A Film Canon

For a period when the feature film is still a relatively unique phenomenon, the epic aspirations of Cabiria are frankly astonishing. Pastrone condenses the Second Punic War to a series of immense spectacles, mainly turning on fire (the eruption of Etna, the Temple of Moloch, Archimedes' fire-machine, the burning of the Roman fleet), and tenously connected by the exploits of a young Roman woman, whose hyperbolic encounters reflect the rise of the serial, but don't quite manage to garner the emotional involvement for which they are designed. Interestingly, with the exception of a few tableaux, this panoramic scope is more thematic than stylistic, as Pastrone tends to favour either medium-shots or long-shots so cluttered with people and objects as to remove any real sense of depth, epitomised by his treatment of the siege of Carthage, condensed to one chaotic parapet, and perhaps explaining the prominence of friezes, frescoes, hangings and chalk drawings, into whose lineage of conspicuous, ceremonial two-dimensionality the film frequently seems keen to integrate itself. That said, the spectacular imperative - and, more specifically, the voyeuristic thrill of witnessing history, bolstered by the analogies between the Second Punic and more recent Libyan wars - produces the most mobile, exploratory camera to date, while the sheer wealth of simultaneous activity indicates the sensibility necessary for cross- editing, if not extensive or elaborate cross-editing per se, setting the scene for Intolerance.