When the rich, middle-aged Salvatore receives word in Rome of the death of his old friend Alfredo, his mind goes hurtling back over the years to Giancaldo, the parched Sicilian village where he grew up. Possibly because Salvatore is now a successful movie director, he remembers all in neatly chronological order.
See the article in its original context from
February 2, 1990,Section C, Page15Buy Reprints
TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers.
This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.
Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems. Please send reports of such problems [email protected].
Thus begins Giuseppe Tornatore's 'Cinema Paradiso,' an Italian memory film about what one might call (in a soggy moment) the magic of movies. 'Cinema Paradiso,' which won a Special Jury Prize at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival, opens today at the Lincoln Plaza.
As a little boy in the postwar 1940's, Salvatore, nicknamed Toto, embarks on his love affair with movies and his friendship with Alfredo, the philosophical projectionist at the Cinema Paradiso in Giancaldo.
Like everything else in Giancaldo, the Cinema Paradiso is picturesque, an operation of hard seats, noisy patrons and, of course, magic.
Toto snoozes through his duties as altar boy, but he's ever alert at the Cinema Paradiso. He likes to hang around the projection booth, especially when Alfredo is screening films for Father Aldelfio, who is also the local film censor. Father Adelfio loves movies too, but when a man and a woman are about to collide onscreen in a kiss, he pulls himself together and vigorously rings a little bell, otherwise reserved for use in the Mass.
Alfredo dutifully excises the offending scene.
As a result nobody in Giancaldo ever sees a movie kiss except Toto, Alfredo and Father Adelfio. One dark day, Toto's purloined collection of kiss scenes, hidden under his bed at home, catches fire and nearly burns down the poor cottage he shares with his war-widowed mother.
The flammability of old acetate film plays an important part in 'Cinema Paradiso.' It's responsible for an especially overcharged melodramatic sequence, the kind once featured in old Rin-Tin-Tin or Lassie movies in which the faithful dog saves its unconscious master from a roaring inferno.
Show more Show less Films delivered to you. The arrival of the world wide web has no doubt revolutionised how things work. Before, folks would go to their local DVD film rentals shop but now, more and more TV buffs and movie lovers are turning to film rental online services every day. Young Salvatore Di Vita (Salvatore Cascio) discovers the perfect escape from life in his war-torn Sicilian village: the Cinema Paradiso movie house, where projectionist Alfredo (Philippe Noiret.
This use of fire could be an allusion to Walter Pater's 'hard, gemlike flame,' with which Toto, the nascent artist, burns as a child, but it seems more like dopey movie making.
'Cinema Paradiso' is stuffed with dozens of clips and other mementos that evoke the heritage of the cinema. At one point or another the movie calls up Jean Renoir's 'Lower Depths,' Luchino Visconti's 'Terra Trema,' Chaplin, Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, Fritz Lang's 'Fury,' Erich von Stroheim, Rita Hayworth, John Ford's 'Stagecoach' and, the high-point of 'Cinema Paradiso,' the ecstatically youthful Silvana Mangano as she dances an all-out mambo from the movie of the same name.
This is risky business in a movie as soft as 'Cinema Paradiso,' which means to celebrate the icons of the cinema. The film, however, evokes nothing more substantial than sentimental B-movies made by hacks in Hollywood and abroad, and which go unrecognized by Mr. Tornatore in his anthology of clips.
Mr. Tornatore, who wrote the screenplay and directed 'Cinema Paradiso,' may admire the masters but his methods are commonplace and false.
The film's tone is set by his direction of Salvatore Cascio, who plays Toto as an 8-year-old. The handsome little boy is a nonprofessional discovered by the director in Sicily, where the film was shot. At the director's bidding, he gives an enthusiastic but awful miniature-adult performance, the kind that one might have thought outmoded after the films of Francois Truffaut and Steven Spielberg, among others.
As Alfredo, the venerable Philippe Noiret is better but not much, perhaps because he was aware that the kid was upstaging him (and, so, overacted), or maybe because of the material. He must make Alfredo into a heroic father figure by musing on the loneliness of the projectionist ('You talk to Garbo and Power, like donkeys'). When, in turn, Toto replaces him in the booth, he reminds the boy: 'Life isn't like it is in the movies. Life is harder.'
One wouldn't know it from 'Cinema Paradiso,' in which the 8-year-old Toto grows into a movie-making adolescent (Marco Leonardi) who looks like a male model and, finally, into Salvatore (Jacques Perrin), the weary, world-class movie director. Salvatore drives a Mercedes, lives in a palatial apartment in Rome and has a beautiful mistress, who is probably traded in at the same time as the Mercedes.
Though 'Cinema Paradiso' is certainly better, I'd rather watch a half-dozen reruns of 'Diff'rent Strokes.' Not so much magic and the pretensions are fewer.
Backward Glances
CINEMA PARADISO, directed and written by Giuseppe Tornatore; in Italian with English subtitles; director of photography, Blasco Giurato; edited by Mario Mora; music by Ennio Morricone; and Andrea Morricone; production designer, Andrea Crisanti; produced by Franco Cristaldi; released by Miramax Films. At Lincoln Plaza, Broadway and 63d Street. Running time: 123 minutes. This film has no rating.
Cinema Paradiso full movie, online
Alfredo ... Philippe Noiret
![]()
Salvatore ... Jacques Perrin
Salvatore as a child ... Salvatore Cascio
Salvatore as an adolescent ... Marco Leonardi
Elena ... Agnese Nano
Maria, young ... Antonella Attili
Cinema Paradiso Movie Online Greek Subs
Maria, old ... Pupella Maggio
Watch Cinema Paradiso
Anna ... Isa Danielli
Father Adelfio ... Leopoldo Trieste
Comments are closed.
|
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |