Nights of Cabiria

Federico Fellini's Nights of Cabiria won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1957 and Giulietta Masina the Cannes Best Actress prize the same year. The film completes the loose trilogy that began with La Strada and continued with Il Bidone, all featuring Masina in central roles that established her as one of the great post-war screen presences, a performer of clown-like physical mastery and disarming emotional candour, shot through with stubborn hope.

Cabiria is a Roman prostitute working the Passeggiata Archeologica, fiercely resilient, defended by her apartment savings and her own hard-won realism, and yet absolutely unable to give up the dream of being loved. Across episodic encounters, a near-drowning by a crooked boyfriend, a celebrity encounter with the actor Alberto Lazzari, a religious pilgrimage with her fellow streetwalkers, a hypnotism scene in which she reveals her capacity for trust (the film accumulates the case for her endurance. Masina's performance) built around a music-hall comic register that Fellini had developed with her since their stage and radio work in the 1940s, is one of the most-discussed in postwar Italian cinema.

Bob Fosse adapted the film as the Broadway musical Sweet Charity in 1966, with Gwen Verdon and later Shirley MacLaine in Masina's role. But the original is irreplaceable, Masina here, with Nino Rota's score and Aldo Tonti's photography, is one of the elemental performances in cinema.

Why it's an Editor's Pick: The most generous film Fellini ever made. Masina's Cabiria is among the great women of European cinema, and the closing shot is among the great endings, a small miracle of trust in the face of everything.