Cinema Paradiso

Winner of five British Academy Awards in 1989, the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 1990, and the Cannes Grand Prize for Best Picture, Giuseppe Tornatore's Cinema Paradiso is arguably the most loved of all films to celebrate the magic of cinema for the young and the young at heart.

In rural Sicily, during the ‘golden years’ of cinema – those final few years before the advent of television would spell the demise of many a local movie house - a young boy, Salavatore (Salvatore Cascio), escapes his hard home life by immersing himself in the movies. He spends almost every day at the local cinema – The Cinema Paradiso - stealing into the projectionist’s booth and haranguing its long time occupant, the gruff Alfredo (Philippe Noiret), to teach him the magic of the movies. At first Alfredo sees Salvatore as a nuisance, but he slowly comes to accept the boy, and eventually they develop a deep, father-son relationship.

At the core of Cinema Paradiso is a film that explores two key relationships of Salavatore’s - his one with Alfredo, and his one with the movies. Told in flashbacks, we follow Salvatore’s life from boyhood, through his troubled adolescence and into manhood. Cinema Paradiso also provides a portrait of small village life; a life that inexplicably revolves in and around the small cinema. This is a place where the village meets to socialise, where people gain their knowledge about the outside world and where relationships are first kindled. We meet and get to know the cinema’s many patrons; the local priest whose iron fist censors the merest sniff of carnal activity from every film, the man who comes just to escape his noisy family and sleep, the local lotto winner, the local prostitute.

Cinema Paradiso is certainly a film of two halves. The first follows the adventures of a young and precocious Salvatore (wonderfully played by Salvatore Cascio) as his friendship with Alfredo matures and he cultivates his love of cinema. In these early scenes, the interplay between the two friends is just wonderful, generating some truly memorable comedic moments. When Salvatore enters his teens, however, the film switches to a much less impressive ‘coming-of-age’ story that focuses on the euphoria and grief of the young man’s first love. It is then that Salvatore rues the complete absence of screen kisses from his boyhood education.

I reluctantly admit that I glanced once or twice at my player's time display during the second half of the film, which seemed to drag just a little before the arrival of the wonderfully moving climax. Originally released on video in Italy at 155 minutes, after winning the Special Jury Prize at the 1989 Cannes festival and the Best Foreign Film Oscar, this 170-minute director's cut was created. The release of this digitally remastered Cinema Paradiso to DVD marks the first time this longer version of the film has been available with an English translation, and although I applaud the release of director Giuseppe Tornatore's true vision for the film, I’m afraid my Gen-X attention span was left just a little wanting.

My own problems aside, there’s no disputing that Cinema Paradiso is a wonderful film, featuring some stunning cinematography from the very area of Sicily where Tornatore grew up, and uniformly brilliant performances. At times genuinely moving, and at others hilariously funny, this is definitely one movie that all lovers of cinema should see at least once.

I must admit to a few misgivings as I popped Cinema Paradiso into my trusty player; the last release that I reviewed from relative newcomers Umbrella Entertainment, Cyrano de Bergerac, featured a pretty poor transfer drawn from terrible source material. To say that I was overjoyed by what I saw is an understatement, with Umbrella’s treatment of Cinema Paradiso drawing smiles all round. Taken from a brand new digital master, Umbrella’s anamorphic transfer – despite a few small flaws - is everything that fans of this cinematic classic could hope for.

The image is sharp and bright, plumbing the depth of detail provided by the picturesque Sicilienne locations. Blacks are deep and clean and colours are vivid and well rendered, with the dusty yellow fields and deep blues of the seaside village looking stunning. The source material does exhibit the odd bit of film grain in lower-lit scenes, but where possible shadow detail is fine, and although cleaned up for the digital remastering process, the print does display the odd spec of film dirt. In terms of compression artefacts, the odd bit of macro-blocking (pixelation) can be seen in some of the darker backgrounds, but that’s about it. The layer change, coming around the half-way mark, is well placed at the junction between scenes.

Of course Cinema Paradiso does contain many scenes from the golden age of film, and I won’t demean myself (or you) by mentioning the state of these snippets – suffice to say they look just like you’d expect for footage being projected over 50 years ago. All in all, as I have said, this is a fantastic job from Umbrella, and fans of the film will be very pleased with the results. Let’s hope that this signals good things to come from them in the future!

In terms of audio, Cinema Paradiso provides only the simplest of Dolby Digital two-channel soundtracks. In fact, heard through your trusty Prologic decoder, you will swear that it is mono, with the majority of the sound emanating from the centre channel. Not that there is much to hear, as Cinema Paradiso is primarily a dialogue-driven film and the voices have only a few simple foley effects to compete with. Although there are some sporadic lip-sync problems, these seem to be a product of poor post-production looping rather than problems with the transfer. Despite the film’s quite minimalist approach, a definite highlight is the wonderfully moving score from renowned film composer Ennio Morricone, whose efforts were recognised with a British Academy Award. Overall, Cinema Paradiso provides an audio presentation that is serviceable yet technologically uninspiring. Within minutes of the movie starting you won’t even notice...

Accessed via nicely animated, anamorphic menus, Umbrella have compiled a small number of extras to explore. These include an anamorphic theatrical trailer for Cinema Paradiso that looks very nice indeed, as well as biographies for the more experienced cast members Philippe Noiret and Jaques Perrin, as well as director Giuseppe Tornatore and composer Ennio Morricone. In addition, two text pages listing the awards that the film garnered have been provided, as well as a set of trailers for other Umbrella releases Malcolm, My Beautiful Laundrette, and Shallow Grave.

If you have never experienced Tornatore's moving treatise on the magic of the cinema, then I cannot recommend it more highly. For those of you who know and love the film and have been eagerly awaiting its release, Umbrella’s transfer, drawn from a superb digital remaster, certainly looks the way this influential film deserves to. In its digital format, Cinema Paradiso is all you may have hoped for, and more.