The aesthetics of black and white cinema I watched the director's version of the film, a two-hour one. She discovered a new genre of cinema – “peplum”. This is a monumental historical drama on biblical or ancient subjects, in which a large crowd is involved.
Do any of us remember an ancient god like Moloch? Meanwhile, as early as the third century B.C., hundreds of children were regularly sacrificed to this overlord at a time. They were burned. One hundred innocent children, usually bought on the slave market. And that was considered normal. This is about the manners and boundaries of permitted. I assume that in a few hundred years the descendants will be horrified by our foundations of life.
Carthage is a great city of the past, the capital of the eponymous state founded by the Phoenicians, one of the largest powers of the Mediterranean. According to legend, in the ninth century BC, Queen Dido, who fled to these places from Tyre, decided to buy land for the foundation of the city. She was allowed to take as much land as a bull’s skin could cover. The fancier cut the bull skin into thin straps, tied them and the resulting long rope marked her possessions. By the beginning of the third century BC, Carthage had become the largest state in the western Mediterranean. Its location between Sicily and the coast of present-day Tunisia made it possible to control ships passing by. It is this time of prosperity and is shown in the film.
After the eruption of the volcano, his beloved daughter disappears from the house of the Roman patrician Batto. Everyone thinks it's buried under rubble and ash. In fact, she is kidnapped and sold into slavery. First she goes to the temple of Moloch, then to Princess Sofonisba. The grown-up girl is saved by heroes - the Roman patrician Fulvius Axilla and his slave-giant Mazistus. Bartolomeo Pagano starred as Macista. The whole movie is in a loincloth, it is impossible to come off. A true alpha male.
"Cabiria" is striking in its scale. Stunning scenery – temples, buildings, palaces; costumes, jewelry, real snow-capped mountain peaks, camels, a live cheetah in the frame, decorative white pigeons, the eruption of Mount Etna, hundreds of extra actors – and this is all in the era of pre-computer technology. You forget that the movie came out in 1914. Real circus tricks, no insurance. Desperate people.
And acting, although the movie is silent, without grinding, twitching, wringing hands - a real art of facial expressions, hand movements, body turns. It's like the actors are dancing. Beautiful.
I recommend it. Classic.