A Closer Look At: Cabiria (1914)
In 1914, most films ranged from one to three reels long–half an hour or less. But as filmmakers were growing more confident about telling longer, more complex stories, the occasional hour-long film was released. Arguably, it was Italy that really got the ball rolling on features that were both lengthy (even crossing the two hour mark) and epic in scale. And in 1914, no film was longer or more epic than the twelve-reel Cabiria (1914), filmed in Turin and set during the Punic Wars of the 3rd century BC.
The film was masterminded by director Giovanni Pastrone, a name that’s rarely heard nowadays even when Cabiria is being discussed. Pastrone grew up with a passion for music (he even handmade his own instruments), and balanced his artistic side by studying accounting. He was clearly attracted to grand, epic stories from history. When he was put in charge of the newly-formed Itala Film Company, he was soon making ambitious shorts like Henry the Third (1909), Julius Caesar (1909) and The Fall of Troy (1911). Likely inspired by lengthy films such as Milano Films’ L’Inferno (1911) and Enrico Guazzoni’s Quo Vadis (1913), he apparently decided he was going to outdo them all.
Pastrone largely drew upon Emilio Salgari’s 1908 novel Carthage in Flames and Gustave Flaubert’s 1862 novel Salammbô. He also convinced famed Italian author Gabriele D’Annunzio to collaborate with him, having him rewrite the title cards and name the characters (which included “Cabiria” herself). Having D’Annunzio’s name attached to the film gave it extra gravitas, although it did result in Patrone’s own name being overshadowed–as it tends to be to this very day.
Told in five parts (or “episodes”), Cabiria follows a wealthy Roman family whose home in Sicily is destroyed during the eruption of Mount Etna. They mourn the apparent loss of their little daughter, Cabiria, not knowing that she escaped with some of the family’s servants. Cabiria is captured by Phoenician pirates who sell her as a slave in Carthage, and she narrowly escapes becoming a human sacrifice during a pagan ritual to the god Moloch. Ten years pass, during which we see recreations of such famed historical events as Hannibal crossing the Alps and the siege of Syracuse, when Archimedes’ “heat ray” mirrors were used to set Roman ships on fire. (A title card states: “A device, never before seen is suddenly, divinely revealed…”)
The film is practically stuffed with characters, from Roman spies to slaves to Hasdrubal the brother of Hannibal, but fortunately the character of Cabiria gives the film a unifying thread. Pastrone made his film as grand as he could, especially considering the limitations of film technology at the time. His smooth, stately tracking shots helped popularize moving camera techniques, and other effects included the careful use of miniatures. Crowds of extras were enlisted and a number of people also did their own stunts. Scenes at seaside cliffs, mountains and deserts added grandeur and authenticity.
And of course, befitting its status as an epic, there were some impressive large-scale sets. In the film’s most famous sequence, the young Cabiria is sold to the high priest Karthalo and brought to the Temple of Moloch. The enormous temple set, with its entrance shaped like the three-eyed, bull-headed god’s massive open mouth, is still astonishing today. Scenes showing the bronze statue of Moloch, with its chest that yawns open so child sacrifices can be slid into its interior furnace, are among the most iconic in early film.
Cabiria premiered in grand style at the Teatro Vittorio Emmanuele in Turin, accompanied by an 80-piece orchestra and a choir of 70 (a special score had been written by Ildebrando Pizzetti). In Rome, airplanes dropped flyers on the city to hail its coming. It would end up being a worldwide hit, often playing for weeks in theaters in a time when many films were shown for a day or two. Critics were in awe–an article in Motion Picture News said: “The picture well-nigh beggars description. Words are feeble in their capacity to convey the impressions created by the series of stupendous spectacles which are here welded together into one gigantic photodrama by the shrewdest craftsmen of Italy’s motion picture world.” A writer for Moving Picture World was equally effusive: “Summing up it may well be said that Cabiria ranks in the very first flight of the masterpieces of kinematographic art. Nor must I omit a tribute to Italy, the country which has given us all our greatest classics in films.”
Cabiria would influence countless “spectaculars” that followed it, most notably Intolerance (1916) with its grand scenes set in ancient Babylon. Today it survives in good condition, easy to find and watch on our 21st century devices. The acting seems far more stilted than it was in 1914, and the archetypical characters seem more remote. But there’s still elegance in its cinematography and art direction and the stunts are timelessly impressive. Watching it today, I quickly understand what Roger Ebert meant when he wrote: “The movie feels old, and by that I mean older than 1914. It feels like a view of ancient times, or at least of those times as imagined a century ago. We are looking into two levels of a time machine.”
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–Lea Stans for Classic Movie Hub
You can read all of Lea’s Silents are Golden articles here.
Lea Stans is a born-and-raised Minnesotan with a degree in English and an obsessive interest in the silent film era (which she largely blames on Buster Keaton). In addition to blogging about her passion at her site Silent-ology, she is a columnist for the Silent Film Quarterly and has also written for The Keaton Chronicle.
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