Essay Instructions: The document needed is a personal response essay of no more than two pages. Choosing the film I like, Cinema Paradiso(1989), and write about an aspect of it (a scene, one or two shots, the music, etc.) Talk about your personal response to it and how it works in relation to the whole. No term papers, please.
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Providing a brief summary of the movie: A famous film director returns home to a Sicilian village for the first time after almost 30 years. He reminisces about his childhood at the Cinema Paradiso where Alfredo, the projectionist, first brought about his love of films. He is also reminded of his lost teenage love, Elena, who he had to leave before he left for Rome. A man receives news from his aging mother in a little town that someone he once knew has passed away. A beautiful story unfolds about the man's childhood friendship with an old man who was the projectionist at the local theater. Their bond was one that contained many highlights and tragedies, and shaped the way for a young boy to grow and move out of his rundown village to pursue a dream.
Somethings from the many that I love about this movie is the music and the touching story. I belive it is an amazing self-discovery plot, where a young boy who is born without any resources or education finds the movies as his escapegoat, as the way to disconnect himself from the reality of leaving without his father in a small italian village. He later finds love, only to be neglected because of his social standing vs. her social needs and her parents (being the school director of the village, the girl's father). After many years, accidents, tragic moments and life occurences, he leaves the village, promising Alfredo, the old man, that he would not return to the village and that he would make a life for himself, he would make his dreams come true. He leaves, and becomes a famous Italian Film Director. He later finds out Alfredo has died, returns to the village, only to find a recompilation all put together in a reel of the kissing and intimate moments of every old film Alfredo had shown in the cinema when he was a small boy, (where usually taken out by the catholic priest, who wanted the movies to be shown without the intimacy/sexual moments) and that Alfredo had promised the boy that he could have them,but the boy never took them with him. The reel was all the special moments, one after the other. There the movie ends.
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Special quotes: Alfredo: [after informed about the arrival of the new non-combustible film] Progress always comes late. (becuase of a fire in the cinema, using combustible film, Alfredo became blind. He was saved by Salvatore).
Alfredo: Living here day by day, you think it's the center of the world. You believe nothing will ever change. Then you leave: a year, two years. When you come back, everything's changed. The thread's broken. What you came to find isn't there. What was yours is gone. You have to go away for a long time... many years... before you can come back and find your people. The land where you were born. But now, no. It's not possible. Right now you're blinder than I am.
Salvatore: Who said that? Gary Cooper? James Stewart? Henry Fonda? Eh?
Alfredo: No, Toto(aka.Salvatore). Nobody said it. This time it's all me. Life isn't like in the movies. Life... is much harder.
This quote is when Alfredo is telling Salvatore that he should leave the village, and not come back from now to many years to come, no matter what.
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It reaches within me to places other movies have never reached and I have often wondered why. Perhaps it is because of it's simplicity. It contains no expensive special effects, it has no gratuitous sex or violence, it has no "multi-millon dollar per performance" actors that I know of, it is arguable whether it even has a story line, and yet it soars far above the nonsense that film makers are producing these days. It's characters are portrayed by each and every actor in award winning style and the music is not only beautiful but absolutely perfect for this film.
It is quite simply the story of a human life and it's tragedies and triumphs within the context of a vocation. A young boy matures and gradually learns the lessons of life, cultivates his passion for the cinema, and is rewarded with professional success; however, he remains unfulfilled for true love has escaped him only to return in the form of a gift of love which transcends time, space, and death to reveal at the closing of the film Toto's one true mistress.
A staggering triumph of both the cinematic art and of story telling.
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Some detailed review of the movie:
If you love movies, it's impossible not to appreciate Cinema Paradiso, Giuseppe Tornatore's heartwarming, nostalgic look at one man's love affair with film, and the story of a very special friendship. Affecting (but not cloying) and sentimental (but not sappy), Cinema Paradiso is the kind of motion picture that can brighten up a gloomy day and bring a smile to the lips of the most taciturn individual. Light and romantic, this fantasy is tinged with just enough realism to make us believe in its magic, even as we are enraptured by its spell.
Most of Cinema Paradiso is told through flashbacks. As the film opens, we meet Salvatore (Jacques Perrin), a famous director, who has just received the news that an old friend has died. Before departing for his home village of Giancaldo the next morning to attend the funeral, he reminisces about his childhood and adolescence, thinking back to places and people he hasn't seen for decades.
