Cinema Paradiso. (15.)
Directed by Giuseppe Tornatore. 1988.
Starring Philippe Noiret, Salvatore Cascio, Marco Leonardi, Agnese Nano, Leopoldo Trieste and Jacques Perrin. Out on 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD on a two-disc edition with the Theatrical and Director's cut from Arrow Academy. 124/ 174 mins.
Cinema Paradiso is a sacred text for lovers of the movies. The story of a cinema in a square in a small town in Sicily over the forty years after the end of the Second World War, it taps into an almost unlimited well of sentimentality. Firstly, a sentimentality about the magical nature of cinema, but much more so our sentimental attachment to Italians; hysterical, over emotive, mamma mia Italians.
It's a tale of three Salvatores. After a phone call from his momma, grey middle-aged present-day Roman Salvatore (Perrin) looks back to his Sicillian upbringing and his relationship with father figure projectionist Alfredo (Noiret) at the local cinema. First, as cheeky young scamp Salvatore (Cascio) who can't act at all but has such an endearing face that you want to reach into the screen and pinch it. Then, as adolescent Salvatore (Leonardi) who is now the projectionist himself but unlucky in love even though he is better looking than most of the people on the big screen.
Now, you may be shocked to know I'd never seen this before. Honestly, I was a little shocked to learn that myself. I half expected it all to come back to me once the film started, but no, it was all totally new to me. Probably the bigger surprise though was that I didn't really like it. And the reason I didn't like it was a resistance to The Prod.
We can see this early on with the kid and the way Tornatore carefully works around his limitations as a performer, getting just enough out of him to make a scene work. Opposite him is the brilliant French actor Noiret who can anchor any venture. But it isn't all him – you get his stoic face but with an excitable Italian voice coming from it which doesn't seem appropriate. He's like a mannequin whose ventriloquist is throwing the wrong voice.
The film gives you all the Italianisms international audiences expect. The square has its own village idiot. When the bambino is naughty his mamma give him the big smacking. In the cinema everybody is noisy. The landscape is beautiful. Excitable is the default setting. It's like a Fellini film but where the whimsy and flights of fancy are replaced by a determination to herd the audience towards its goal.
None of this should suggest that I sat stony-faced through the film. Not in the slightest. It worked me over and I was misty-eyed in all the places where you are meant to be misty-eyed. The Kissing Sequence is genuinely magical. Its impact has been meticulously prepared for but it is still the one moment when you don't feel the prod, when the effect seems greater than the strongarming used to get you there.
And there's a Morricone score. Here the maestro is helped out by son Andrea who provides the Love Theme. Despite having Youtubed the entire soundtrack I have no idea which section is the Love Theme: apart from the music for the scene with a fire (sneakily recycled from his OST to Malick's Days of Heaven, and why not as the only music people remember from that film is the Saint-Saens) everything in this score sounds like a love theme.
The Morricones' music is crudely manipulative and sentimental but that's the film they're working with so that's what they came up with. And it is crudely manipulative sentimentality done with finesse.
My other issue with Paradiso is that I don't agree with its conception of the magic of the movies. For a start, though the film is supposed to be a love letter to cinema, it suggests that cinema can only thrive when people don't have anything else to do. The Cinema Paradiso doesn't survive the arrival of television (not even Italian television) but in reality, cinema did survive and, pre-pandemic, appeared to be thriving, after a fashion.
More than that, I'm not sure it knows what's good about cinema. TV is the Idiot's Lantern, but here cinema is simply a communal idiot's lantern: a place where people come together to be distracted by colour and movement. It's a great irony that one of the things the cinema is terrible at is scenes of people in a cinema. Always in a movie scene, a cinema auditorium is full of busy, active people making noise and doing anything other than focusing on the screen. Which may well, all too often, be the cinema-going experience but certainly isn't an example of its magic.
Now, I'm not denying that sharing a film with hundreds of other people can be exhilarating, but one of the greatest thing about 2020 was that, if you were prepared to risk it, it offered the most blissful cinema-going experiences: no adverts and nobody else around to distract you. Sitting alone in a cinema is a glorious feeling, and having that vast expanse of screen all to yourself is a staggering indulgence.
Extras.
This Arrow Academy edition gives you a choice of two versions. The version that most people fell in love with is nearly an hour shorter than what Tornatore originally intended. The longer version has more about the middle-aged Salvatore and twists the tone of the film into something sourer.
4K (2160p) UHD Blu-ray presentation in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible) of the 124-minute theatrical version
High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation of the 174-minute Director's Cut
Uncompressed original stereo 2.0 Audio and 5.1 surround sound options
Audio commentary with Italian cinema expert critic Millicent Marcus
A Dream of Sicily – A 52-minute documentary profile of Giuseppe Tornatore featuring interviews with the director and extracts from his early home movies as well as interviews with director Francesco Rosi and painter Peppino Ducato, set to music by the legendary Ennio Morricone
A Bear and a Mouse in Paradise – A 27-minute documentary on the making of Cinema Paradiso and the characters of Toto and Alfredo, featuring interviews the actors who play them, Philippe Noiret and Salvatore Cascio as well as Tornatore
The Kissing Sequence – Giuseppe Tornatore discusses the origins of the kissing scenes with clips identifying each scene • Original Director's Cut Theatrical Trailer and 25th Anniversary Re-Release Trailer
Directed by Giuseppe Tornatore. 1988.
