Cinema Paradiso Review

Tornatore's trick is to make the projection booth a workshop rather than a shrine. Alfredo teaches Toto the mechanics first, the nitrate that burns, the carbon arc, the changeover cues, so the magic on the piazza wall is always paired with the labor behind it. Philippe Noiret plays Alfredo with a craftsman's impatience, affection delivered as instruction, and the film is smart enough to make him blind before it makes him wise. Blasco Giurato lights the Sicilian square in dusty amber and shoots the audience more often than the screen, which is the point: the reaction shots are the subject.

Ennio Morricone's main theme and his son Andrea's love theme do a lot of the emotional lifting, arguably more than the script earns on its own. The plot is a chronicle, drifting rather than building, and the adult romance is thin. Then the last scene arrives, a private reel of every kiss the village priest ever ordered cut, spliced back together as an inheritance, and the film converts a hundred small deprivations into one overwhelming return. Few endings are this well funded.