Cinema Paradiso

The final scene is probably the best in the history.

This movie is very sentimental, so if you are proud of your cynical side, stay away.

If you are scared of foreign movies and start foaming at the mouth at a subtitle, stay away.

For the rest of us, this is a masterpiece! Enjoy the movie and enjoy yourself! The end is so beautiful that it is almost unbelievable.

I seldom watch Italian movies, (i saw it today for the first time) being Italian maybe i'm biased, but this one really stands out. A real masterpiece; i can't remember another movie so moving like this one, maybe Schindler's list; it makes you laugh and it makes you cry, yet it is so simple and straightforward. Maybe there lies its magic: no Hollywood superstars, no special effects, just pure emotions and feelings, love, fear, grief and regret, nostalgia for childhood and youth, memories of places and times that will not come back, memories of the loved ones. Some movies are there to entertain, some to scare, some to question. This movie is there to affect your feelings. Definitely to be seen.

After seeing this special edition DVD which shows the entire 174-minute film (in addition to the 121-minute one that most of us had seen over the years,) my rating of this film was elevated. This review is of the longer "director's cut."

Most of the new footage involved the main's character's romance while he was a young man. The story then is continued years later when that character comes back to his hometown for a funeral and runs into the woman he was in love with but never was able to get for his own. It turns out to be a somewhat tragic love story.

The first part of the film, with Salvatore Cascio as "Toto" a young boy is a love story about two people sharing their love of movies: the kid and an adult "Alfredo" (Phillpe Noiret) who runs the local movie theater. Their love of film bonds them for life.

The word "love" is used repeatedly in this review because that's the dominant theme: the love people had for others and for the world of film, something all of us on this website share.

The second and third parts of the film are the above-mentioned love story of Toto (Marco Leonardi as an adolescent and then Jacques Perrin as an adult) and "Elena" (Agnese Nano/ Brigitte Fossey). The first third of this director;s cut edition is much livelier and interesting, frankly, than the last two-thirds. Although not boring, it does drag in a few spots but the longer version is better in the long run because it makes the whole story much more meaningful.

It's very nicely filmed and you get a real feel for the Italian people and their little town. The director of the movie, Giuseppe Tornatore, went on to make other great visual films, two of which I also like: Malena and The Star Maker.....but Cinema Paradiso, I believe, is considered his "masterpiece."

I have seen this film at least a dozen times and each time I am carried away to a small village in Italy, where the dreams of a small boy come true and we can join his spellbinding journey. The Italian language (it is subtitled) adds to the film's beauty and music, the characters are so real you can almost smell them. I am absorbed into "Paradiso" each time I watch it, so that when it is over, I am shocked into the realisation that I haven't actually been anywhere except right there, in my theatre seat. I am not a huge "art house" film fan or indeed enjoy subtitled films (it is hard on the old eyes!) but "Paradiso" is a gem and is worth seeing again and again.