Cinema Paradiso (1988) Review: Cinema as Memory and Home

Is Cinema Paradiso worth watching?

Yes. Cinema Paradiso is a masterpiece of feeling, a funny, nostalgic and ultimately devastating film about childhood, friendship and the way movies shape a life. Giuseppe Tornatore captures a whole Sicilian village through its love of the local cinema, and the bond between a boy and an old projectionist is one of the most touching friendships on film. If there is a caution, it is that the film wears its heart openly; viewers allergic to sentiment should know it aims straight for the tear ducts, and almost always hits.

What is Cinema Paradiso about?

Cinema Paradiso opens in Rome, where a successful film director, Salvatore, learns that Alfredo, the projectionist from his home village in Sicily, has died. The news sends him back in memory to his childhood in the years after the Second World War, when he was a mischievous boy called Totò who spent every spare moment in the village cinema, the Cinema Paradiso.

Alfredo (Philippe Noiret), gruff and warm-hearted, reluctantly lets the boy into the projection booth and becomes his friend, teacher and substitute father. The film follows Totò as he grows up alongside the cinema and the village around it, with Antonella Attili as his mother and Enzo Cannavale among the townspeople who fill the auditorium every night.

Tornatore wrote and directed the film, an Italian production in Italian. The extended director’s cut runs 174 minutes, while the more widely seen international version is around two hours. It won the Grand Prix at Cannes in 1989 and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

A whole village in one auditorium

The heart of the film is its portrait of a community watching movies together. Tornatore fills the cinema with a rowdy, lovable crowd: men who cry at melodramas, boys who heckle, couples who court in the back rows and a local priest who previews every film and insists on cutting the kissing scenes. The audience reacts to each film as though it were happening to them, and the result is some of the most joyful filmmaking about filmgoing ever made.

The cinema also becomes a record of history. As the years pass, the programmes, audiences and the village itself change around it, and Tornatore uses the building as a gentle measure of time and of the modern world arriving in a small Sicilian town.

Philippe Noiret and a child’s-eye view

Philippe Noiret gives Alfredo a gruff tenderness that never tips into softness. He is funny, stubborn and wise without being saintly, and his scenes with the young Totò, played with irresistible cheek by Salvatore Cascio, form the emotional core of the film. Their friendship is built on arguments, bargaining and shared delight in the magic of the projector, and it feels completely real.

Ennio Morricone’s score is essential to the effect. His themes, lyrical and aching, carry the film across its decades and have become as famous as the images themselves. Few scores have done more to make audiences feel nostalgia for a place they have never been.

Which version to watch

The one real complication is the choice of cut. The shorter version is tighter and more focused on Totò and Alfredo, and many viewers consider it the more perfect film. The 174-minute director’s cut adds considerable material about the adult Salvatore, deepening the story’s themes of regret while also changing its emphasis and slowing its final hour. Both are rewarding; first-time viewers may find the shorter version the more natural place to start.

Who should watch Cinema Paradiso?

It is essential for anyone who loves the movies, and for viewers who enjoy nostalgic, character-driven drama about childhood and home. It works beautifully for families with older children, though a few scenes feature mild sexual content and one sequence of danger may upset younger viewers. Keep tissues nearby.

Three Italian classics to follow it with:

• 8½, Fellini’s great film about a director lost in memory, a more surreal cousin to this one.
• The Great Beauty, another Italian film about an older man looking back at the life and the love he let slip away.
• Once Upon a Time in the West, for more of Ennio Morricone’s legendary music in a very different Italian classic.

The verdict

Cinema Paradiso is one of cinema’s great love letters to itself, and one of the most moving films about growing up and leaving home. Warm, funny and heartbreaking, carried by Noiret and Morricone, it deserves every bit of its reputation.

Rating: 5/5