"Don't give in to nostalgia..." That's what Philippe Noiret's blind cinema projectionist tells his protégé Salvatore (Salvatore Cascio) as the boy leaves the Sicilian village he grew up in. It's good advice, but impossible to follow as Giuseppe Tornatore's slow-building love letter to the power and beauty of cinema wraps itself around you.
It's love of cinema that drives Salvatore, as he changes from a star-struck boy into a romantic teenager and finally into a successful director, returning to the village for the funeral of his friend the projectionist. Told in amber-toned flashbacks, Cinema Paradiso is a film all about glorious, beautiful nostalgia.
DVD Extras:
It has little else, but this two-disc set does boast both the 118-minute theatrical release and Tornatore's 168-minute Director's Cut. Expanding on the characters and adding a hefty chunk of plot revelation late on, the longer cut could be seen as the more definitive, certainly the more grown-up, take. But in darkening the tale, it loses something of the naïve, childlike beauty of the first outing - and that's a shame.
