I wanted to rebuild what the cin­ema hall used to be once; a sacred place where peo­ple used to know each other, to spend time together, to smile, and dream — Direc­tor Giuseppe Tornatore.

I started watch­ing films in my school days at an above aver­age level. I watch any kind of cin­ema start­ing from Tel­ugu dub­bing Chi­ran­jeevi movies, MRRAdha’s clas­sic ‘Rathak kaneer’ to ‘Schindlers list’. But I had the pas­sion to watch them in the­atres alone. I watch DVDs with a heavy heart that I could have enjoyed them much in theatre.

Once I remem­ber my father dragged me out of Tamil exam in 4th stan­dard to watch ‘Salan­gai Oli’ in Mura­likr­ishna. My mother took me to ‘Sakalakala valla­van’ twice. Obvi­ously, when I watched ‘Cin­ema Par­adiso’, I just eas­ily fixed me in that char­ac­ter where the boy’s life is just made up of cin­e­mas, he watched.

The other thing is friend­ship with a father-like senior [ Like paruthi veeran ] and this film deals with that bond­ing between a 6 yr old boy Toto and his father-like friend Alfredo.

Nuovo cin­ema par­adiso [ New Cin­ema par­adiso ] 1988/Drama/Italy

Music : Ennio Morricone

Writ­ten & Directed by : Giuseppe Tornatore.

Plot

The famous Ital­ian direc­tor Sal­va­tore gets a call from his mother with a news. He nei­ther called his mother nor vis­ited her for 30 years. But the mes­sage takes him back to his home­town. With that his child­hood story comes in flashback.

6 years old Toto [ nick name of Sal­va­tore ] helps the local pas­tor in the church and very pas­sion­ate about movies. The small town has only one the­atre called ‘Cin­ema Par­adiso’. He devel­ops with a mid­dle aged the­atre pro­jec­tion­ist Alfredo. Though Alfredo ini­tially rejects him in the pro­jec­tion room, due to a deal he allows him to work with him in free time. They develop a strong bond­ing over the time and due to an issue, a new cin­ema par­adiso is built with Toto as the pro­jec­tion­ist. The story then flows with the adult Toto.

Toto falls in love with Elena in col­lege and tries to develop the rela­tion. Alfredo doesn’t want Toto to fall in love and end his life in the small town. Some­how, the love doesn’t become suc­cess­ful and they are sep­a­rated. Alfredo strongly advices Toto to leave the town and never ever come back for any rea­sons to pur­sue his career. Mean­while, Toto learns to shoot ama­teur videos.

The 3rd part of the story is the old Toto vis­it­ing his home town and spend­ing time with his mother. Toto also finds Elena in the same town and they meet once to talk about their past. Alfredo’s wife gives a par­cel and film reel as a gift from Alfredo. Toto watches the reel in his per­sonal pro­jec­tion the­atre and runs with tears. He watches the best in that cin­ema reel which he was pas­sion­ate in his childhood.

View

- As any good cin­ema, this starts from the first shot as you see ‘FRANCO CRISTALDI PRESENTA’. The mes­meris­ing piano + vio­lin music pre­pares the audi­ence to just attach with the story. As a good nar­ra­tion the movie starts with a flash­back, where the movie direc­tor rewinds his child­hood days in his native.

- The very first scene explains the char­ac­ters that are intro­duced. The kid is intro­duced sleep­ing in a prayer ses­sion where he is sup­posed to help the pas­tor. A clever n mis­chie­vous boy who is enor­mously inter­ested in cinema.

- Ennio Mor­ri­cone needs a spe­cial men­tion for his sparkling score for this movie. He was involved in the movie right from the script­ing phase and hence he lived with the story. That is proven in the music. One of the best theme music and sound­tracks, in my collection.

- Edit­ing games — Every scene con­nects with the next scene in a poetic man­ner.. For ex., The light­ning in the first scene changes into the sun­light in the church, the scale blows by a teacher change into the lev­el­ing of film reel, small church bell turn­ing into big school bell.. Even when Toto’s mother cries about her hus­band, the boy is attracted towards a cin­ema poster.

- Alfredo — A per­fect father who is tough in out­look but so soft in nature. He advices Toto not to enter pro­jec­tion oper­a­tor job but wit a ideal he teaches him. His dia­logues are almost made up of cin­ema dia­logues as he watches every film almost 100 times.

- The scene where Alfredo talks to Toto was a fan­tas­tic piece. Go away and never come back to this town. This is an impor­tant dia­log to a per­son who lives in a small town [ Remem­ber the same dia­log in ‘Men of Hon­our’ for Crawl Basheer from his father.. The inten­tion is not to make the junior to suf­fer the same as they did in life ].I could under­stand the real­ity by being com­ing from a lit­tle town. Lit­tle town takes out the energy. The rela­tion between Alfredo and Toto was amaz­ing. A father­less kid and a child­less projectionist.

- The first love is of course shown as just an attrac­tion at the first sight. The girl is not so attrac­tive in this movie, I guess [ oth­er­wise I would have writ­ten 2 para­graphs about her :) ].

- The best scene is after 30 years Toto tries to con­tact his ex lover and the con­ver­sa­tion is shown in a sin­gle shot.. Zoom in shows the Toto in a pub­lic booth and zoom out shows Elena in a sil­hou­ette in her window.

- The dia­log between Toto’s mother and him after 30 years was a touch­ing one.

- Cin­ema hall — It’s a part of the peo­ple from that Sicily town.I couldn’t resist think­ing about my home­town the­atres. I am one of the freaks who couldn’t digest cin­ema the­atres chang­ing into malls and mar­riage halls. My home­town got only one the­atre now. :( . The var­i­ous char­ac­ters in the movie are excel­lently por­trayed includ­ing the the­atre owner, pas­tor, his assis­tant, a pros­ti­tute and whom not.

- The morn­ing school and the forenoon school shots are a beau­ti­fully com­mu­ni­cated with a noisy chil­dren crowd and a silent horse walk.

- The adult Toto tries to impress Elena and the dia­logues are nice. Also, the scene which old Toto meets Elena was poetic.

- Most of the dia­logues uttered by Alfredo are from old movies and his life style was depicted neatly in the film. He heats his lunch in the old pro­jec­tion light box :)

- The cin­ema hall itself is a char­ac­ter in this movie. The stages it come across and it’s end. I attach with the great the­atres that were demol­ished in my time. [ ex : Ananda the­atre in Pondicherry :( ].

Con­clu­sion

I am for­tu­nate to see the direc­tors cut [ 173 mins ] of this movie — it was a treat to watch. I won­dered how an Ital­ian cin­ema has the traces of my child­hood. I used to play mar­bles [ Goli ] in exchange for film stripes and mar­bles too.. [ Rajini films were costly :) ]

By see­ing the cut films Toto adds the dia­logue to that and also he col­lects those films in a box. I see myself in that char­ac­ter and hence my name :) .

- Toto.

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