Cabiria ***** (1914, Lidia Quaranta, Italia Almirante Manzini, Bartolomeo Pagano) – Classic Movie Review 13,988

Giovanni Pastrone’s 1914 Italian megawork Cabiria is the screen’s first silent epic masterpiece, telling the story of Sicilian slave Cabiria (Lidia Quaranta) at the time of the Second Punic War between Carthage and Rome.

Director Giovanni Pastrone’s 1914 Italian megawork Cabiria is written by Gabriele d’Annunzio and Giovanni Pastrone, and stars Lidia Quaranta, Italia Almirante Manzini, and Bartolomeo Pagano.

Behold the tinted and restored version of the screen’s first silent epic masterpiece, telling the story of Sicilian slave Cabiria (Lidia Quaranta) at the time of the Second Punic War between Carthage and Rome (218–202 BC).

Besides its spectacular sets and location work, highlights of land and sea battles, volcanic eruption and Hannibal crossing the Alps, the film makes dramatic use of tracking shots and extensive use of moving cameras, and boasts intertitles by the celebrated writer and poet Gabriele d’Annunzio, who also provided the names for the characters and the film. It features an eruption of Mount Etna, religious rituals in Carthage, Hannibal’s trek across the alps, Archimedes’s defeat of the Roman fleet at the Siege of Syracuse and the Roman general Scipio in North Africa. 

Carolina Catena plays Cabiria as a little girl, whose home is destroyed by the erupting Mount Etna volcano. Abducted and sold in Carthage to be sacrificed in a temple, she is saved by Roman spy Fulvio (Umberto Mozzato,). But Rome and Carthage are at war.

Epic it is, told in five episodes, originally running 200 minutes, though surviving US cuts run 123 minutes.

Maciste first appears in this film, played by Bartolomeo Pagano, apparently discovered working on the docks in Genoa. Instantly popular, he received his own film the following year, launching a series of Maciste movies throughout the silent era. Maciste then famously appeared in the sword-and-sandal boom of 1958 to 1965 in dozens of Italian films set in various locations and eras from ancient Egypt to medieval Japan to the Wild West, and played by Gordon Scott, Kirk Morris, Mark Forest, and Dick Potter.

Gordon Scott stars as Maciste in Maciste cotro il Vampiro.

Cast: Lidia Quaranta, Italia Almirante Manzini, Bartolomeo Pagano, Umberto Mozzato, Vitale de Stefano, Enrico Gemelli, Luigi Chellini, Almirante Manzini, Carolina Catena.

Release date:18 April 1914 (Italy).

A restored version was screened on 27 May 2006 at the Cannes Film Festival, running 190 minutes.

In June 1914, Cabiria was the first movie screened at the White House, when a screening on the South Lawn was viewed by President Wilson, First Lady, Vice President, his wife, members of the Cabinet and their wives from the porch and lawn chairs due to the summer heat. The Birth of a Nation was the first movie actually shown in the White House, in the East Room.

© Derek Winnert 2026 – Classic Movie Review 13,988

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