Starring Philippe Noiret, Salvatore Cascio, Marco Leonardi, Agnese Nano, Leopoldo Trieste and Jacques Perrin. Out on 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD on a two-disc edition with the Theatrical and Director's cut from Arrow Academy. 124/ 174 mins.
Cinema Paradiso is a sacred text for lovers of the movies. The story of a cinema in a square in a small town in Sicily over the forty years after the end of the Second World War, it taps into an almost unlimited well of sentimentality. Firstly, a sentimentality about the magical nature of cinema, but much more so our sentimental attachment to Italians; hysterical, over emotive, mamma mia Italians.
It's a tale of three Salvatores. After a phone call from his momma, grey middle-aged present-day Roman Salvatore (Perrin) looks back to his Sicillian upbringing and his relationship with father figure projectionist Alfredo (Noiret) at the local cinema. First, as cheeky young scamp Salvatore (Cascio) who can't act at all but has such an endearing face that you want to reach into the screen and pinch it. Then, as adolescent Salvatore (Leonardi) who is now the projectionist himself but unlucky in love even though he is better looking than most of the people on the big screen.
Now, you may be shocked to know I'd never seen this before. Honestly, I was a little shocked to learn that myself. I half expected it all to come back to me once the film started, but no, it was all totally new to me. Probably the bigger surprise though was that I didn't really like it. And the reason I didn't like it was a resistance to The Prod.
We can see this early on with the kid and the way Tornatore carefully works around his limitations as a performer, getting just enough out of him to make a scene work. Opposite him is the brilliant French actor Noiret who can anchor any venture. But it isn't all him – you get his stoic face but with an excitable Italian voice coming from it which doesn't seem appropriate. He's like a mannequin whose ventriloquist is throwing the wrong voice.
The film gives you all the Italianisms international audiences expect. The square has its own village idiot. When the bambino is naughty his mamma give him the big smacking. In the cinema everybody is noisy. The landscape is beautiful. Excitable is the default setting. It's like a Fellini film but where the whimsy and flights of fancy are replaced by a determination to herd the audience towards its goal.
None of this should suggest that I sat stony-faced through the film. Not in the slightest. It worked me over and I was misty-eyed in all the places where you are meant to be misty-eyed. The Kissing Sequence is genuinely magical. Its impact has been meticulously prepared for but it is still the one moment when you don't feel the prod, when the effect seems greater than the strongarming used to get you there.
And there's a Morricone score. Here the maestro is helped out by son Andrea who provides the Love Theme. Despite having Youtubed the entire soundtrack I have no idea which section is the Love Theme: apart from the music for the scene with a fire (sneakily recycled from his OST to Malick's Days of Heaven, and why not as the only music people remember from that film is the Saint-Saens) everything in this score sounds like a love theme.
The Morricones' music is crudely manipulative and sentimental but that's the film they're working with so that's what they came up with. And it is crudely manipulative sentimentality done with finesse.
My other issue with Paradiso is that I don't agree with its conception of the magic of the movies. For a start, though the film is supposed to be a love letter to cinema, it suggests that cinema can only thrive when people don't have anything else to do. The Cinema Paradiso doesn't survive the arrival of television (not even Italian television) but in reality, cinema did survive and, pre-pandemic, appeared to be thriving, after a fashion.
More than that, I'm not sure it knows what's good about cinema. TV is the Idiot's Lantern, but here cinema is simply a communal idiot's lantern: a place where people come together to be distracted by colour and movement. It's a great irony that one of the things the cinema is terrible at is scenes of people in a cinema. Always in a movie scene, a cinema auditorium is full of busy, active people making noise and doing anything other than focusing on the screen. Which may well, all too often, be the cinema-going experience but certainly isn't an example of its magic.
Now, I'm not denying that sharing a film with hundreds of other people can be exhilarating, but one of the greatest thing about 2020 was that, if you were prepared to risk it, it offered the most blissful cinema-going experiences: no adverts and nobody else around to distract you. Sitting alone in a cinema is a glorious feeling, and having that vast expanse of screen all to yourself is a staggering indulgence.
Extras.
This Arrow Academy edition gives you a choice of two versions. The version that most people fell in love with is nearly an hour shorter than what Tornatore originally intended. The longer version has more about the middle-aged Salvatore and twists the tone of the film into something sourer.
4K (2160p) UHD Blu-ray presentation in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible) of the 124-minute theatrical version
High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation of the 174-minute Director's Cut
Uncompressed original stereo 2.0 Audio and 5.1 surround sound options
Audio commentary with Italian cinema expert critic Millicent Marcus
A Dream of Sicily – A 52-minute documentary profile of Giuseppe Tornatore featuring interviews with the director and extracts from his early home movies as well as interviews with director Francesco Rosi and painter Peppino Ducato, set to music by the legendary Ennio Morricone
A Bear and a Mouse in Paradise – A 27-minute documentary on the making of Cinema Paradiso and the characters of Toto and Alfredo, featuring interviews the actors who play them, Philippe Noiret and Salvatore Cascio as well as Tornatore
The Kissing Sequence – Giuseppe Tornatore discusses the origins of the kissing scenes with clips identifying each scene • Original Director's Cut Theatrical Trailer and 25th Anniversary Re-Release Trailer
