Nuovo Cinema Paradiso

Plot synopsis:
DIRECTOR'S CUT VERSIONBeginning at the end, the movie opens with Salvatore's mother trying to inform him of the death of Alfredo. Salvatore, a filmmaker who has not been home since his youth, leaves Rome immediately to attend the funeral. Through flashbacks we watch Salvatore in his youth, in a post WWII town in Southern Italy. As a young boy he is called Toto and he has a strong affinity for the cinema. Toto often sneaks into the movie theater when he shouldn't and harasses the projectionist, Alfredo, in attempts to get splices of film that are cut out by the church because they contain scenes of kissing. Toto has a younger sister and war widowed mother who often struggle due to the loss of Toto's father. Toto is banned from the movie theater by his mother when his film bits accidentally catch fire and nearly kill his sister along with burning up the only picture Toto has of his father along with other family photographs. Eventually he sneaks his way back and forms a father-son bond with Alfredo, despite Alfredo's reluctancy, Toto even learns how to run the projector. Meanwhile one of the townspeople wins the lotto and becomes a rich man. One day in the cinema, after Toto leaves to watch the movie with his friends below, the film catches fire in the projector and knocks Alfredo out. Young Toto rescues Alfredo from death in the fire, unfortunately the cinema burns down and Alfredo loses his sight. Lucky the lotto-lucky-townsman pays to have a new cinema put up. Since Toto already knows how to run the projector he works with Alfredo in the projection room. Some years pass and Salvatore is now a young man. A rich girl, Elena, comes to town and Salvatore and his friends vie for her attention. Salvatore films her and begins to fall in love. Alfredo advises him to steer clear of love because it only causes pain. Despite his warning, Salvatore confesses his love to Elena, who's reply is that she does not, but she could. So he waits, every night outside her house for her reply. One day he gives up and trudges home depressed and upset only to soon discover that Elena does love him in return. They begin a passionate romance, like that of two newlyweds. Unfortunately, Elena's father doesn't approve and so he takes Elena away. All summer they try to meet, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. On one particular day he tries to reach her and she him but their paths don't cross. As we discover later, Alfredo catches Elena and convinces her to leave Salvatore alone out of love. Salvatore then wanders without purpose and eventually joins the military due to the requirement by Italian law that all male youths serve for a period of time in the army. When he returns to his home town, all has changed and he cannot adjust. Alfredo urges him to leave and tells him that if he were to ever return, he would not see him. Obviously Salvatore goes on to become a successful filmmaker. As he wanders the remains of his town after the funeral he sees a vision of Elena just as she was when they were young; he realizes it is Elena's daughter and follows her to Elena's home where he sees that she married one of Salvatore's childhood friends, a dunce when Salvatore knew him. He confronts Elena and they meet. They talk and she reveals to him that she didn't miss out on their fateful reunion but rather that Alfredo convinced her to leave. Salvatore realizes what a role Alfredo had in shaping his life and that Alfredo knew that if he stayed with Elena he would have no chance to pursue his love of film and so by going to Rome to become a filmmaker he sacrificed his love for Elena. Salvatore and Elena say farewell and go their separate ways. Salvatore returns to Rome with a can of film left to him by Alfredo. It contains all the splices of the kissing scenes from Salvatore's youth.

Tags: melodrama, cute, sentimental, flashback

Review:
It's characters are portrayed by each and every actor in award winning style and the music is not only beautiful but absolutely perfect for this film.It is quite simply the story of a human life and it's tragedies and triumphs within the context of a vocation.
A young boy matures and gradually learns the lessons of life, cultivates his passion for the cinema, and is rewarded with professional success; however, he remains unfulfilled for true love has escaped him only to return in the form of a gift of love which transcends time, space, and death to reveal at the closing of the film Toto's one true mistress.A staggering triumph of both the cinematic art and of story telling and yet there may be found people who do not like this movie ....
It turns out to be a somewhat tragic love story.The first part of the film, with Salvatore Cascio as "Toto" a young boy is a love story about two people sharing their love of movies: the kid and an adult "Alfredo" (Phillpe Noiret) who runs the local movie theater.
Their love of film bonds them for life.The word "love" is used repeatedly in this review because that's the dominant theme: the love people had for others and for the world of film, something all of us on this website share.The second and third parts of the film are the above-mentioned love story of Toto (Marco Leonardi as an adolescent and then Jacques Perrin as an adult) and "Elena" (Agnese Nano/ Brigitte Fossey).
