August 2027, 1998
movie shorts
recommended
The heroine of Federico Fellini's episodic, sweetly bitter 1957 classic is a dumpy little Roman streetwalker, always defeated in her quest for love but somehow never destroyed. Fellini gave his wife, Giulietta Masina, the role of a lifetime, and she went to town with it; it's hard to say whether she's well lit or if the glow comes from inside her. Then again, the entire movie glows with the love of humanity, even at its frequent worst. This revival restores a key episode, involving a lone Good Samaritan and the wretched of the earth (a foreshadowing, perhaps, of Cabiria's future). See it, quickly.
—Sol Louis Siegel

