In one of many scenes of sheer marvel from Cinema Paradiso, our young adult hero has his romantic fantasy interrupted by heavy rainfall. Seconds later, that very girl of his heart surprises him with a kiss amidst the rain. It is, in true cinematic discourse, a scene straight out of the movies. An Italian dubbed Kirk Douglas is triumphant in tone on the big outdoor screen, and the movie-goers flock for shelter. The kiss of these lovebirds, mercifully, lingers.
Cinema Paradiso has been described a million times as a love story. But not just through the affections of the human heart, but also the devotion to the moving image. The film’s writer and director, Giuseppe Tornatore, had a passionate eye for film for as long as he could remember. As a boy, born and raised in Bagheria, Sicily, he just wanted his very own camera to capture stories, images, actions. When he did eventually get himself a video camera, he would just go outside and shoot.
The essence of Cinema Paradiso came from that childhood love of film. That exhilaration of waiting in line to see The Good The Bad and The Ugly, and the life-long impact that movie had. Simply going to the movies. Exploring, with his heart on his sleeve, the wondrous stories, fascinating images, the grand and simple romance of others captured on the big screen. Tornatore crafted Cinema Paradiso as an unashamed reflection of his own personal history with the motion pictures. And perhaps his own love story along the way. Fair to say, then, particularly poignant joining of lips – between the likes of Anna Magnani and Gastone Renzelli, or Silvana Mangano and Vittorio Gassman – were never left on the cutting room floor of his own celluloid memories.
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Cinema Paradiso, also shot and set in Sicily, starts with Salvatore just six years-old. Told in three-section flashback, now famous filmmaker, Salvatore Di Vita, takes a trip down memory lane, decades after his elusive childhood experiences. It is, though, sad news that begs his return. That Italian village, Giancaldo, is the cornerstone of Salvatore’s upbringing. And with his imminent return come the floods of his early life. His mother a single parent. The father absent and assumed lost in the war. A village still coiling. And for young Toto, life lessons projected – often literally – before him.
Little Toto, an altar boy, is a cheeky, fresh-faced kid, lapping up a wide-eyed love for film at the local movie theatre, Nuovo Cinema Paradiso. And there starts his unique friendship and a kind of behind-the-wall – or curtain – film education with the projectionist, Alfredo. One of cinema’s all-time great father-figures I do declare. But one whose own turbulent past and inner turmoil naturally oozes a certain stern reflection of their world and his gradual role model status to Toto.
As we can say with many an infiltrated era, given political and religious affiliations, times were definitely a-changing. In Giancaldo, because of the local prudish priest, however, scenes of romance or kissing are cut from the films, causing audiences to become rowdy at such an invasion of their liberated joy. Not would they be able to experience the integral kissing scenes between Marcello Mastroianni and Maria Schell, or even earlier that of Rudolph Valentino and Vilma Banky. A whistle blown on such affairs.
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Anyone who has seen Cinema Paradiso, those that just know of its existence, can blatantly see this is conceived from the adoration of the moving pictures. A love letter to the magnitude and emotion of cinema, and the experience seeing such spectacles through the eyes of a child. Tornatore was a projectionist himself for a while, before the cinema closed down. His film vision clearly demonstrates how preposterous such amorous omissions are.
As a teenager, Salvatore has been operating the projector to help the now impaired Alfredo. Their friendship is stronger than ever, and it is Salvatore who now experiments with a movie camera. A love interest emerges in the form of Elena, but her parents are against the relationship, and she and the family leave. But movies bring him back, if only fleetingly. A poster of Clarke Gable and Vivien Leigh in an embrace, for example, somehow fuels the young man’s optimism.
Tornatore’s fascination and reverence for the visual image has followed him throughout his childhood, and into adulthood. And of course, perfectly fitting for a man dreaming of making such images a reality on the big screen. Just look at the multitude of photographs confronted by a character in his 1994 picture, Una pura formalità (A Pure Formality). Or the wondrous site of Malèna (2000) walking by the sea front, wanton boys’ mouths agape.
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How apt, too, that Tornatore grew up with some of those great slices of cinema scored by the wondrous, immortal Ennio Morricone. The composer’s work here is extraordinary, and clearly one of his most popular and accomplished compositions. And that’s saying something, I guess. Sitting in front of a movie, letting the magic just envelope you, is the core of what makes Cinema Paradiso a classic of cinematic storytelling.
And that cinematic power, almost redefined and renewed as we grow older, epitomizes the final moments of Cinema Paradiso. Awe-inspired, and moved beyond words, middle-aged Salvatore has little choice but to embrace the moving images in front of him on the screen. His teacher, his role model, his old friend, Alfredo, leaves him the remnants of those pictures cut for censorship. A beautiful montage of those prudishly ejected moments of pure romance – like when Cary Grant kisses Rosalind Russell, or Georgia Hale lands one on Charlie Chaplin. It’s a beautiful scene, as teary-eyed Salvatore watches the cut-together footage of kisses, naked flesh, moments of passion etc.
Modern, far more exposed audiences, might grumble had the powers that be cut crucial moments from other films by Italian filmmakers – for example. Like that three-way consummation between Irene Grazioli, Vasco Mirandola and Memo Dini. Eva Green mimicking Venus de Milo. Or not knowing what Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel were wonderingly gawking at in the pool. But that might be neither here nor there.
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Although a 1988 film in its native Italy, Cinema Paradiso endured its own edits once the infamous Miramax swooped in to give it life worldwide. A usually unfathomable chunk of the film was set aside – near enough an hour – to release a more taut version of Guiseppe Tornatore’s masterful story. In 1989, Cinema Paradiso won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival, followed by Best Foreign Language Film win at the Academy Awards, and a Director’s Guild nomination for Tornatore. It’s likely down to audience interpretation whether international success was enhanced by the cuts. Is the term ‘butchering’ a tad harsh in this instance?
Nonetheless, Giuseppe Tornatore literally put his heart into this project. Re-imagining the wonders of film, and how that love grew and grew over the years from a child to a man. The filmmaker’s storytelling is breezy, romantic, and executed with the perfect kind of cinema sentimentality. Certainly enduring and allowed far more breadth in the original three-hour version. Celebrating the art of filmmaking is a common force over the motion picture history, Cinema Paradiso is one of the finest examples of such a spectacle.
Soon after, into the 1990s, Tornatore’s classic would inspire in some way further Italian gems. Imagine seeing those now, without Massimo Troisi kissing the lips of Maria Grazia Cucinotta after she’s sensually teased him with a table football. Or the notable absence of Nicoletta Braschi sneaking under the table to have a smooch with Roberto Benigni. In Cinema Paradiso, Agnese Nano gets to kiss Marco Leonardi right there in the rain. Cinema, as this adoringly portrays, is bliss.
Films referenced:
- Ulysses (1954) Mario Camerini
- Bellissima (1951) Luchino Visconti
- Riso amaro (1949) Giuseppe De Santis
- Le notti bianche (1957) Luchino Visconti
- The Son of the Sheik (1926) Geo. Fitzmaurice
- Gone with the Wind (1939) Victor Fleming
- His Girl Friday (1940) Howard Hawks
- The Gold Rush (1925) Charlie Chaplin
- Mediterraneo (1991) Gabriele Salvatores
- The Dreamers (2003) Bernardo Bertolucci
- Youth (2015) Paolo Sorrentino
- Il Postino (1994) Michael Radford
- La vita è bella (1997) Roberto Benigni