Although not boring, it does drag in a few spots but the longer version is better in the long run because it makes the whole story much more meaningful.It's very nicely filmed and you get a real feel for the Italian people and their little town.
The director of the movie, Giuseppe Tornatore, went on to make other great visual films, two of which I also like: Malena and The Star Maker.....but Cinema Paradiso, I believe, is considered his "masterpiece.".
A filmmaker (Jacques Perrin , he subsequently became a notorious director) recalls his childhood (Salvatore Cascio , Toto , who celebrated his eighth birthday during filming) , when he fell in love with the movies at his village's theater and formed a deep friendship with the theater's projectionist (Philippe Noiret who said all his lines in French) at Cinema Paradise .
You don´t know what you´re missing !CINEMA PARADISO, is, ( along with THE BIG BLUE ), my all time favorite movie ever, ( I can never choose between them ).
It´s amazing how this movie by telling a love story and a life of a character in fact tells about the history of cinema itself.
The use of the theater location as a conection between characters through out the years is magnificently done.And it has probably the most beautiful soundtrack ever !Very emotive and capturing perfectly the story in all its moments.And it has the most beautiful and moving ending ever filmed!
Don't approach the movie with your logic part of the brain switched on.Yes, as someone said there are some flaws relative to how realistic it can be, but that doesn't matter because you'd be missing the point.Just let yourself go and enjoy this celebration of cinema, dream and emotions and this piece of art will bring you on a lovely spiritual trip.I loved it.P.S.: Sorry IMDb, but I was able to say everything I wanted to say without the mandatory 10 lines of text.
It is an amazing story of the magic of film and the cinema, highlighted by great performances and some of the most beautiful cinematography I have ever seen.
The focus of that version is on the relationship between Alfredo and Toto, and their shared love and enchantment with the cinema and film.It is a powerfully emotional film, but, sadly, this level of emotion is lost in the director's cut.
It is the story of a man who grows up in love with two people, the projectionist at the movie theater in his small Sicilian town, and later, a beautiful young woman who arrives for a few years in his town and then leaves.
It is one of the most profoundly moving films I have ever had the pleasure of seeing.A note: the 124-minute version shown on TCM tonight, which is the version I saw many times here in the States in theaters and on VHS, is substantially shorter than the original Italian version, which was at one point released in this country as the "director's cut." I haven't seen that in years, but as I recall, it made certain scenes in the movie more understandable.
However, to select a single one of these as the main story would miss the overall experience, since they are parts of an overall tapestry about the tough choices life presents.The standard hollywood treatment would made a completely happy ending, our hero gets together with the girl (now woman) of his heart; continues his successful movie career; his mentor remains flawless, and somehow restores the old town's spiritual heart.
Five minutes after I have watched this movie,slowly calming down,I am now writing my feelings down and you must know how much I want to share it with everyone who loves this movie!The movie "Nuovo Cinema Paradiso" moved me greatly and the feelings are so strong that I can't even describe it.As they say,Beauty in terms of human words is meaningless.It is a movie about movie,a story about love and friendship and everything that a living human being can feel.A lovely and smart child ,living with a desperate mother waiting for her beloved husband at war,grew up with movies and finally became a famous director.He once loved a beautiful woman and the woman loved him too.However,as we all know,love is fragile.Love immediately comes to an end the moment it meets with marriage.So,is there a way that makes love eternal,always smiling at you when you open your eyes in the morning?
"The soldier stop waiting and go away at the very 99th day,when a day after he would probably have the princess' heart." Maybe sometimes the best thing to do is to walk away,leaving the memory lasting forever.The last fifty minutes of the movie,particularly I think, is the best part.The climax comes when the man and the woman meet each other again thirty years after their inevitable miss.I cant help burst into tears cause I can't hold it anymore after 2 hours' living together with the excellent characters.It's not until this day,by this movie that I am successfully convinced A man can really hold his love for as much as 30 years!Life is like a movie,but it's harder..
The best way to describe the kind of movie we're dealing with here is to say that if you liked "Life Is Beautiful" you will like "Cinema Paradiso." People who don't like foreign movies like this one because, if you take away the Italian subtitles, this film is as fake and schlocky as the worst piece of sentimental clap-trap churned out by the Hollywood myth-making machine.
Subtlety was passed over on every occasion for the the most manipulative of cinematic tricks, and the love story that anchors the film is boring and completely missing any sort of sexual spark.I have a feeling that this movie is so beloved because people who in reality have pretty low-brow movie tastes can watch it and feel like they're cinematically smarter.
