Cabiria (1914)

Originally posted to Facebook on 5/4/2016

Cabiria was our final film from 1914, and, I believe, the third ancient historical epic we’ve seen, after The Last Days of Pompeii and Judith of Bethulia. Like The Last Days of Pompeii this was an Italian film, and had at least one actor in common with that film. It is most famous for its use of a moving camera. After all of the other silent features and shorts that we’ve seen over the last several months, in which camera motion was limited to an occasional pan, or a camera fixed to a train or other moving vehicle, it was truly jarring to see the camera zoom into a scene or glide from one part of the set to another. I don’t know how quickly this was adopted by the movie industry at large -- even today a lot of films are rather static -- but one can only imagine how electrifying it was to audiences at the time. The storytelling itself was not as anywhere near as innovative, but it was an improvement on the previous two epics of its kind that we’d seen. Like The Last Days of Pompeii, this movie also featured an exploding volcano -- Etna this time -- and the collapsing buildings and general destruction were similar to the earlier film, but more extensive and convincing. The sets in general were also more lavish, including particularly the temple of Moloch. The sacrificing of struggling children one-by-one, with the priest throwing them into an oven set into the belly of a demon statue was surprisingly decadent and dark. (The prayers to Moloch referred to him as a great devil and used other insulting terms, which the kids pointed out was perhaps not the best way to win his favor, regardless of how many delicious children you sacrifice to him.) Alli must have just had a unit in school about Greek architecture, because she pointed out various columns and identified them as Doric or Ionic. At one point there were two columns carved into the shape of giant cats. I asked her what type of columns those were. “Ionic,” she said. “Anytime it’s carved into something, it’s Ionic.”

Sad to say, there were a number of characters representing various ethnicities who were played by actors who had darkened their skin. This was fairly distracting, and required periodic pausing of the TV to provide explanations to the kids. At another point a greedy and cowardly innkeeper has what appears to be Hebrew lettering outside of his inn, indicating that this was probably supposed to be a negative Jewish portrayal. The plot was also at times a little confusing, and the title cards were overly verbose, and often written in a weird high-flown poetic style that was not always clear. The movie’s namesake, Cabiria, is a little girl who is separated from her Roman parents at an early age, and ends up with the Carthaginians. She, however, does not get much screen time, and her story is interrupted with other plot arcs, and a fair amount of overly detailed geopolitics. At one point Hannibal’s elephants are shown, and at another Archimedes makes an unexpected appearance with his ship-burning mirrors. (Though who better than Archimedes to send the movie off onto a tangent?)

So, anyway, that concludes 1914 for us. In the real world WW1 was just beginning, but we’ve seen no reference to that in any film to date. I imagine we’ll see it soon. Next week we begin 1915 with Regeneration, an early gangster feature -- some claim it as the first -- directed by Raoul Walsh, who went on to direct many famous films well into the sound era. I’ve also added films from 1916 to the spreadsheet, which is shared here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT