Cinema Paradiso offers a nostalgic look at films and the effect they have on a young boy who grows up in and around the title village movie theater in this Italian comedy drama that is based on the life and times of screenwriter/director Giuseppe Tornatore. The story begins in the present as a Sicilian mother pines for her estranged son, Salvatore, who left many years ago and has since become a prominent Roman film director who has taken the advice of his mentor too literally. Cinema Paradiso A filmmaker recalls his childhood, when he fell in love with the movies at his village’s theater and formed a deep friendship with the theater’s projectionist. Genre: Drama.
Looking to watch 'Nuovo Cinema Paradiso' on your TV, phone, or tablet? Hunting down a streaming service to buy, rent, download, or view the Giuseppe Tornatore-directed movie via subscription can be challenging, so we here at Moviefone want to help you out. We've listed a number of streaming and cable services - including rental, purchase, and subscription alternatives - along with the availability of 'Nuovo Cinema Paradiso' on each platform. Now, before we get into the nitty-gritty of how you can watch 'Nuovo Cinema Paradiso' right now, here are some specifics about the Cristaldi Film drama flick. Released 1988, 'Nuovo Cinema Paradiso' stars Salvatore Cascio, Philippe Noiret, Marco Leonardi, Jacques Perrin The PG movie has a runtime of about 2 hr 3 min, and received a score of (out of 100) on Metacritic, which assembled reviews from well-known critics. What, so now you want to know what the movie’s about? Here's the plot: 'Young Salvatore Di Vita (Salvatore Cascio) discovers the perfect escape from life in his war-torn Sicilian village: the Cinema Paradiso movie house, where projectionist Alfredo (Philippe Noiret) instills in the boy a deep love of films. When Salvatore grows up, falls in love with a beautiful local girl (Agnese Nano) and takes over as the Paradiso's projectionist, Alfredo must convince Salvatore to leave his small town and pursue his passion for filmmaking.' 'Nuovo Cinema Paradiso' is currently available to rent, purchase, or stream via subscription on iTunes Store, Cinemax, VUDU, Amazon.com, XFINITY, and YouTube .
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When the rich, middle-aged Salvatore receives word in Rome of the death of his old friend Alfredo, his mind goes hurtling back over the years to Giancaldo, the parched Sicilian village where he grew up. Possibly because Salvatore is now a successful movie director, he remembers all in neatly chronological order.
Thus begins Giuseppe Tornatore's 'Cinema Paradiso,' an Italian memory film about what one might call (in a soggy moment) the magic of movies. 'Cinema Paradiso,' which won a Special Jury Prize at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival, opens today at the Lincoln Plaza.
As a little boy in the postwar 1940's, Salvatore, nicknamed Toto, embarks on his love affair with movies and his friendship with Alfredo, the philosophical projectionist at the Cinema Paradiso in Giancaldo.
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Like everything else in Giancaldo, the Cinema Paradiso is picturesque, an operation of hard seats, noisy patrons and, of course, magic.
Toto snoozes through his duties as altar boy, but he's ever alert at the Cinema Paradiso. He likes to hang around the projection booth, especially when Alfredo is screening films for Father Aldelfio, who is also the local film censor. Father Adelfio loves movies too, but when a man and a woman are about to collide onscreen in a kiss, he pulls himself together and vigorously rings a little bell, otherwise reserved for use in the Mass.
Alfredo dutifully excises the offending scene.
As a result nobody in Giancaldo ever sees a movie kiss except Toto, Alfredo and Father Adelfio. One dark day, Toto's purloined collection of kiss scenes, hidden under his bed at home, catches fire and nearly burns down the poor cottage he shares with his war-widowed mother.
The flammability of old acetate film plays an important part in 'Cinema Paradiso.' It's responsible for an especially overcharged melodramatic sequence, the kind once featured in old Rin-Tin-Tin or Lassie movies in which the faithful dog saves its unconscious master from a roaring inferno.
This use of fire could be an allusion to Walter Pater's 'hard, gemlike flame,' with which Toto, the nascent artist, burns as a child, but it seems more like dopey movie making.
'Cinema Paradiso' is stuffed with dozens of clips and other mementos that evoke the heritage of the cinema. At one point or another the movie calls up Jean Renoir's 'Lower Depths,' Luchino Visconti's 'Terra Trema,' Chaplin, Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, Fritz Lang's 'Fury,' Erich von Stroheim, Rita Hayworth, John Ford's 'Stagecoach' and, the high-point of 'Cinema Paradiso,' the ecstatically youthful Silvana Mangano as she dances an all-out mambo from the movie of the same name.
This is risky business in a movie as soft as 'Cinema Paradiso,' which means to celebrate the icons of the cinema. The film, however, evokes nothing more substantial than sentimental B-movies made by hacks in Hollywood and abroad, and which go unrecognized by Mr. Tornatore in his anthology of clips.
Mr. Tornatore, who wrote the screenplay and directed 'Cinema Paradiso,' may admire the masters but his methods are commonplace and false.
The film's tone is set by his direction of Salvatore Cascio, who plays Toto as an 8-year-old. The handsome little boy is a nonprofessional discovered by the director in Sicily, where the film was shot. At the director's bidding, he gives an enthusiastic but awful miniature-adult performance, the kind that one might have thought outmoded after the films of Francois Truffaut and Steven Spielberg, among others.
As Alfredo, the venerable Philippe Noiret is better but not much, perhaps because he was aware that the kid was upstaging him (and, so, overacted), or maybe because of the material. He must make Alfredo into a heroic father figure by musing on the loneliness of the projectionist ('You talk to Garbo and Power, like donkeys'). When, in turn, Toto replaces him in the booth, he reminds the boy: 'Life isn't like it is in the movies. Life is harder.'
One wouldn't know it from 'Cinema Paradiso,' in which the 8-year-old Toto grows into a movie-making adolescent (Marco Leonardi) who looks like a male model and, finally, into Salvatore (Jacques Perrin), the weary, world-class movie director. Salvatore drives a Mercedes, lives in a palatial apartment in Rome and has a beautiful mistress, who is probably traded in at the same time as the Mercedes.
Though 'Cinema Paradiso' is certainly better, I'd rather watch a half-dozen reruns of 'Diff'rent Strokes.' Not so much magic and the pretensions are fewer.
Backward Glances
CINEMA PARADISO, directed and written by Giuseppe Tornatore; in Italian with English subtitles; director of photography, Blasco Giurato; edited by Mario Mora; music by Ennio Morricone; and Andrea Morricone; production designer, Andrea Crisanti; produced by Franco Cristaldi; released by Miramax Films. At Lincoln Plaza, Broadway and 63d Street. Running time: 123 minutes. This film has no rating.