A wonderful gift for all movie lovers around the world, Giuseppe Tarnatore's deserving Oscar Winner for Best Foreign Language Film has been (and I believe will be) loved and admired by the viewers regardless their age, gender, native language, and the country they grew up and saw their first movie in the theater, be it a huge multiplex or the modest cinema in a small village."Cinema Paradiso" takes place in a postwar Sicilian village and tells about a friendship between a projectionist in the local cinema of the title, Alfredo (Philippe Noiret, one of the best French character actors whose career spanned more than half a century and who was equally good in the surreal satire, light comedies, moving dramas or revenge war movies) and the little boy Salvatore or Toto whose father had died during the war.
After a fire blinds Alfredo, Toto becomes the projectionist, and the Cinema Paradiso continues to attract all villagers and to bring them together on Friday night to experience again and again the miracle of film.
The boy's obsession with film becomes a lifelong love affair which will make him eventually a famous and successful filmmaker.Deceivingly simple and straightforward, the film is always moving, tender, touching, full of humor, love and compassion to its eccentric characters but what makes is special and unique, is the fact that we the viewers, all of us can and do relate to the story because we relive our own childhood movie experiences while watching the film.
It did happen tonight when I was watching Giuseppe Tarnatore's "Cinema Paradiso", one of the best films about the power, beauty, and magic of FILM ever made..
The director obviously is inspired and imbued his film with genuine love and passion.i have seen thousands of Hollywood, filipino, European, hongkong, Japanese, bollywood Indian & other films but none has touched me as deeply as this low-budget Italian movie.
It is all heart, all passion, all emotions.There is something in the story of a young boy who fell in love with the movies, grew up to be a wealthy & famous director but who made a lot of mistakes and regretted them, which is truly touching.
Cinema Paradiso should be seen by all who love movies and its magic..
filmed 4 years after "once upon a time in America", this flick at the moments resonates the great masterpiece, and i kinda expected old salvatore to look through projection booth while recalling his childhood :)while i can always swallow eternal-love type of story, this one is too shallow, too unfocused and watered.
So, 2003, and I hadn't seen Cinema Paradiso, then I noticed it was on TV, so I gave it a go.I heard a number of good things about this movie and tend to like more non main stream films more and more as I am getting older, but to be honest I was very disappointed with what I saw.Cliché after cliché.
Two hours of clumsy sentimentality, in which nothing happens; a coming-of-age tale which tackles none of the problems of adolescence; characters who spend most of their time simpering over each other, yet they never bother trying to make them connect with the viewer; child acting so dreadful a wooden puppet with its strings cut would have been a better replacement...I resent the laziness of the film, they thought they could rely on its magic formula of nostalgia, saccharine and being foreign so they thought "we don't need to bother building up any genuine feeling for these characters".
Cinema Paradiso, alongside The Good, The Bad and the Ugly and Once Upon a Time in the West, also contains one of Ennio Morricone's most haunting scores and it is also one of my favourites of his.Cinema Paradiso is immaculately directed, has an touching, beautifully-written and honest script and a rich, compelling story that while it has an elegiac feel moves swiftly by draws you right in until the ending, which breaks my heart still after 5 times of seeing it.The characters are very well defined, particularly Alfredo, and the acting is outstanding with Salvatore Cascio, Enzo Cannavale, Marco Leonardi and especially Phillippe Noiret particularly impressive.
After inroads into the environment of the mobsters with "The Professor", and before making this touching human portrait entitled "Everybody's fine", the Italian director Giuseppe Tornatore gave birth screens one of the most beautiful films ever with "Cinema Paradiso", a homage to the cinema and never forget the friendship.The film tells the story of a young altar boy fascinated with the celluloid and a veteran projectionist prone to spoil.
With absolute sobriety and the most charming comic relief, Tornatore taking shape that relationship that will last until the inevitable decline of the old projectionist (Philippe Noiret magnificent), but that will endure in memory of Salvatore di Vito, little Toto become, at present, a prominent filmmaker."Cinema Paradiso" is a pleasant and meaningful childhood memory.
Movies like "Cinema Paradiso", remind us that Italy always gave us one of the best filmmakers in the world..
In my opinion, Cinema Paradiso is the best foreign film ever made and one that will live on for years to come..
