Cabiria
| Cabiria | |
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| Directed by | Giovanni Pastrone |
| Produced by | Giovanni Pastrone |
| Written by | Gabriele d'Annunzio (portrayed as the "auteur" in this poster) and Giovanni Pastrone (from the works by Emilio Salgari, Gustave Flaubert and Titus Livius) |
| Starring | Bartolomeo Pagano |
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Release date
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Running time
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200 min (original) 137 min (1937 version) 123 min (1990 restoration) 190 min (2006 restoration) |
| Country | Italy |
| Language | Silent film Italian intertitles |
| Budget | 1 million Lira |
Cabiria is a 1914 Italian epic silent film, directed by Giovanni Pastrone and shot in Turin. The film is set in ancient Sicily, Carthage, and Cirta during the period of the Second Punic War (218–202 BC). It follows a melodramatic main plot about an abducted little girl, Cabiria, and features an eruption of Mt. Etna, heinous religious rituals in Carthage, the alpine trek of Hannibal, Archimedes' defeat of the Roman fleet at the Siege of Syracuse and Scipio maneuvering in North Africa. Apart from being a classic on its own terms, the film is also notable for being the first film in which the long-running film character Maciste makes his debut. According to Martin Scorsese, in this work Pastrone invented the epic movie and deserves credit for many of the innovations often attributed to D.W. Griffith and Cecil B. DeMille. Among those was the extensive use of a moving camera, thus freeing the feature-length narrative film from "static gaze".
The historical background and characters in the story are taken from Livy's Ab Urbe Condita (written ca. 27–25 BC). In addition, the script of Cabiria was partially based on Gustave Flaubert's 1862 novel Salammbo and Emilio Salgari's 1908 novel Cartagine in fiamme (Carthage in Flames).
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