Nuovo cinema Paradiso (1988)

Director:

Giuseppe Tornatore

Writers:

Giuseppe Tornatore (story)
Giuseppe Tornatore (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

23 February 1990 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy | Drama | Romance

Tagline:

A celebration of youth, friendship, and the everlasting magic of the movies.

Plot:

A filmmaker recalls his childhood, when he fell in love with the movies at his village's theater and formed a deep friendship with the theater's projectionist.

Plot Keywords:

Projectionist | Village | Young Boy | Film Making | Theater

Awards:

Won Oscar. Another 19 wins & 12 nominations

Cast

Antonella Attili	...	Maria Di Vita - Younger
Enzo Cannavale	...	Spaccafico
Isa Danieli	...	Anna
Leo Gullotta	...	Usher
Marco Leonardi	...	Salvatore 'Toto' Di Vita - Teenager
Pupella Maggio	...	Maria Di Vita - Older
Agnese Nano	...	Elena Mendola
Leopoldo Trieste	...	Father Adelfio
Salvatore Cascio	...	Salvatore 'Toto' Di Vita - Child
Tano Cimarosa	...	Blacksmith
Nicola Di Pinto	...	Village Idiot
Roberta Lena	...	Lia
Nino Terzo	...	Peppino's Father
Jacques Perrin	...	Salvatore 'Toto' Di Vita - Adult
Philippe Noiret	...	Alfredo

Also Known As:

Cinema Paradiso (Australia) (France) (UK) (USA)
Cinéma Paradiso (France)
Cinema Paradiso: The New Version (USA) (director's cut)

MPAA:

Rated R for some sexuality. (director's cut)

Runtime:

155 min | Italy:170 min (extended version) | 124 min (International version)

Country:

Italy | France

Language:

Italian | English | Portuguese

Colour:

Colour

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

Iceland:L | South Korea:15 (director's cut) | Spain:T | South Korea:All (original rating) | West Germany:12 (f) | Italy:T | Argentina:Atp | Australia:PG | Canada:G (Quebec) | Canada:PG | Chile:TE | Finland:S | France:U | Germany:12 | Hong Kong:IIB | Norway:10 | Peru:PT | Singapore:M18 (director's cut) | Singapore:PG | Sweden:11 | UK:15 (director's cut) | UK:PG | USA:PG (original rating) | USA:R (director's cut) (2002)

Filming Locations:

Bagheria, Palermo, Sicily, Italy

Company:

Cristaldifilm

Trivia:

When Salvatore returns to his home and looks at the room his mother prepared for him, there's a picture on the wall from the movie Lo sceicco bianco (1952), a Federico Fellini movie starring Leopoldo Trieste, who plays Father Adelfio in this movie.

Goofs:

Continuity: In the scene of the cinema fire, Alfredo is showing the film to a packed piazza because the theatre is closed for the night but the crowd outside wants more. Yet, when the theatre catches fire crowds of people are shown running OUT of the theatre as young Toto rushes in.

Quotes:

Alfredo: Once upon a time, a king gave a feast. And there came the most beautiful princesses of the realm. Now, a soldier, who was standing guard, saw the king's daughter go by. She was the most beautiful one, and he immediately fell in love with her. But what could a poor soldier do when it came to the daughter of the king...
[...]

Movie Connections:

Referenced in The Holiday (2006)

Cinema Paradiso - Exactly that.

The narrative of Giuseppe Tornatore's 1988 Italian gem is distinctly segmented and effortlessly coherent. Salvatore (Toto) is a successful film director in his 40s. When he learns of the death of a prominent figure from his formative years, he privately reminisces on the highs and lows of growing up in the community he left more than 30 years earlier.

Young Toto, played with delightful enigmatic naturalism by Salvatore Cascio, is pugnacious and mischievous. Raised in a small Sicilian village in the 1940s by his struggling, widowed mother he adores the cinema. He loves film more than anything in the world. He steals his mother's milk money to get into screenings and it's easy to sympathies. The local Cinema Paradiso is a vibrant place where the villagers gather to take in the latest screenings; a place to escape the communistic rule and laugh, whistle, grope, fall in love, breast feed, get drunk – in short, it is a place to live; not merely an extension of the community, but the heart of it.

In one beautifully photographed scene, the Paradiso, already packed, is besieged by villagers desperate to see the film of the week. As the unhappy mob file into the village square, ragged projectionist Alfredo (a wonderfully world-weary Philippe Noiret) cleverly uses a mirror to reflect the image from the cinema screen onto the wall of a house in the square. As the image is redirected, the camera slowly pans with it as it slides and slithers across the walls of the projection booth and out of the window – the movement is utterly sensual and full of life, as though the film itself is seductively slipping out to taste the night.

The first half of Paradiso is perhaps the better, focusing on the frictional friendship of young Toto and Alfredo. The projectionist is at first reluctant to allow Toto into his booth, and refuses to give the young sensate the reels of kissing scenes that local holy man, Father Adelfio, ordered be cut before they could be screened.

Precocious Toto worms his way into the booth, and under Alfredo's wing, after a promise to help the projectionist in a test. A devastatingly cruel twist of fate sees a technically gifted Toto hired as projectionist for the Paradiso, and guided by Alfredo, the cinema continues to thrive.

Adolescent Toto (a perfectly understated Marco Leonardi) has fallen in love. The object of his affection - beautiful student Elena - does not reciprocate, so every night after working the Paradiso he waits outside her window in the hope that she will come around – Toto has lost none of his dogged determination. In the development of this romance, Tornatore uses all the devices and contrivances of a true cinematic love story – it is a technique that at once feels like a tongue in cheek pastiche, and a metaphor for Toto's complete submersion in film. For example, upon hearing that Elena is to leave for University, Toto soliloquizes: 'When will this bloody summer end. In a film, it'd already be over. Cut, and there's a storm.' Without a pause, lightening strikes, and in the resultant downpour Elena unexpectedly arrives and the two passionately kiss – truly the stuff of movies.

Toto is drafted into military service. His absence and subsequent return is marked only by a virtually reclusive Alfredo. In one of the most moving scenes in this utterly moving film, the old projectionist selflessly talks Toto into leaving the small village, to move on, move away and to never "give in to nostalgia" and return.

Toto keeps this promise to Alfredo, until it is no longer necessary to do so. When he does return, thirty years later and by then a successful director, he visits the ruin of the old Paradiso – it is a moment full of emotional symbolism. The concrete lion's mouth through which the films were once projected - a barely concealed metaphor for the power of the projected image - lies crumbled and useless on the ground. It is difficult not to feel that the words spoken to the middle-aged Toto by the old Paradiso owner are the feelings of Tornatore himself: "The world of films has become a memory".

The Cinema Paradiso must have been a glorious place for a young Toto to indulge his love affair with movies. Those early colourful scenes provide a rather stark contrast to the slightly clinical cinema-going experience of today. If people talk, they are shushed. If a couple kiss they should expect an aptly proportioned number of tuts. And God forbid a mobile phone should ring.

Perhaps it was with this in mind that Tornatore made his modern masterpiece. Whatever the reason, the result is a beautifully nostalgic, utterly heart wrenching romantic waltz. Cinema Paradiso is almost certainly the most emotionally engaging film about a love of film ever made.