Nuovo cinema Paradiso (1989) - film review

A successful film maker, Salvatore, receives a telephone call from his estranged mother, informing him that his childhood friend, Alfredo, has just died.  As Salvatore ruminates over whether he should return to his home town to attend Alfredo’s funeral, he reflects on the happy memories that the older man brought him when he was growing up.  Alfredo was the projectionist in the town’s revered cinema, the Paradiso, the only entertainment for the town’s inhabitants.  As a young boy, Salvatore would steal money from his mother to watch films at the cinema, and it was his love for cinema which led him to strike up a close friendship with Alfredo.  After the cinema is accidentally burned down, Salvatore replaces Alfredo as the projectionist in the rebuilt cinema.  As Salvatore comes of age, Alfredo is still around to give advice to his young protégé on life and love...

Nuovo cinema Paradiso offers an evocative portrayal of nostalgia and love of cinema which will doubtless appeal most strongly to devotees of the seventh art.   Having won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes in 1989 and an Academy Award in the Best Foreign Language Film category in 1990, the film became an international success, establishing the reputation of its director, Giuseppe Tornatore.

The film has been criticised for its obvious sentimentality and far from subtle attempts to manipulate the emotions of its audience.  Yet, steeped in sentimentality as it is, the film has a genuine capacity to engage the spectator and it is surprisingly easy to relate one’s own nostalgic experiences to those which are presented in the film.

Nuovo cinema Paradiso is a film of two halves, the first being concerned mainly with a young boy’s discovery of the beauty of cinema.  This part of the film is certainly the most charming and entertaining, the alluring photography and endearing performances from Philippe Noiret and Salvatore Cascio capturing vividly the magic of cinema whilst reminding us of our own first experiences with cinema.  The second half, telling an anodyne tale of unrequited love between the young projectionist and a banker’s daughter, is naïve in its simplicity but filmed so beautifully that you can help but be enchanted by it.

The first release of the film in America and the United Kingdom suffered from a fifty minute cut, which robbed the film of its resolution and, consequently, made the film appear slightly weak and insubstantial.  The film has since been re-released in its original Italian cut, with the missing third of the film reinstated.  This addition makes the final sequence of the film, where a nostalgic Jacques Perrin watches an astonishing montage of censored film kisses, all the more poignant.  In its restored form, it is clearer that Nuovo cinema Paradiso is not so much a homage to cinema, but rather a touching visual poem on the spiritual, almost religious, relationship between cinema and a keen cinema enthusiast.

© James Travers 2000

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