Cinema Paradiso
Screening: 19 September 2005
The President's Choice to be introduced by Paula Thelwell
Italy/France 1988
Directed by Giuseppe Tomatore
Leading players ~ Phillippe Noiret, Salvatore Cascio & Leopoldo Trieste.
125 minutes (subtitles)
Synopsis
For the inhabitants of a Sicilian village the Cinema Paradiso is the focal point of their ordinary lives. In the stalls and more salubrious circle romances blossom, friendships are forged and babies suckled as the movie stars act out the audience's fantasies on the big screen. The story focuses on the projection room where Alfredo (Philippe Noiret) reluctantly becomes the mentor and father figure to Salvatore (played as a boy by Salvatore Cascio).Told as a flashback, the story follows Salvatore's life from a wayward small child, whose father has been killed fighting with Mussolini's army in Eastern Europe, to his first heartbreaking teenage love.
The villain of the piece is not some baddie on the theatre screen but the village priest, Father Adelfio (Leopoldo Trieste), who delights in enjoying the forbidden celluloid fruits he decrees are not fit for public viewing. At the agitated ring of an altar boy's bell Alfredo reluctantly cuts the offending footage from the film. Destined never to see their idols kiss the villagers still queue up religiously for each performance, their mortal souls, at least in the eyes of Father Adelfio, protected from corruption.
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Cinema Paradiso was filmed in Bagheria, the Sicilian village where director Giuseppe Tornatore grew up, seeing a wide variety of films from Kurosawa to the Hercules movies at the local picture house.Winner of the Best Foreign Language Film at the 1990 Academy Awards, child actor Salvatore Cascio also picked up a deserved BAFTA for his memorable performance as the young Toto.
When Salvatore returns to his home and looks at the room his mother prepared for him, there's a picture on the wall from the movie Sceicco bianco, Lo (1952), a Federico Fellini movie starring Leopoldo Trieste, who plays Father Adelfio in this movie.
In one scene, scenes from the film And God Created Woman (1956) are shown. Several scenes later, Salvatore is shown marking a calendar dated 1954. And God Created Woman was released in 1956.
