Nuovo Cinema Paradiso (Cinema Paradiso)

1989  Director: Giuseppe Tornatore Duration:  US release - 123 minutes Original release in Italy - 155 minutes Director's cut - 170 minutes

Salvatore, a successful movie producer, reminisces on a sleepless night his life experiences when as a young boy in a small Sicilian town he was befriended by Alfredo, the projectionist of the local movie theater, the Cinema Paradiso owned by the parish. Through this friendship Salvatore is often seen with Alfredo in the projectionist booth watching movies being previewed by the parish priest who requres Alfredo to cut out parts he deems inappropriate, no matter how innocent, much to the amusement of the young boy. When he grows up, he learns to love films.  He develops an enfatuation with the daughter of the local bank manager. The whimsical response of the girl, due perhaps to her family
position in life  has a long-lasting, tragic effect on his life.  In a very moving scene, Alfredo tells the boy, now a young man, to leave Sicily and never return if he is to succeed in his life-long ambition of one day making movies."This is a cursed land", he states. "Living here day after day, you think it is the center of the world; you believe nothing will ever change. When you come back everything's changed. The chain is broken. What you came back to find isn't there. What was yours is gone. You must go away for many many years before you can come back and truly discover your people and the land where you were born". At the railroad station, just before Salvatore leaves, Alfredo further tells Salvatore: "Never come back! Don't ever think about us, don't look back. Don't write. Don't give in to nostalgia. Forget about us." It is the death of Alfredo many years later that brings Salvatore  back to his town. In his mother's house, Salvatore tells his mother that he had been afraid to come back. "Now, after all these years" he tells her, "I thought I was stronger...that I had forgotten lots of things, but in fact I find them in front of me as if I had never been away. Yet I look around and don't recognize anyone. And you mother, I have abandoned you without an explanation." To which the mother replies: "And I never asked you for one...You did well to leave and do what you wanted to do. Your life is there, here there are only ghosts."  He returns to Rome with the gift left for him by Alfredo - the compilation of all the film  cuttings, that had been made during those early years.

The film was substantially cut from the director's version to the 123 minutes available on video today.