Cinema Paradiso (1988)

Salvatore Cascio: Salvatore 'Totò' Di Vita - Child

Photos 

Quotes 

• Alfredo : I choose my friends for their looks, my enemies for their intelligence. You're too sly to be my friend. I always tell my children, "Be careful how you choose your friends."

  Salvatore 'Totò' Di Vita - Child : You haven't got any children.

  Alfredo : When I do, I'll tell them.

• Salvatore 'Totò' Di Vita - Child : Don't you like anything about it?

  Alfredo : Oh, you get used to it. Sometimes you can hear that the house if full of people laughing and having fun. Then you're happy too. It makes you feel good to hear them.Like you're the one who made them laugh - who made them forget their troubles. That part I like.

• Alfredo : Now listen. I got into this business at age ten. Back then, we didn't have fancy machines. Movies were silent. You turned the projector by hand with a crank. All the livelong day! And that damn crank was so hard. If you got tired and slowed down a bit, like a shot - voom - everything went up in flames.

  Salvatore 'Totò' Di Vita - Child : So why not teach me? Now that there's no crank and it's easier.

  Alfredo : Because I don't want to. This is no job for you. You're like a slave - and always by yourself. You see a film 100 times. You've nothing else to do. You talk to Greta Garbo and Tyrone Power like an idiot. You work like a dog. Even holidays - Easter, Christmas. You only get Good Friday off. And if they hadn't stuck Christ on a cross we'd even work then.

  Salvatore 'Totò' Di Vita - Child : So why don't you change jobs?

  Alfredo : Because I'm a nitwit. Who else around here could run a projector? Nobody. It takes an imbecile like me. I never had any luck.