary reality, where there is potential to burst in a spontaneous dance, meet the nouveau riche, and encounter exotic showgirls from unknown corners of the the world. In these scenes Fellini integrates a sort of manic metatextual expressionism withiin the usual context of Italian neo-realism, giving a glimpse of how a 1950's Michael Mann movie could have looked like. After the visit to Alberto Lazzari's (Amedeo Nazzari, playing apprently a version of himself with a wonderful combination of sleaze and charm) extravagant villa, Fellini only ocassionally returns to this approach, settling for a more conventional style that still showcases why post-war Italian cinema has become so influential. Among other things, he keeps framing his characters against the backdrop of construction projects, railways and other symbols of Italy's rapid industrialisation during the 1950's/60s. It's a metter of time before the travellers' encampment will be replaced by apartment flats, but whether Cabiria will get to live in those is a whole other question.