Everyone who watches it is amazed and wonder "why can't more movies like this be made"  An excellent film such as "Cinema Paradiso" does not need to be viewed in the "dubbed in English" version.
"Cinema Paradiso" is the rarest of rare gems: a film in which the script, cinematography, acting, music, scenery and directing come together flawlessly to move the viewer in a profound way.
The story, which is packed with raw emotion, and a beautiful bond between two characters make this film a real joy to watch and will keep you moved throughout the whole 155 minutes in which it runs for.This film follows young Salvatore (Toto), who lives in a small Italian village during the Second World War. Fatherless, he begins to form a bond with the projectionist at the local cinema, Alfredo (Philippe Noiret), a friendship in which the film revolves around.The acting in this is quite good; Philippe Noiret gives a great performance as Alfredo as do all three actors who play Salvatore.
Cinema Paradiso is everything anyone needs to fall in love with the art of making a heartfelt movie.
Plus, the brilliant and memorable soundtrack by Ennio Morricone adds lots of emotion to the film, particularly in its first half, which is without a doubt the best part of the movie.One of the biggest charms of this movie is the fascination and enthusiasm of Salvatore (whose nickname is "Toto") on the cinema and the projectionist job.
In fact, the moment he grows up, for some reason the movie looses its initial greatness.Phillipe Noiret gives a great performance as Alfredo, but little Salvatore Cascio steals the show as little "Toto".I never saw the Director's Cut version.
Before watching this on DVD just now, I had not seen director/screenwriter Giuseppe Tornatore's internationally renowned hit movie - at least the 123-minute version - since its initial 1990 release in the U.S., but I remember having mixed feelings that ran the gamut between being moved by its genuine poignancy and being resentful about what I felt at the time was its shameless heartstring tugging.
Blasco Giurato's cinematography is stunning throughout, and enough cannot be said of Ennio Morricone's memorable music score, one of cinema's most beautiful in evoking the movies aura of romantic nostalgia.Beyond the director's cut of the movie, the 2006 Limited Collector's Edition DVD has several extras of note, the best being an informative, somewhat academic commentary track from Italian film historian Millicent Marcus interspersed with periodic personal recollections from Tornatore, as well as a fifteen-minute retrospective featurette, "Exploring a Timeless Classic".
"Paradiso" is a beautiful film, a movie that takes a simple story of a very special couple of people and explores how the most intense emotions in life shape the best films, and how censoring our dreams can lead to incomplete existences.Watching Toto grow up from an innocent who is drawn to the movies, though he might not be able to express the reasons why.
The teenage Toto is portrayed less well, by Marco Leonardi, perhaps because of his lack of screen time - although there is one sequence in particular concerning his character and that of Elisa which stands out.Also in the cast is the excellent Philippe Noiret as Alfredo, the cinema projectionist who becomes the sage, the wise voice of reason within Toto's life.For me, though, the best sequences are the ones which take place within the Cinema Paradiso - the snatches of famous films which play before us, the reactions of the audience, the whole ambience of a little flea pit.
As a young boy (Salvatore Cascio) we see the character being given pieces of film that are cut from the movies due to what the local priest believes to be questionable material (people kissing).
The boy and Alfredo have a charming chemistry which is wonderful, it gives a smile and at times there are feelings echoed my own of the way I respected my childhood teachers.A word about Giuseppe Tornatore, he really knows how to show kids and adolescents in the film.
When "Cinema Paradiso" was first shown here it ran a very serviceable two hours and told the story of a boy, Toto, in Sicily whose love of cinema is instilled in him through his relationship with the elderly projectionist in the local movie house.
The shorter version will, of course, appeal to anyone who loves cinema, even remotely, (and Alfredo's 'gift' to Toto is director Giuseppe Tornatore's gift to us), but the longer version is a masterpiece that engages us on a much more profound level.
A beautiful film that celebrates life,love and the magic of cinema.
Simply, because Cinema Paradiso isn't like any movie I've ever seen, because it's like life!(8.5/10).
Almost 30 years later I revisited Cinema Paradiso (I also saw the released director's cut version somewhere in between) and experienced a slightly different response to a film that I originally enjoyed unconditionally.
Beautiful film about someone who love his life and his passion for movies.
Sure, it also talks about how real life doesn't always turn out like it does in the movies, but that's also part of why we love them so much.To you, Toto.
Great music, a beautiful film about the love that we cut, about love to our works and cinema itself, where we feel what in real life - hard and not possible, we think about our lives.