Nights of Cabiria (1957)

Fellini won back to back, and the second win is arguably the better film. Masina returns as Cabiria, a kind-hearted prostitute in Rome who keeps getting robbed, dumped and humiliated and keeps choosing hope anyway. She won Best Actress at Cannes for it, and her final close-up is one of the great endings in cinema. Pier Paolo Pasolini helped with the street dialogue, which gives the Roman outskirts a scrappy authenticity. If the story feels familiar, that is because Broadway turned it into Sweet Charity.