Greatest Movie of All Time of the Week: Cabiria!

<6'0" tinder profiles be like

The greatest movie of the 1910s may also be the greatest Roman epic ever filmed. Set against the auspicious backdrop of the Second Punic War (the one with Scipio and Hannibal), 1914's Cabiria so impressed D.W. Griffith that he ripped it off wholesale for his Intolerance (also worth a spin when you have four hours to spare). Nor was that the limit of its influence: Fellini named his Nights of Cabiria in tribute to it, and its breakout character Maciste became a staple of entirely unrelated spinoffs set in any and all periods in history. It's also likely that Fritz Lang ripped off the Moloch sequence for his Metropolis. Yet today Cabiria is rarely fêted among self-styled cinéastes, and unknown among normals. This is a travesty because not only was it a spectacular display of technique in its day, but it remains as pacy and exciting an adventure as you'll find (at least the two-hour cut I've seen is; versions up to 200 minutes long may exist or have existed).

These stills go harder than every movie since 2008 combined.

The plot consists in several grandiose setpieces loosely strung together with the common theme of buddy heroes Fulvius Axila and his slave Maciste trying to rescue the titular character from sacrifice at the hands of the priests of Moloch. Establishment ""historians"" tried to deny for decades if not centuries that the Phoenician colony of Carthage practiced child sacrifice before being utterly BTFO the fuck out by archaeological proof (the same thing would later happen with the Aztecs, with the spin machine proclaiming Spanish records of pillars of skulls mere fabricated propaganda, until the edgy decor in question was unearthed, prompting a sulky retreat to "well, it probably took them a long time to build them"). So while the conflation of Carthaginian rites with the worship of Moloch in particular might be artistic license, Carthage really was that bad.

When you watch the kino, blast some doom metal or "Night on Bald Mountain" or something over this sequence. The standard plinky-plonky piano music isn't going to cut it.

While Fulvius and Maciste provide us with a throughline, stumbling about amidst the chaos and upheaval of the war a bit like Frodo and Sam, whole sequences are offered up just for the spectacle of it all. The opening volcanic eruption sets a high bar, but the burning of the Roman fleet by the devices of Archimedes and the climactic siege are no less ostentatious or impressive.

Italy could pull this off in 1914 and you can't put down that Twinkie.

In the 1910s movie cameras weighed as much as the moon and camera movements were as rare in any given movie as in any given Ozu kino. Cabiria's camera movements were so frequent and ambitious for the time it feels less dated than a lot of 1930s flicks.

This was to 1910s viewers what 2001's star gate was to 1960s viewers or what Gollum was to 2000s viewers. For my younger readers, try to imagine anything being exciting. That's what it was like.

Anyway, watch Cabiria.