Lo spazio mobile. Del montaggio e del carrello in Cabiria

This essay is the result of a comparative study of the film Cabiria and its out-takes (i.e. its footage excluded from its final cut) and it demonstrates to such extent the staging of this Italian film released in 1914 is based on a peculiar form of spatial composition in depth. Notably, it demonstrates that Cabiria and its “carrello” achieve an ideal of three-dimensional spatial representation “with limited circularity” (or without centering), which, while allowing the spectator to get closer to the scene, never situates the spectatorial instance at the center of the action. Cabiria, then realizes an ideal of spatial representation within which the mobility of the space is obtained differentry than by the succession of shots and change in viewpoints. Therefore, even if traditional historians of cinema generally consider the carrello as an ancestor of the traveling shot, such would not be the case according to the authors of this essay. Even if it is indubitably part of the family of camera movements, and even if it implies the movement of a camera on a moving device as in a traditional tracking shot, the cabirian carrello is endowed with several specific characteristics that make it a unique case in the history of cinema.