NUOVO CINEMA PARADISO

NUOVO CINEMA PARADISO is a director’s cut re-release of the 1988 Cannes Film Festival award winning Italian film about a little boy’s love affair with the movies.

The movie begins with middle-aged Salvatore (Jacques Perrin), a famous film director, receiving news from his aging mother that someone he once knew had died. For the first time in thirty years, he returns home to his Sicilian village, where a lifetime of memories and lost dreams flood his mind.

He remembers Alfredo, a wizened old projectionist that tried to alleviate a World War II-wounded town by showing great movies in his beloved old theatre, “Cinema Paradiso.” Alfredo had encouraged him in his fascination for the movies and the projectionist’s trade in his early childhood and how, amidst the chaos of the war and the separation of generations, a lifetime of friendship had been formed.

He remembers the classic John Wayne, Clark Gable and Charlie Chaplin movies that the town’s priest would censor by making the projectionist splice out the kissing scenes before the townspeople could view them.

Salvatore knew even as a young child that his mother’s encouragement about seeing his father, a soldier in Russia, was false. He sensed that his father had died, and he set about to busy himself and cover his grief by working at the cinema. Alfredo had tried to discourage him from this passion, insisting that the projectionist’s life was one of slavery and loneliness and endless repetition of the same movies, over and over again, but Salvatore had remained steadfast in his film pursuits.

He reminisces about the beautiful Elena (Antonella Attili/Pupella Maggio), and how her father disapproved of him and forbidden their courtship. Salvatore remembers the grief he felt when she did not shown up on the day the two had planned to meet, possibly to elope.

Now, 30 years later, Salvatore stands with the townspeople to watch the demolition of his beloved cinema, long forgotten since the introduction of television and the progress of technology and its distractions. The audience wonders with him: Is this, indeed, the end of a youthful era of harmless entertainment? Is his perception correct about Elena’s rejection, or is there another story, perhaps, one that she could reveal now herself? Had the old Alfredo truly been a friend, or could there have been a mysterious betrayal of the young Salvatore?

NUOVO CINEMA PARADISO was originally released in Italy in 1988 at 155 minutes, but after a very poor box office performance, the movie was pulled out of circulation and shortened to 123 minutes. After that, it won the Special Jury Prize at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival and the Best Foreign Film Oscar, was re-released in Italy on video, first in its 155 minute form, then in a special 170 minute director’s cut. The longer versions of the movie include an alternate ending to the love story.

This movie is interesting in its ability to whisk the audience away to a fascinating foreign land in another era, and it truly evokes nostalgic feelings for the good old days of the old cinema, where entire families could gather to watch the carefully censored versions of all the great early classics. The acting is superb, and the story and cinematography are top-notch.

Regrettably, the worldview is pagan, though the story is centered around a Catholic community. It is clearly the movies, and not the church or the Lord, which brings life and hope to the townspeople. The movie contains some foul language, plenty of base body-humor, and some unnecessary sex scenes. The tone of the film is typical of the world’s system – dark, relativistic, hopeless, tragic.

As with other movies releasing this month, such as DIVINE SECRETS OF THE YA-YA SISTERHOOD, as well as older movies like CHOCOLAT, there is a lesson taught. It is: a church full of doctrine and liturgy, void of the vitality and abundance of personal relationship with Jesus Christ, will bear no fruit in the crucial areas of freedom, hope and true life purpose.

Due to its worldly outlook and strong sexual content, however, this re-release of CINEMA PARADISO is excessive.