Film

Cinema Paradiso (1988)

Director: Giuseppe Tornatore

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

A successful movie director in his 40s, Salvatore returns home to Sicily after hearing of the death of Alfredo, ex-projectionist at the eponymous village cinema. The greater part of Tornatore's film is a flashback to Salvatore's WWII childhood and adolescence when, obsessed by movies, he is befriended by the wise and gruffly benevolent Alfredo (Noiret), the local priest censors kissing scenes, the whole village is wowed by Rome, Open City, a fire caused by nitrate stock blinds Alfredo, and just as Salvatore is shooting his first home movie he falls in love. Warmly nostalgic without (for the most part) falling foul of Felliniesque caricature, the film is too emotionally manipulative for its own good, Noiret's typically professional performance notwithstanding. Alfredo's mystic sagacity is implausible, and the infant Salvatore (Cascio) is too cutely precocious by half. The politics and history, too, are simplified (partly, perhaps, by a 30 minute pruning for export release). But the final montage of censored clips, hoarded by the boy and rediscovered in adult life, is a sweet hymn to the romance of cinema.

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