By casting the diminutive, clown-visaged, essentially sexless Giulietta Masina as his prostitute [in Le Notti di Cabiria], Fellini has automatically divorced himself from the currently fashionable exploitation of lurid themes. His treatment is neither sensual nor sentimental. By depicting Cabiria's spirited recovery from her ludicrous betrayal, Fellini indicates his concern with the indestructibility of his heroine, and by implication, of the human spirit generally. We sense that Cabiria's dunking in the stream is not her first setback, and Fellini quickly insures that it shall not be her last. (p. 19)

God enters Cabiria's life in the guise of a miracle-seeking procession to a shrine of the Virgin Mary. Here Fellini divides his attention between Cabiria, who prays for the intangible miracle of a new life, and a crippled procurer and dope-peddler, who has come to have his limbs healed. In a brilliantly composed and edited passage, Cabiria and the procurer alternately struggle through a milling, hysterical crowd of pentitents to reach the altar. At the edge of one overhead shot, an elaborate loudspeaker subtly mocks the spontaneity of the occasion. The forward motion of the scene relentlessly accelerates until the procurer throws away his crutches and collapses, writhing and threshing briefly on the floor before Fellini tastefully fades out the scene.

Fellini's treatment of this episode is crucial to an understanding of his general position. Although he does not believe in the more obvious manifestations of the miraculous (he was the author of Rossellini's controversial work, The Miracle), Fellini does not indulge in De Sica's sly anti-clericalism. The problem for Fellini is one of individual faith rather than social responsibility. The emotional power of the religious spectacle he creates suggests that God is sanctioned by man's need for faith, possibly even that God was created by man to supply hope for a better life. Fellini never spells out his personal commitments, but he seems to accept the Church as part of the furniture of his environment. There are indications in Cabiria as well as La Strada that Fellini is more kindly disposed to the humanistic influences within the Church than to its authoritarian dogmas. A mendicant friar whom Cabiria meets on a lonely road has a greater impact on her soul than all the elaborate machinery of the miracle festival. However, like Cabiria and Gelsomina and the nun in La Strada who shares Gelsomina's sense of rootlessness, the friar is something of an outcast in the eyes of the Church. To accept the universality of these people as Fellini apparently does, it is necessary to consider the notion that in some sense we are all outcasts in our moments of loneliness and in the individual paths we follow to our salvation. In any event, by stressing the pugnaticy and indestructibility of Cabiria, Fellini comes closer to creating a viable symbol of humanity than does De Sica with his whining protagonist in The Bicycle Thief. (pp. 19-20)

In Cabiria one sees the familiar landmarks of the anarchic sub-world of Fellini's imagination. Empty fields, roads, and streets set off by solitary travelers and distant buildings convey an image of the world as a lonely desert peopled by insubstantial De Chirico figures vainly striding towards mathematically improbable intersections of humanity. In such a world, social theories are meaningless since society itself seems to exist beyond the horizon of any given individual. Personal relationships, however tenuous, achieve an exaggerated intensity, and the mystiques of romantic illusion and religious faith become the indispensable components of existence. This would be a forbiddingly dismal view of life if Fellini did not provide compensations with a rich sense of humor and a perceptive eye for colorful detail. Fellini does not merely assert that life is worth living under the worst circumstances: he demonstrates the strange joys which flourish in the midst of loneliness and suffering. Without this demonstration, Cabiria would be an unbearably sadistic experience.

Fellini's work since The White Sheik has been a continuous adventure in symbolism within the framework of unusually complex plots. Yet, Fellini's technique does not lend itself to what we are accustomed to in the way of symbolic imagery. He does not give surfaces or objects any special gloss or lighting to emphasize their significance. There are never any meaningful shadows in a Fellini film, nor any unusual contrasts between sunlight and darkness. His shots, day or night, fall into a neutral zone of grayness. (p. 20)

It is odd to think of Fellini following in the footsteps of the neorealists, but it would be an error to consider his work completely apart from their influence. Indeed, it is the realism in Fellini's technique that enriches his symbols. He does not prettify reality although he tends to control it somewhat more than his predecessors. He does not shrink from dirt or grime or the garish ugliness of stage make-up. Indeed, like most neorealists, Fellini seems more at ease with settings of poverty and moderate means than with citadels of luxury. His cheap, noisy music hall in Cabiria seems more authentic than the plush, unusually quiet night club. Cabiria's drab house seems less of a caricature than the actor's incredibly palatial villa. It is not a question of visual reality, but one of camera treatment. Fellini looks at the poorer settings objectively, picking out their most characteristic elements. However, the luxurious settings are viewed satirically and only their most ridiculous features are emphasized.

Similarly, in Cabiria at least, the upper class people—the actor and his mistress—are seen mechanically from the viewpoint of a lowly wide-eyed prostitute. Fellini's unwillingness to study a wider range of social strata does not imply an inability to do so. Still, with all its merits, Cabiria may represent the point at which Fellini's concern with the stragglers of society begins to yield diminishing returns. Somehow Cabiria does not have the feel of greatness that Vitelloni communicates. In Vitelloni every character counts for something and every incident advances toward a common truth. Cabiria is too much of a one-woman show with Giulietta Masina's heroine achieving a sublime illumination while all the other characters linger in the darkness of deception and irresolution. Like La Strada, Fellini's other near-masterpiece, Cabiria has some of the limitations of an acting vehicle that sometimes loses its way on the road of life and forks out into the by-path of a virtuoso performance. (p. 21)