In Nights of Cabiria, the prostitutewho first comforted the hapless husband in Fellini's early film TheWhite Sheik (1952) comes into her own, and holds her own though she iscontinually exploited, robbed, and physically abused by the very men sheloves. Giulietta Masina in one of her finest performances turns a filmabout prostitutes, pimps and johns into an ironically radiant statementabout the indestructibility of the human spirit. Cabiria is five feet ofpure defense; her mantra is, "I have everything I need."Still, the temptation is always to love; Cabiria of the streets in herlittle fur coat in the rain, eleven years before Juliet of the spiritsin her orange collar and matching gloves in the garden, lets down herguard and is literally hypnotized into desire. Nights of Cabiria showshow Fellini transformed the precepts of neorealism into a poetry ofplace-the dusty outpost where Cabiria lives, the slick highways shehaunts at night. Like Augusto in Il Bidone, Cabiria will come in fromthe margins only to be cast out again.