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Italy

Cabiria begins with a screen that gives some of the film's history and explains that the Italian film industry was "spurred by a victory in the Libyan war". It goes on to explain that this is one of many large scale historical dramas made prior to World War one and that this film was one of the inspirations for D.W. Griffith's "Intolerance" {a historical drama set on a huge scale that cost so much to make and made so little money that it nearly ended Griffith's career.} then gives some of the technical details of the version on this disk.

The first intertitle tells us that Batto has just returned to his garden at Catana. Cut to a really lavish Roman street scene in which we meet Batto then to a scene in which we meet Cabiria, his daughter {Carolina Catena as a youngster and Lidia Quaranta in later life}, and her nurse Croessa {Gina Marangoni}.

Suddenly, the peaceful scene is interrupted by an earthquake and a nearby volcano begins to erupt. Rather than running, Batto offers up prayers to the gods but apparently this only works for a while. The family's awakened that night when the volcano erupts in earnest and the city is thrown into chaos and flames. The servants escape through a hidden passageway that opens up in the floor but, unfortunately for Batto, the passageway leads through his treasure room so the servants, Croessa and Cabiria amongst them, take time to rob him blind as they go. There are many nice scenes of the city falling down around its citizen's heads here.

When the whole thing finally blows over, Cabiria's family believes her to be dead and there's a short scene of mourning. Cut to the servants dividing their ill-gotten gain. The refugees discover a ship that's been left empty by Phoenician pirates but are just a little slow about getting it into the water. When the pirates come back and discover them in the act of stealing their boat, all of the men are slaughtered and Cabiria and Croessa are captured and sold as slaves at the market in Carthage. Shortly after their arrival at the slave market, Karthalo {Dante Testa} buys Cabiria to use as an offering to Moloch.

Fulvius, a Roman {Umberto Mozzato}, lives in Carthage where he operates as a spy for his own empire. Cut to the innkeeper Bodastoret {Raffaele di Napoli} who runs the inn where Fulvius and his slave Maciste {Bartolomeo Pagano} happen to be staying. After several scenes of happy life at the inn we cut to Karthalo's temple and the selection of Cabiria to be in the next group to be sacrificed. In a scene that's fairly risque for the times, Croessa is beaten for attempting to protect Cabiria but manages to escape and contact Fulvius as well as to convince him to rescue the little girl.

Cut to the Temple of Moloch where a long stream of small children are tossed into the furnace. Cabiria is rescued by Maciste just as her turn comes to be tossed into the flames. This is followed by some nifty footage of the escape in which the rescuer's crawl around on a Sphinx-like temple. Croessa doesn't fare all that well in the escape. Cut to Hannibal {Emilio Vardannes}in the "sacred mountains" as he masses his forces to attack Rome. Bodastoret warns Fulvius, who's in hiding at his inn, of this and Fulvius readies to escape back to Rome. Cut to Sophonisba {Italia Almirante-Manzini}, the daughter of Hansdrubal {Edoardo Davesnes} and something of a love story...

Eventually, this incorporates all sorts of intrigue and espionage as well as battle scenes and everything we've learned to expect from historical dramas. In addition to huge and lavish sets, this includes all of the action sort of thing that's so common in early film: people escaping by jumping from the top of a cliff into the waters below, swordplay, ancient temples and horrible gods, torture, bloodshed, flaming battleships, death, destruction, violence, damsels in distress and so on.

The acting's surprisingly good for one of these films, the cast is huge and you can tell they didn't spare any expense at putting this together. Kino Video's done a nice job of putting this onto a DVD as well. If you're a fan of ancient, epic, action stuff, and don't especially need Douglas Fairbanks or Hollywood, you might like this. Do expect a silent film and a large helping of cheesiness but, you can also expect a really impressive movie.