Cinema Paradiso - a Greg Collins and Paul Allen joint

Roger Ebert laments me watching DVDs on my computer screen when he says this about Cinema Paradiso,

Yet anyone who loves movies is likely to love "Cinema Paradiso," and there is one scene where the projectionist finds that he can reflect the movie out of the window in his booth and out across the town square so that the images can float on a wall, there in the night above the heads of the people. I saw a similar thing happen one night in Venice in 1972 when they showed Chaplin's "City Lights" in the Piazza San Marco to more than 10,000 people, and it was then I realized the same thing this movie argues: Yes, it is tragic that the big screen has been replaced by the little one. But the real shame is that the big screens did not grow even bigger, grow so vast they were finally on the same scale as the movies they were reflecting.

It seems that 3-D movies are here to stay. High Definition lost out to BluRay but 3-D is not going to meet the same fate. As Buck Snodgrass makes clear, Avatar was made to be a '3-D' movie, not just a movie. I re-watched Cinema Paradiso after seeing Avatar in an effort to re-live an era of film I never actually lived.

The story is told in flashback. It begins with famous film director Jacques Perrin being notified that a close friend, his mentor, the man who made films his life, the projectionist in Perrin's home village has passed away. Salvatore, Perrin's real/childhood name, is a young kid lacking a 'home' who finds his home in the classic, early hollywood melodramas shown at the local cinema. He annoys Alfredo (the projectionist) enough to earn a spot alongside the wise old man learning the ins and outs of projecting 'for the people'. Salvatore, by way of director Guiseppe Tournatore's predictable but fun story-telling, shares his aches and pains of adolescence with us. Highlights of his childhood are when Salvatore seems to fail the most. He misses out on the girl, he burns down the cinema, and he leaves only to never come back. The sympathy with which one views this movie is as dense as the 'shout-outs' made to classic films. My effort to re-live these classic movies comes only from a desire to lean over to the person next to me when a classic is being shown in Cinema Paradiso and say, 'dude, that is one of the best movies ever'. The irony of this is that only then would I be a huge film-tool, as if I'm not already one now.

At any rate, anyone who loves movies for the escape that they are, you get the opportunity to share this love with characters that love movies more than you. The scenes in the cinema with people yelling, smoking, drinking, breast-feeding and being awesome, makes me think that watching movies in silence as white people do now is causing us to miss out. Much how I feel white congregations miss out on God on a weekly basis. That is to say though, people talking or chompin popcorn or sticking their clumsy paws into sour-patch-kid wrappers drives me nuts. Also great is the scene R. Ebert refers to in which Alfredo sticks it to the man and projects the kissing scene on the piazza walls for the whole village to see. Sticking it to the man is always awesome in movies.

Cinema Paradiso was re-released on DVD in full length, a full 51 minutes longer than the original 1988 release. I have not seen the short version but I can't imagine doing without the 51 pertinent minutes. I'm all for long movies (Alexander being the exception).

This is a really fun movie that everyone needs to see. Guaranteed movie enjoyment.