Splendor

Splendor is the name of an old cinema in a provincial town. Jordan took it over from his father and has spent years keeping it open. But the audiences have gone, the debts have grown, and there is a television in every house. All he has beside him is Luigi the projectionist and Chantal on the door. In the end he has to sell, and the businessman who buys it means to turn it into a furniture shop. Ettore Scola directs, with Marcello Mastroianni, Massimo Troisi and Marina Vlady. It is a film about the death of cinema that refuses to sing a lament over it and keeps a comic register instead. It is as much about the people sitting in the dark as about what is on the screen.