Cinema Paradiso
From AwardAnnals
| Film: | Cinema Paradiso |
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| Director: | Giuseppe Tornatore |
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| Distributor: | Miramax |
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Reviews
Amazon.com
Giuseppe Tornatore’s beautiful 1988 film about a little boy’s love affair with the movies deservedly won an Oscar for Best Foreign Film and a Special Jury Prize at Cannes. Philippe Noiret plays a grizzled old projectionist who takes pride in his presentation of screen dreams for a town still recovering from World War II. When a child (Jacques Perrin) demonstrates fascination not only for movies but also for the process of showing them to an audience, a lifelong friendship is struck. This isn’t just one of those films for people who are already in love with the cinema. But if you are one of those folks, the emotional resonance between the action in Tornatore’s world and the images on Noiret’s screen will seem all the greater—and the finale all the more powerful. —Tom Keogh
Barnes and Noble
A foreign-language favorite gets a surprising face-lift with Cinema Paradiso: The New Version, an extended restoration of the Oscar-winning drama from Italian director Giuseppe Tornatore. Cinema Paradiso is the touching story of a boy (Salvatore Cascio) growing up in Sicily during WWII who falls in love with the movies and forms a powerful bond with a wise old projectionist (Philippe Noiret). Told as a flashback from the perspective of the boy, now all grown up and a successful filmmaker, the story jumps forward in time to follow the boy’s adolescence, when he works as a projectionist himself. Paradiso is a triumphantly and unabashedly nostalgic gem. It revels in its sentimental portrayal of a small Sicilian town in the thrall of the moving picture, plunging headfirst into a love story set to a brilliant musical score by the great Ennio Morricone. In this newer version, the extent to which Tornatore has altered his classic is surprising. The director added almost an hour of footage to make what amounts to a new third act that significantly changes the tone and even meaning of his story. It’s an audacious gesture, and worth seeing on that account alone. Fortunately, the DVD also includes the original 1989 cut, as many viewers may prefer one to the other. Either way, Cinema Paradiso is still a charming and profoundly touching film, drenched in enough dreamy nostalgia to please even the most diehard romantic. Gregory Baird
