CINEMA PARADISO Movie Review

Nuovo Cinema Paradiso

When Salvatore, a movie director, learns of the death of the projectionist at the cinema in the small Sicilian town of his youth, he returns home—both physically and by way of flashback sequences—to relive and rediscover the primal childhood joy that he discovered at the movies so many years before. Giuseppe Tornatore's 1988 Cinema Paradiso has an enchanting premise, but somewhere into the second hour the seemingly endless reaction shots of the dazzled young hero and his fellow villagers begin to wear thin, and we realize that Cinema Paradiso might have made a wonderful, brief subplot in one of Fellini's memory films, but is far too cloying, relentlessly sentimental, and monotonous to pad out an entire feature. (And the American release was about half-an-hour shorter than the original.) One gimmick is memorable, though; in the flashbacks, the local priest demands that the projectionist (the usually wonderful Philippe Noiret in his aggressively sweet, full teddy bear mode) remove all offending kissing scenes from the movies he shows. As a child, Salvatore saved all of those “naughty” pieces of film, and that leads to Cinema Paradiso's payoff—which possesses the genuine charm that most of the rest of the movie lacks—by letting us and the adult Salvatore watch happily and gratefully as all of those sweet, romantic, censored moments unspool end to end. It's a touching sequence, but not quite worth the wait.

NEXT STOP … Amarcord, The Clowns, Sherlock Jr.

1988 123m/C IT Philippe Noiret, Jacques Perrin, Salvatore Cascio, Marco Leonardi, Agnes Nano, Leopoldo Trieste; D: Giuseppe Tornatore; W: Giuseppe Tornatore; C: Basco Giurato; M: Ennio Morricone. Academy Awards '89: Best Foreign Film; British Academy Awards '90: Best Actor (Noiret), Best Foreign Film, Best Original Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor (Cascio); Cannes Film Festival '89: Grand Jury Prize; Golden Globe Awards '90: Best Foreign Film. VHS, LV, 8mm HBO