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, making the choice to turn its American remake into a lavishly produced Hollywood musical much more questionable. Nights of Cabiria, and Giulietta Masina's great perfromance in it, works so well because of its sparseness. 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 ycu 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 more like it is 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 his 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 foreign dancers 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. 

280. On the Beach

Song - Vluchten Kan Niet Meer (Frans Halsema & Jenny Arean)

Movie: On the Beach (Stanley Kramer, 1959)

When an American nuclear submarine docks in Melbourne, it finds its citizens rather unexcited by the approaching end of the world. Nuclear war has wiped out life in all of the northern hemisphere and it's a matter of months until the radioactive fallout will reach Australia, where people await their faith with a dignified resignation. A fuel shortage has left the streets filled with bicycles and horses, moving even slower than usual in scenes that are quietly masterworks of pacing and perfectly timed choreography. Nobody has a spring in their step, yet everyone is still trying to do more than just go thorugh the motions, wonderfully evoking a sense of demure bustle. People still tend to their families and work, run errands, enjoy the beach, make love, and commit to their daily responsibilities. At no point does anyone do anything illegal or out of line with social conventions. Moira (Ava Gardner) is a promiscous drunk, but she had always been that, and the arrival of Dwight Towers (Gregory Peck), the commander of the submarine, may be her chance to find real love at last. 

The social conventions everyone respects are not those of 50's Australia, but of the 50's Hollywood studio system. It's notable that everyone, including characters who are supposed to be English or Australian, speaks with an American accent. It's also notable that nobody ever gets angry at the American submarine crew for maybe being complicit in the apocalypse. Nobody blames the Sovjets either, all of it is chalked up as an immensly tragic accident, and it never becomes clear who started the war, or why. The stale, actively inoffensive formality of the film's politics, style and characters is sometimes a bit too much, but it does help make Kramer's less conventional choices more startling and effective. On the Beach looks like it is going to follow a familiar structure. It presents a seemingly totally hopeless situation, until a certain 'revelation' hints that things may not be as dire as they appear, becoming a 'men on a mission movie' where the men on the mission are supposed to heroically improve things through their hardheaded determination. However, commander Towers and his crew never get to showcase any determination and this subplot only serves to highlight that even the idea of hope is completely ridiculous in these circumstances, a point Kramer keeps reinforcing. The film has no interest in offering even the slightest possibility of a way out. 

Apocalyptic fantasies have always existed, partly because they allow people to imagine that the fate of the world may depend on their actions and that they will belong to a very special 'last' generation.  Most narratives about the apocalypse reflect that and are about people finding meaning in their lives, becoming heroes, asserting their true personalities or simply about spectacular sights and sounds never before seen. The famous saying 'it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism' means to imply that capitalism has become so entrenched in our daily lives that it is hard to imagine an alternative to it. There is a lot of truth in that, but it's also the case that many people would much rather imagine the end of the world, because it gives them more freedom to indulge in their most irresponsible, incredible fantasies. I think it's worth researching to what extent climate change doomerism has contributed to the rise of fascist movements around the world and quite appreciated On the Beach's coomplete refusal to indulge in any fantasy that would make the end of the world feel in any way meaningful - it doesn't even show a dead body. Life remans as mundane and insignificant as usual, people are just slightly sadder.  As one character exclaims, "there is a lot of bureaucracy still, you know?", and indeed even in the final days people are still standing duly in line to receive the suicide pills from the government officials handing them out.