It is now 30 years since 'Cinema Paradiso', one of the most internationally acclaimed films in modern Italian cinema, was released.
Giuseppe Tornatore was just 32 when he made Cinema Paradiso, his second feature. The film flopped initially. But a new cut, released in 1990, propelled it to awards success in the shape of an Oscar for best foreign language film and a clutch of Baftas, cementing Tornatore's reputation as a director of note. For many, it remains his best picture, though personally I'd struggle to choose between 'Cinema Paradiso' and 'Malèna' (2000), his emotional film featuring Monica Bellucci as a vulnerable widow in wartime Sicily, whose descent into prostitution is observed by a group of adolescent boys.
It's no accident that Cinema Paradiso's nostalgic celebration of the power of great film-making, and of cinema as a communal experience, so captured audiences' imaginations. It came at a time when home video was leaving live cinema in the doldrums, with many film theatres falling derelict across Europe and North America: the present-day demolition of the Nuovo Cinema Paradiso to make way for a municipal car-park is one of the film's most powerful scenes.
The film's overall tone, too, is elegiac: it must have been easy, when 'Cinema Paradiso' first came out, to see it as a swansong for movie-going – to imagine that, in a few years' time, no local cinema would again have the same ability to bring together an isolated rural community, opening a window into other worlds.
Three decades later, we know that such worries were more or less unfounded: cinema-going is still alive and well, despite the triple-headed threat of DVD, Blu-ray and the internet, and many small independent cinemas are thriving. But for Cascio, and for the film's many fans, its message remains very relevant.
'Cinema Paradiso is about the power of dreams. In the film, we see the people go to the cinema to dream: by watching great movies, they forget all their problems. In becoming a great film director, Totò achieves his own personal dream, too. In today's world, with this crisis that we're all experiencing both in politics and in society, the film reminds us that we can, and must, keep on dreaming.' ~ Salvatore Cascio
© From Where I Sit™
www.fromwhereisit.co
writer/blogger/bon vivant
July 12, 2018
* Salvatore Cascio & Philippe Noiret - 'Cinema Paradiso' (1988)
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