Cabiria Review - Michael Kachanyuk

 "Cabiria" is an Italian silent movie set in the Punic wars between mighty Rome and Carthage. The story follows the main characters Cabiria, Fulvio, and our grand macho man Maciste as they try to escape from the evil Carthaginians. I enjoyed the movie Cabiria quite a lot and it was a massive improvement from the short silent movie about Mark Antony and Cleopatra that was released just a year prior. The movie Cabiria improves on film techniques such as camera angle, movement, scale, varied shots, and other such techniques. The camera wasn't static and actively moved around in several scenes to further develop the scene. Several different camera shots were used to expand on the scale of the scenes as well as delve closer at the smaller important details that would've been hidden in static full body shots. The movie also improves on the scale of the scenes by creating vibrant backgrounds that give the shots a 3d look instead of a flat 2d perspective. The addition of comedic jokes in some scenes was a nice touch and also helped reset your focus on the scene. Overall, the movie did not show any major weaknesses or poor uses of some techniques and was quite interesting to watch.  - Michael Kachanyuk

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