CINEMA PARADISO (1988)
Directed and written by Giuseppe Tornatore
Titanus, 124 minutes, R (dumbest rating ever!)
In Italian with subtitles
★★★★★
The holiday season brings out the sentimental softy in all of us, but how many times can you watch It’s a Wonderful Life and A Charlie Brown Christmas? How about something different? It’s not a holiday film, but you could do worse than crank up the Wayback Machine and watch/re-watch Cinema Paradiso, which rightly won the 1989 Best Foreign Language Oscar, the Cannes Grand Prix, and numerous other prizes. Among other things, it will remind you that people who watch movies on their smart phones are without a cinematic bone in their bodies.
Cinema Paradiso is an Italian love letter to movies, especially American ones. It’s set in a small Sicilian village in the years immediately after World War II and extends into the 1980s. Rome-based film director Salvatore Di Vita (Jacques Perrin) learns that back in his Sicilian hometown, a man named Alfredo has died. That triggers flashbacks and the movie magic begins. Di Vita’s village, Bagheria, is not the same place as the square where the namesake cinema was allegedly situated–it’s in Palazzo Adriana–but it scarcely matters. We meet Di Vita’s 8-year-old self–played by the sly and winsome Salvatore Cascio–the son of a soldier who hasn’t returned from the war and Maria (Antonella Attili), who is struggling to keep her household together. There’s no money and Salvatore, nicknamed Toto, spends days and nights sneaking or ingratiating his way into the Cinema Paradiso. Toto has never met a film he doesn’t like, though the movies are the only game in town and everyone else loves them as well.
Toto has something the others don’t have, a developing friendship with the middle-aged (and illiterate) projectionist Alfredo (the great French actor Philippe Noiret). Alfredo does his best to chase Toto away, but to no avail and he too falls prey to Toto’s impish charm. Soon, Toto is watching films from the booth and is being schooled in how to operate the projector. It’s a good thing, as an accident sends the cinema up in flames and blinds Alfredo. A local businessman Spaccafino (Vincento Cannavale) helps rebuild the Nuovo Cinema Paradiso and I’ll bet you know who the new projectionist will be.
The film centers on the relationship between Alfredo and Toto, but the village backdrop is precious in its own right. If you think Frank Capra’s Bedford Falls has personality, it’s bland compared to Bagheria. The latter is populated by characters who redefine the world colorful: a mildly demented man who thinks he owns the square, a prudish priest (Leopoldo Trieste), a snooty bourgeois who spits from the balcony upon those he thinks are communists, scores of street kids, and villagers who aren’t afraid to cry their eyes out when what’s on the screen moves them. I’ll bet every director wishes he or she had made this movie and several of the actors–Perrin, Cannavale, Trieste–were directors.
We watch as Toto becomes a young man (Marco Leonardi) and falls in love with Elena (Agnese Nano), but circumstance has other ideas. Through it all, it’s Toto and Alfredo, who one day makes Toto promise he will leave the village and never come back. In Rome, Di Vita becomes a famed film director in his own right and keeps his promise for 30 years, returning only for Alfredo’s funeral. You can imagine how much has changed in that period of time. You’ll have to watch to see what decision Di Vita made. I’ll say only that the film has a multilayered denouement that is moving, funny, and deeply satisfying.
I should also note that the film carries an R rating, which may be the dumbest single designation of the past quarter century. I give away nothing when I say that it derives from just two moments: a gross (but hysterical) comeuppance in which a snob is on the losing end, and naked breasts on filmstrips that are integral to the story and wouldn’t be considered salacious by a fundamentalist weaned on a pickle.
Cinema Paradiso is a life-affirming tale that reminds you of what movies can do that television programs cannot. If you’re looking for holiday cheer after too much of that ice pick to the brain known as soulless mall with piped-in cheesy carols, you’ll find it here. You might even wish to freeze the credits so you too can see the magical celluloid creations that thrilled young Toto.
Rob Weir
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