Cabiria

Cabiria (1914) is Giovanni Pastrone's silent Italian epic, free to watch online on iFILM. During the Second Punic War, an eruption of Etna buries the Sicilian house of the patrician Batto. His little daughter Cabiria survives in her nurse's arms, only to be seized by Carthaginian pirates and carried across the sea.

Sold into slavery, the child is marked for sacrifice to the fire-god Moloch. A Roman spy named Fulvius Axilla and his giant slave Maciste pull her from the flames — the role that made Bartolomeo Pagano the screen's first muscleman star. Then fate scatters them: Cabiria is handed to a noblewoman, Maciste is punished for his daring, Fulvius is sent off to fight for Rome. Over two and a half hours the story sweeps through the siege of Syracuse, Hannibal crossing the Alps, and Carthage in flames.

This was one of the most ambitious productions of early cinema: 148 minutes, vast physical sets, and Pastrone's gliding dolly shot that invented a film grammar a decade before Hollywood caught on. The intertitles were penned by the poet Gabriele D'Annunzio. Maciste proved so popular he spun off into his own film series — a character who outlived the movie that birthed him. Stream Cabiria (1914) online on iFILM if you care where the movie spectacle began.