Matthew J. Dinaburg

Cinema Paradiso (1988) is a page torn from the childhood picture book of writer-director Giuseppe Tornatore. It offers the semi-autobiographical tale of a young boy falling in love with cinema, told mostly in flashbacks, and unified by the entire life of its protagonist Salvatore Di Vita – chronologically: a fatherless boy (Salvatore Cascio) comforted by the village projectionist Alfredo (Philippe Noiret); a romantic adolescent (Marco Leonardi) resolving to adventure; and a middle-aged, film director (Jacques Perrin) returning home for the funeral of his mentor – all under the scaffold of Italy’s rebirth following World War II. The film blends poetry, philosophical observation and breathtaking visuals with the bitter realities of a rebuilding nation.

The world of Cinema Paradiso is thick and viscous. It extends beyond the borders of the frame in perpetuity, a document of experience. The audience peeks into a fifties, war-torn, rural Italian village, and there is a tangible sense of actuality, of correctness, that life and history exist on-screen under the guidelines of reality, truth and objectivity. This is generally referred to as realism.

Tornatore, with the help of collaborating writer Vanna Paoli and the rest of his crew, visited an actual town, Palazzo Adriano in Sicily, and shot in its streets, houses and theater – buildings with four walls and a roof; he employed the actual villagers as extras. The attention to locale creates function and purpose and heart; the abundance of villagers creates a tangible sense of community. They pile into the theater for a showing – raucous, laughing, booing, kissing, drinking wine and celebrating. They assemble in the streets to watch floating, projected images: a jocund experiment on the cinema’s magical powers of spectacle.

This is how films should be – Tornatore’s meager five-million-dollar budget is not tainted with poverty. Instead, the film exudes a depth and richness that can only be attributed to the director’s mastery of the filmic medium, attaining the aspirations of his neorealist predecessors by employing many of their strategies, namely: long takes, shooting on-location, use of non-professional actors, meticulous costuming, and what is now considered “naturalized” dialogue.

Yet, the charm of the film lies in its blend of spectacle with reality, in its moments where melodrama seeps into the narrative. When Young Toto (Salvatore Cascio) learns how to work the projector, how to cut film, how to smile with pride at succeeding where he finds meaning, it is depicted as montage. Labor transforms into excitement. Cascio’s wide-eyed gaze encapsulates the wonder and curiosity of childhood; it is the innocence of Cascio’s face that perpetuates Young Toto’s passion. When Alfredo teaches Young Toto how to work the projector, this passion – thus far found in the gaze and eyes – becomes material, tangible, seen in action and with definition. 

The projection booth, a space of transience, is emblematic of the duality of the film’s structure; it is gritty and grounded, a prop of their harsh reality, but also a window into the splendor of cinema. In the projection booth, fantasy mingles with the mundane, like two colors on a painter’s palette. And this duality represents the paradox of the Italian state – ravaged by the war yet optimistic for the future. When Toto and his mother walk through the city ruins – undoubtedly the result of air-raids in World War II- his mother weeps, sobs, wipes her tears with a handkerchief, and Toto glances at the movie poster, distracted by the vibrant colors of life abroad, his hope embodied by the rich hues of Hollywood. 

The film uses the enhanced emotionality of cinema to create grandeur, and it uses realism to define the lives, struggles, and experiences of its characters. Without this blend, the film’s best lines couldn’t work. “Life is not how it is in the movies. It’s harder.” “In the movies, we would just cut to a storm.” Toto has used the movies to escape his situation, and now that he is suffering, he wishes the tropes of Hollywood would enter his life and vanquish his struggles. But they don’t, and we mourn for his situation.

The magic to Cinema Paradiso rests in the conceit that the movie is still a movie- truth and reality exist, sure, but also art and poetry and imagination. The film is an invention of infinite possibilities, a convergence of realism and aestheticism, packaged as one epic tale of nostalgia, passion, ruin and triumph. And this complexity in structure was both unprecedented then, and unattained since.

Words: 734