Nights Of Cabiria

Federico Fellini - 1957
Opening with an extremely long shot, pans back and forth. Fellini often frames full body and more, the world as the big stage. And then he can move in, really quite close, portraiture at furthest away; here for SRS and eyeline matches, usually strongly shading towards one character, Cabiria.
This is where one should say that Massina's performance is lively, strong, full of joie de vivre, wiping water off the face, hugely expressive eyes, Chaplinesque. Her stlye is almost expressionist, broad. Frankly, I got little out of this; I found it, and her, annoying. This is partly one of the points of the film; how do we react to such a display of innocence? My problem was perhaps more that it seemed to me predictable, for all the pyrotechnics almost tired; the story is hugely predictable.
The grimness that follows is pretty ritual, I'm really not at all sure what the point in the excercise is; perhaps as a social document, fine, but I'd like a bit of a more complex analysis then. The final shot, Fellini's classic music, is again broad, but the look into the camera does some interesting things (by the by, I can't say I picked out special lighting in this scene).