Epic, passion, adventure, and most of all a great, great spectacle. One hundred years after its first release, Cabiria maintains its innovative force and the capacity to make us marvel. Third century B.C.: a Sicilian girl is taken away from her family after the eruption of Etna and sold at the market of Carthage as victim to be sacrified to a bloodthirsty god; the camera then takes the spectator through deserts, palaces, taverns and battlefields while the lives of the leading characters intersect with History (without ever actually showing Rome, which remains a kind of place in the soul). The most important Italian silent film is unforgettable for so many reasons: the staggering sets, the burning fire coming from the mouth of the god Moloch, Giovanni Pastrone’s experimental tracking shots and the impact of D’Annunzio’s words. All very true. But Cabiria is also the film that, only few years after feature-length films were introduced, dared to use a multi-narrative plot achieving a complex yet perfectly coherent result; a thrilling movie with unforgettable characters, especially Maciste, the Numidian slave, and Sophonisba “the blushing bloom of the pomegranate”.

To celebrate Cabiria‘s 100th anniversary, the Museo Nazionale del Cinema is presenting the 1914 version restored in 2006 by Prestech in London with the original orchestral score adapted and revised by Timothy Brock.

Stella Dagna