As a fatherless child, Salvatore (Salvatore Cascio) loved the movies. He would abscond with the milk money to buy admission to a matinee showing at the local theater, a small place called the Cinema Paradiso. Raised on an eclectic fare that included offerings from such diverse sources as Akira Kurosawa, Jean Renoir, John Wayne, and Charlie Chaplin, Salvatore grew to appreciate all kinds of film. The Paradiso became his home, and the movies, his parents. Eventually, he developed a friendship with the projectionist, Alfredo (Philippe Noiret), a lively middle-aged man who offered advice on life, romance, and how to run a movie theater. Salvatore worked as Alfredo's unpaid apprentice until the day the Paradiso burned down. When a new cinema was erected on the same site, an adolescent Salvatore (Marco Leonardi) became the projectionist. But Alfredo, now blind because of injuries sustained in the fire, remained in the background, filling the role of confidante and mentor to the boy he loved like a son.
Cinema Paradiso's first half, with Salvatore Cascio playing the young protagonist, is the superior portion. The boy's experiences in the theater, watching movies and listening to Alfredo's stories, form a kind of journey of discovery. As Salvatore cultivates his love of movies, those in the audience are prodded to recall the personal meaning of film. It's an evocative and powerful experience that will touch lovers of motion pictures more deeply than it will casual movie-goers.
Once Salvatore has grown into his teens, Cinema Paradiso shifts from being a nostalgic celebration of movies to a traditional coming-of-age drama, complete with romantic disappointment and elation. Salvatore falls for a girl named Elena (Agnese Nano), but his deeply-felt passion isn't reciprocated. So he agonizes over the situation, seeks out Alfredo's advice, then makes a bold decision: he will stand outside of Elena's window every night until she relents. In the end, love wins out, but Salvatore's joy is eventually replaced by sadness as Elena vanishes forever from his life.
The Screen Kiss is important to Cinema Paradiso. Early in the film, the local priest previews each movie before it is available for public consumption, using the power of his office to demand that all scenes of kissing be edited out. By the time the new Paradiso opens, however, things have changed. The priest no longer goes to the movies and kisses aren't censored. Much later, following the funeral near the end of Cinema Paradiso, Salvatore receives his bequest from Alfredo: a film reel containing all of the kisses removed from the movies shown at the Paradiso over the years. It's perhaps the greatest montage of motion picture kisses ever assembled, and, as Salvatore watches it, tears come to his eyes. The deluge of concentrated ardor acts as a forceful reminder of the simple-yet-profound passion that has been absent from his life since he lost touch with his one true love, Elena. It's a profoundly moving moment -- one of many that Cinema Paradiso offers.
Is Cinema Paradiso manipulative? Manifestly so, but Tornatore displays such skill in the way he excites our emotions that we don't care. This film is sometimes funny, sometimes joyful, and sometimes poignant, but it's always warm, wonderful, and satisfying. Cinema Paradiso affects us on many levels, but its strongest connection is with our memories. We relate to Salvatore's story not just because he's a likable character, but because we relive our own childhood movie experiences through him. Who doesn't remember the first time they sat in a theater, eagerly awaiting the lights to dim? There has always been a certain magic associated with the simple act of projecting a movie on a screen. Tornatore taps into this mystique, and that, more than anything else, is why Cinema Paradiso is a great motion picture.
Thoughts about the "Director's Cut": When Cinema Paradiso was released in the late 1980s, the version seen by Italian movie-goers was much different than the cut shown to North American viewers. 51 minutes were sliced and diced from the U.S. release. The truncated edition is still a stunning, masterful production, but it leaves the audience with a nagging question: What really happened to Elena? The answer is provided in a 35-minute sequence that never made it into the 1988 American release, but which has now been restored.
Of the 51 "new" minutes of footage, most comes near the end, although several relatively inconsequential scenes have been re-inserted into the main story (one of which shows Salvatore losing his virginity). In the shorter version, Alfredo's funeral functions as an epilogue. In the director's cut, it's a full third act that gives closure to Salvatore and Elena's story and provides us with a more complete picture of Salvatore's mentor. Rather than slowing down Cinema Paradiso's pace, this footage enhances the film's poignance and power, elevating it to a loftier level than the rarified one attained by the first cut. And, viewed after this new material, the Screen Kiss montage is even more touching and transcendant.
For lovers of Cinema Paradiso, widely regarded as one of the best foreign language films ever to grace American screens, this restored version is unquestionably a "must see". The magic and poetry of the original remain, but the added scenes fashion a different, more complete cinematic experience. For those who have never seen Tornatore's masterpiece, this is an excellent opportunity to view it for the first time.
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Some background autobiography of me:
It stays stuck in my mind, the raw smell engulfing the land, the plodding thunder of their feet hitting the ground, the shutterspeed freezing towards a traffic jam of elephants. It?s one of many ? a mountain of fireants towering over the people, frighteningly slight below, fireworks dashing through the nights? sky, sprent with stars, at the San Redentore festival, the peculiar strength and symbol of China?s Great Wall. They fill my body full, a mountain of memories connecting me to my world, and my soul to my hands; they are what keep the camera pressed fast to my eye.
We traveled the world keeping up with my dad, a photographer, and, as a family, earned the great privilege by proxy of wide-world exploration; my parents, however, kept me firm in my appreciation of it. Nothing ever glossed over, there was never too much ? there was only me, still a little girl, tugging on my father?s sleeve, begging for his camera. I found inside of it a symbiosis of distance and exposure that let me see something new; though the lens, a whole world of adventure. The exotic smells, brightly colored vistas, and epic peculiarities of the greater world I saw through the lens were different than those I found at home on our small island of Puerto Rico, more different still than the home I later discovered in New York.
As a family, we trekked the vast beauty of the earth, from continent to continent, seas, mountain ranges, and deserts in between. Atop elephants, horses, camels, boat; looking down from an airplane, up from slow train, I found a world in which each moment, cultural site, and person along the way that world, big, powerful engine that it is, exists in precarious harmony with the other. From the Caribbean and North America I was able to see Mexico, Cuba, Spain, Italy, Greece, England, Holland, France, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, the islands of the South Pacific, and Japan. A mirage of faces and insular little worlds, I was able to connect them all in my memory, a collection of the still photographs I cultivated and kept, locked away inside my mind.
There were also physical photographs, the ones I proudly showed my friends, traced with my fingers upon our returns, puzzled out the greater world. Outside of my front door was something vastly different than the one inside it; my parents filled our home with classical music, knowledge, and exposure; we soaked it up like sponges. Somehow, though, the two worlds melded together and the experiences, one, tied me not only to my home island, but left a bit of me everywhere I went, while I captured pieces of the world to keep, too.
At five years, still a little girl, while my friends sat on their bedroom floors playing with their favorite dolls, I curled up next to my father on the orange nylon of an airplane seat, pleading with him to show me his camera and how it worked, picking the threads apart with my fingers in rampant anticipation. We were going to Italy! Italy was the world of dreams, to me, it was where princes and princesses danced until the wee hours of the night, where the Pope ruled with kingly presence, where the most fashionable dined along the shores of Wharton?s Como. Italy was the place of dreams.
I remember landing and, the routine now too engrained to be a nuisance, fetching our luggage and going through the turmoil of getting settled into a new trip. With suitcases, luggage, camera bags, and young children trailing them, my parents set off into the Italian countryside to show us this land of which I had dreamed. We started in Venice, where the splashing water of the gondola wet my thirst for the land, the language soared in and out of my head with the heat of painters and musicians. I fell in love with it, looking up to Italy from the awe-filled eyes of a child barely tall enough to see over the counter where I enjoyed the many flavored gelatti with the glee only a child can muster.
We fell in and out of other countries as I grew older; I found a world under water in Australia as we dove the great depths of the sea. In Bora Bora, I snorkled the barrier, rife with magic, eyes peeled for sting rays, jelly fish, turtles, and coral so dazzling I could never forget it; I wanted to take a piece of all of it ? the salty sting of the water, the velvety touch of the rays ? home with me, to keep it forever. My sense of adventure and longing to preserve this world I met failed to cease; my big brother took me shark feeding and I realized that this world I knew was more alive than anything one could ever imagine unless they, too, were able to experience it.
