Cinema Paradiso

Giuseppe Tornatore starts with Salvatore, a director in Rome, hearing that Alfredo, the projectionist of his Sicilian childhood, has died, then goes back thirty years. The village priest has every kiss cut from the prints; Alfredo keeps the trimmings. Salvatore inherits an unlabelled reel and the stool he stood on at the projector. Two cuts circulate. The version first released in Italy was much longer and failed commercially; the 124 minute cut is the one shortened for international distribution, and the one that travelled. The 2002 director’s cut adds a stretch where the adult Salvatore finds Elena and learns Alfredo had kept them apart deliberately. At Cannes in 1989 it shared the Grand Prix with Bertrand Blier’s Trop belle pour toi, the year sex, lies, and videotape took the Palme d’Or. It won the 1990 Academy Award for Foreign Language Film, and five BAFTAs in 1991: actor for Philippe Noiret, supporting actor for the child Salvatore Cascio, original screenplay, original music for Ennio and Andrea Morricone, and film not in the English language. A good fit if you accept a long first half given to the cinema itself and the real blow saved for the reel of kisses at the close. Not for anyone who wants to know how the Elena strand ends; the 124 minute cut does not say.