Katherine Pulzone’s movie critique on: CINEMA PARADISO

1990 Director: Giuseppe Tornatore

Writers: Vanna Paoli (collaborating writer); Giuseppe Tornatore (screenplay)

In one word: GEM

Toto, brilliantly played by Salvatore Cascio, is a young mischievous boy, raised in a small Sicilian village in the 1940’s. His mother is a widow and struggling but little Toto steals his mother’s milk money to go to the cinema. He loves movies more than anything else in the world. The local theater, Cinema Paradiso, is the hub where the villagers gather to see the latest movies, an escape from communistic rule where they can laugh and escape, get drunk, fall in love, feed the baby. The Cinema Paradiso is the heart of the community.

In one beautifully photographed scene, the Paradiso is already packed with people desperate to get in. The projectionist, played wonderfully by Philippe Noiret, thinks of a clever way to project the movie onto the wall of a house in the square by using a mirror. This way, everyone can see it. This is the most moving part of the movie, although it’s hard to choose the best part. The director and camera work showing the film in the cinema and slowly creeps outside to show the projection on the wall of the house outside, is quite moving. (I have to mention that the projection of the movie comes out of a stone lion’s mouth – leave it to the Italians for an artistic way of showing a film.)

So Toto befriends the projectionist Alfredo, and allows him in the projection booth. The local priest Father Adelfio screens all the movies and orders kissing scenes to be cut as well as anything he doesn’t approve of. (This was very common back then.).

Without telling you the whole story, a cruel twist of fate for Alfredo, gets Toto hired as the projectionist.

Toto grows to teen-age and falls in love with a student named Elena who doesn’t feel the same way about Toto. The romance of Toto deepens and he doesn’t give up on her. She’s set to leave for university studies. Lightening strikes. Toto is drafted into the military. Alfredo, the projectionist becomes reclusive. Toto finds out they are going to destroy the Cinema Paradiso and Alfredo urges him to leave the village and move on. (Another stunning and moving scene in the movie.) YOU JUST HAVE TO SEE THIS MOVIE – I GIVE IT 4 STARS