When my fifteenth birthday came around, and my friends began preparing for their own parties in celebrative commemoration of this rite of passage, I begged my parents to take me to Africa. A big, grand trip, not associated with work, just so I could see it ? it was, in my head, the biggest present for which I could ask. I wanted to see more of the world. To my delight and surprise, they relented, and very soon after, I was sitting in front of my tent, camera in hand, taping the warthogs as they roamed the night?s land, running familiar songs through my head I knew I would pare with the footage the minute we stepped back through the front door at home.
Soon our front doors changed, and we left our little island of Puerto Rico for another, Manhattan. I hated the city at first; I miss my home, my family, the heat, the familiar. My parents were undeterred, immersing themselves in the jobs that brought us here, exploring every inch of New York with the same determination they made Italy understandable to a young child. At school, I enrolled in a photography class, the most sacred thing in my life, and one of the few things that did not change in our great move. New York was so fast and hectic, still a shock to my system; but under the careful tutelage of my teachers, guiding calm of my parents, and the beat for adventure that spurred my heart forward, I found New York to be something entirely different than the place that first scared me ? hectic turned out to be just another way to describe a place that was really just a kingdom of infinite moments, mine for the taking. Here, amongst the Whitneys, Vanderbilts, and Trumps, I knew I was rich.
My school, trenchant in determination to give us New York, offered a New York City Literature course that I clamored to take. The final project was for most the steady recomposition of English essays that have graced teachers? desks for years; but the course had showed me New York, and my camera traced it; I found the stories of New York existed for me not on the paper, but instead, behind the lens. I submitted a final video, a clumsy first, splicing clips, my own interview explaining the death of John Lennon, shots of the Dakota, and mingled them with the developmental history of Central Park. As I stayed awake well past my bedtime night after night, desperate to finish the project and show my classmates the city I discovered, I found my passion. My teacher, a true pedagogue, observed my complete inspiration and, granting me not only an A but an earned excuse from the final exam, encouraged me to pursue my dream.
I decided to go catch it. I splurged on a Macintosh, filling with Final Cut Pro and Avid Cinema. I read the program manuals cover to cover, soaking up everything I could, enrolled in photography and film courses at Georgetown College Prep, and took the Nikon Workshop Course. I documented everything ? graduations, celebrations, trips, the sidewalk bordering our apartment. Attending University in Puerto Rico, I changed schools to try and get closer to the arts, remembering the Italy I discovered as a little girl and wanting to feel its language on my own tongue. I participated in a Summer Exchange Program and lived in Urbino for two months, discovering Roma, San Marino, Rimini, Perguai, Napoli, Portofino, Venezia for the first time on my own, and always with my camera.
I am now trilingual, with an ever-expanding veraciousness for the world, and a camera inextricably connected to my eyes through which I not only see but also share it. Now at American Inter Continental Unversity, I am nearing the completion of pursuit for my BFA, after which I intend to seek a strong, vocational training in the art that has characterized my life. I am continuously spurred on, not only through outward recognition like that of Shutterbug Magazine, which carried not only my photographs but also my story, but through my passion for the world I have come to know and want to preserve. I also went on to get certified by Apple as a Final Cut Pro Professional End-User. Mohammad said that the true wealth of the person is measured not only in dreams but action, which I supported publishing an environmental column in the newspaper El Vocero. The column dealt with the importance of coral preservation and education, an issue critical to the survival of a tropical island, and something I knew I could share not only through words but also through image.
My dreams get bigger by the day, as does my determination to see them through. I have come to understand, even in my early years, the important balance that exists between man and earth; if one understands the need for environmental protection, it is a matter of responsibility to share that knowledge. While I set in motion the banner I know I must carry for the preservation of the environment, I also spur others on to hold and remember the causes close to their heart, with my own start-up digital scrapbook company, Voyager Productions. Maybe one day I will work for National Geographic, or start my own company that harkens to my cause, but in the meantime I know that, ?if you do your work with your whole heart, you will succeed, there is so little competition.? - Elbert Hubbard.
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The personal response has to be very detailed about the mere part of the movie I love, the music and the story(plot itself). How the whole connection about the love for movies, italy and the feeling for self-discovery made me live the movie as I watched it.
Anymore information please don't hesitate to contact me, recommend to view the movie to understand review(story).
