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Giulietta Masina glows as a Chaplinesque prostitute in Fellini's newly restored "Nights of Cabiria." BY STEPHANIE ZACHAREK | The little house belonging to the title character in Federico Fellini's "Nights of Cabiria" rises out of the landscape on the edge of a desolate yet oddly cheerful little Roman neighborhood, like one of the solitary, boxy buildings that dot the horizon in a Krazy Kat cartoon. It's a cube built out of something like stucco, with a curtain of beads hanging like a shimmer of fake rain in front of its simple door -- part jazzed-up fairy-tale cottage, part Spartan make-do dwelling. For its owner, the love-starved yet emotionally self-sufficient prostitute Cabiria, played by Giulietta Masina, in the role of her career, the house represents security and pride, a place to return to that's all her own, like the tiny studio apartment of any city working girl. But is the house meant to signify isolation as a protective measure, or the sense of feeling truly at home with oneself? Or both? That conflict lies at the heart of what may be Fellini's loveliest and most moving picture, made in 1957 and currently making the rounds of theaters across the country in a beautifully restored (and long overdue) version distributed by Rialto Pictures (the company partially responsible, along with Strand Pictures, for last year's restored re-release of Jean-Luc Godard's "Contempt"). Maybe what's so wrenching is that the house in "Nights of Cabiria" does symbolize both: Isolation can be a way to hide from pain and involvement, but there are also times when no one seems to deserve our company, when solitude -- a deep sense of being at home with oneself -- is preferable to anything else. "Even as a child, I couldn't help but notice who didn't fit in for one reason or another -- myself included," Fellini says in Charlotte Chandler's 1995 book "I, Fellini." "In life, and for my films, I have always been interested in the out-of-step. Curiously, it's usually those who are either too smart or are too stupid who are left out. The difference is, the smart ones often isolate themselves, while the less intelligent ones are usually isolated by the others." In "Nights of Cabiria," Fellini weighs the cost of both isolation and connection, but it's such a graceful picture that his technique comes off as anything but ponderous -- it's more like a graceful soft-shoe, a muted shuffle on a sandy floor. "Nights of Cabiria" is almost vaudevillian in its structure and sometimes in its tone. It's not that it's broad or obvious -- it's that Fellini lets the story of Cabiria unfold as a series of discrete but connected episodes. N E X T_P A G E _| Cabiria on her "beat"

PHOTO COURTESY OF RIALTO PICTURES | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED