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Cabiria (1914) - Giovanni Pastrone

Related: 1914 - Italian cinema - silent cinema - sword and sandal film

Cabiria (1914) - Giovanni Pastrone


Cabiria is a classic silent movie from the early years of Italy's movie industry, directed by Giovanni Pastrone. It was released in 1914.

The movie is based very loosely on Gustave Flaubert's exotic novel Salammbo. Set in ancient Carthage during the period of the Second Punic War, it treats the conflict between Rome and Carthage through the eyes of Cabiria, the title character, who is kidnapped by pirates, sold as a slave in Carthage, and rescued from being sacrificed to the god Moloch by a Roman nobleman and his muscular slave Maciste. Hannibal and his elephants fit into the convoluted plot of this epic film.

Italian author Gabriele d'Annunzio contributed to the screenplay and wrote all of the placards. The movie was quite inventive and innovating in its cinematography for the time, and was a major influence on Birth of a Nation by D. W. Griffith. The film also marked the debut of the Maciste character, who went on to have a long career in Italian sword and sandal films. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabiria [Jun 2005]

Sword and sandal

Sword and sandal films are a cinematic genre of adventure or fantasy films that have subjects set in Biblical or classical antiquity, often with contrived plots based very loosely on mythology or history. Most movies based on Greco-Roman history and mythology, or the surrounding cultures of the same era (Egyptians, Assyrians, Etruscans, Minoans), etc. are sword and sandal epic films. The greatest productions of this film genre were made during the 1950s, but it has experienced a recent renaissance. Broadly considered, this could compass such diverse films as Ben-Hur, Cleopatra, Titus, or The Ten Commandments. In this sense, it is one of the oldest movie genres; the original Ben-Hur was made by Sidney Olcott in 1907; the 1914 silent film Cabiria was important in the development of the art of cinematography. Another name for the genre is peplum, from a Latin word for a sort of tunic, easy to make, and favoured by the costume departments for these films. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sword_and_sandal [Jun 2005]

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