Movie: Cinema Paradiso - Nuovo Cinema Paradiso (Giuseppe Tornatore, 1988)
Filmmakers hold an obvious fascination for fires caused by film stock. Cinema Paradiso contains many wonderful sequences, but Giuseppe Tornatore reserves his greatest efforts for the burning of the titular cinema. When its regulars demand a new movie start just before closing time, projectionist Alfredo (Philippe Noiret) gives them an even more special experience, screening the film on the walls of a house on the main square. It's such an enrapturaing sight the audience doesn't even mind that parts of the film are blocked by the balcony. Watching the magic happen outside, a glowing Alfredo forgets to pay attention to his equipment, and right before the climactic gunshot the screen dissolves in a sea of flames. As the cinema catches fire, Tornatore places the burning building in the middle of the frame, with the tonwfolk running away from it in all directions,. All is dark, except the frightening orange glow seen through the projection room's window. It's a spectacular sequence that becomes even more exciting when little Toto, Alfredo's 'assistant' starts running towards the cinema to save his friend. He does, but Alfredo will be blind the rest of his life, strengthening his conviction that being a film projectionist in a little Sicilian village is a waste of one's time and abilities. When Toto grows older, Alfredo urges him to leave, take the opportunities he wasn't able to and never come back or talk to him again. The film starts 30 years later when Salvatore 'Toto' De Vita, now a succesfull filmmaker in Rome, remembers his childhood as he prepares to go back to Siciliy for Alfredo's funeral.
Reading between the lines, you may complain that I always latch on to connections with Inglorious Basterds or Good Will Hunting, but these are genuinely the most interesting and surprising elements of a film that's a little more ambivalent about the 'magic of cinema' than I expected. Noiret turns into Ben Affleck, because he views film in much the same way Affleck looked at working in construction and drinking with his buddies. In one of the funniest scenes, Alfredo returns to a classroom for his umpteenth attempt to pass his high school exams. Visibly struggling with some math problem (he keeps starting over counting his fingers) he unsuccessfully turns to cheating. The pupils, who may well be his grandchildren, clock him and shade their papers. Working in film is the only thing he is capable of and he finds it sickening that a bright young man like Toto would be willing to squash his potential to follow the same career path. When Toto eventually departs for the big city, Alfredo's goodbye wish is that whatever he ends up doing, he'll love it with the same passion as the film camera and the projection room.
Jacques Perrin gives an interesting performance as the now successful Salvatore. He is introspective everytime he is on screen, remembering his old friend, and wondering why he became a filmmaker in the first place. Does he even really like movies that much or is it something else he is chasing? The fire being the key event is entirely in line with Tornatore's general approach. He is far more interested in showing the communal 'events' and social relationships the theatre's existence makes possible than the effects specific films have on the audience in general, let alone on Toto in particular. During a screening of a film promoted as being highly emotional (most of the films shown are not identified) Tornatore highlights how everyone in the theatre is crying in unison, suggesting that this is in fact the main objective of their presence here; the film is more an excuse to be emotional together, rather than the source of these emotions. There are many more scenes showing how the cinema enables people to observe each other, find love, develop friendships, overcome class differences, and escape the duties of ordinary life. The actual films sometimes feel like incidental distractions, especially for teenage Toto who spends his work time thinking more about pretty Elena (Agnese Manano) than about editing techniques, and is oblivious whenever Alfredo quotes some famous actor.
After the cinema burns down it's restored by an especially entrepreneurial guy from Naples. "These northernes know how to make money" note the Sicilians talking about him, one of the most wonderfully tickling lines of dialogue I've heard recently - in the same category as "In America, we can finally live as Australans" from Ali's Wedding. Cinema Paradiso contains many such moments of sharp wit and humor I didn't expect from the guy that made The Best Offer. I don't remember much of that film, except thinking that Tornatore was utterly out of touch with modern sensibilities. Cinema Paradiso suggests that he is fully aware of that and embraces it. Throughout the film Tornatore keeps returning to a bird's eye view of the main square, showing its modernisation to be inversely proportional to its communality. At the beginning, the whole town gathers on the square to play around, flirt, gossip and socialise, often inter-generationally. By the end, Cinema Paradiso is about to be destroyed and the square has been turned into a parking lot, occupied by cars and billboards, each advertising a product to a different market-researched target audience. Everyone goes their own way, with only the funeral procession for Alfredo as a memory of a different way of living.
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