Cinema Paradiso (Director's Cut) [DVD]

Cinema Paradiso is a serious movie buff's oxygen! No legitimate student of film can NOT be emotionally affected by it; no serious student of film can ever forget it! It is so many things: a tender story of friendship, a beautiful portrait of a Sicilian village community and a "love letter" to the cinema itself. As uplifting and heartwarming as the story is, it still does show that an obsessive love of something (such as films) can also result in sadness and regret: a man is able to have two "loves" in his life, but success in one of them comes at the expense of the other! There are actually two versions of this film that differ greatly: the original three hour Director's cut and the re-edited, two hour theatrical version which was the one that I saw when I first experienced this magical movie gem. I have since seen the longer version but (as is the case with Coppola's masterpiece "Apocalypse Now") the shorter version is crisper, more intense and makes the ending even more emotionally wrenching! A boy Salvatore (Toto) who grew up in a Sicilian Village returns home as a famous film director after receiving news about the death of an old childhood friend. Told in flashback, Salvatore (as an adult played by Jacques Perrin) reminiscences about his childhood and his relationship with Alfredo (Philippe Noiret), the projectionist at the Cinema Paradiso. Under the fatherly influence and guidance of Alfredo, Salvatore (played as a boy by Salvatore Cascio) falls in love with film making. Alfredo painstakingly teaches young Salvatore the skills that eventually become his "stepping stone" into the world of film making. As the retrospective story unfolds we are are witness to Salvatore as a teenager (played by (Marco Leonardi) and his tortured relationship with the beautiful Elena (Agnese Nano). As this whole endearing human story is finally revealed we are also shown the changes in cinema due to technological progress and social factors. Most of all the film illuminates a young boy's dream of leaving his little town to foray into the outside world Divided into three sections, it is the first section that was left almost intact in the short version. It is of course primarily concerned with the relationship between young Toto and Alfredo. It is full of delightful touches, such as Toto's spellbound face as he watches the footage that will be censored by the town priest. The cinema is portrayed as almost being the centre of life in the town (Giancaldo) in which the film is mostly set. As the film moves forward several years to show Toto as a 16 year old, the wonderful cinema scenes are still present. However, it is mainly concerned with Toto's (now called Salvatore) courtship of and love for Elena, a love that is never to reach its full potential. In the final section Salvatore, now a great film director, returns to Giancaldo as a middle aged man to attend Alfredo's funeral. His reunion with the older Elena (Brigitte Fossey) and his mother and his exploration of the cobwebbed, dilapidated cinema of his youth are extremely moving. And ... as for the final scene when Salvatore opens a certain gift Alfredo left him: it never ever fails to make the skin tingle and the eyes water profusely! I am often asked why I love movies so much (and I too once looked for a definitive answer to that question); Cinema Paradiso gave me the answer! If you love movies, Cinema Paradiso will remind you why you do; if you don't love movies, it will tell you why you should!

What can I say about this film? There are not enough superlatives to describe this wonderfully atmospheric, romantic, lost love, period film. The plot is straightforward. In a small 1940's village in Southern Italy, a small boy becomes obsessed with the local cinema. He does everything he can to go there and watch films but more importantly learn how the projection room works. Over time he learns from the old projectionist how the antiquated machines work and through this, a friendship begins between the old man and the young boy. Intermingled in the story are some wonderful comedic scenes looking at what was also happening in the cinema whilst a film was showing. By accident there is a fire and the small boy has to take over the running of the cinema. Through the passage of time from a junior through to adolescence the audience is shown a sweet love story full of pathos between the teenager and his first love. The story is beautifully shot and told. The young projectionist eventually grows up and leaves the village to go to Rome and learn cinematography. The original film then shows the return of the now grown up famous film director going back to the village for the funeral of the old projectionist. The Directors cut makes the ending of the film completely different than the cinema released version. It is quite amazing how the two films differ so dramatically, as in the Directors cut the now famous film director goes in search of his first love from many years ago. It is a beautifully shot film, full of pathos and atmosphere. The friendship between the young boy and the old projectionist is beautifully crafted so that it feels real. The script lifts you up and then fills you full of sadness towards the main characters, it is a real emotional roller-coaster of a film. My own preference is for the original cinema released ending, rather than the Directors cut. This version adds quite considerably to the timing of the film and makes the ending not quite as pleasant. I suppose you have to watch the film and then decide which ending you prefer. This film is beautifully shot with a wonderful bitter sweet story, of what life was like in a Southern Italian village just after the second world war and what it is like for a successful person to go back to, a village, his past and his memories from a time of his life that could never be repeated. The film deserved more than the one Oscar it received. I cannot recommend this film enough, a beautiful story wonderfully shot with a fantastic script and incredible direction. Brilliant!

If Nuovo Cinema Paradiso isn't one of your favourite films, you probably haven't seen it. With the Paradiso serving as the focal point for a small Sicilian village, its changing sense of community and values beautifully realised and mirrored through the changing cinematic trends, few modern films have so many wonderful moments - the village priest censoring movies with his hand bell ever at the ready; a villager asking another what a rolling title says only to find out that he's illiterate too; the young Toto acting out a film while he holds a discarded strip of celluloid to the light; that great final montage... the list could go on for ages. Still a deeply emotional experience, some of the film's most moving moments are its most understated, such as the young Toto editing out a newsreel reference to war dead in Russia to save his mother's feelings or the sadness in Alfredo's face as he watches the villagers in the square marvel at the film he shows on a townhouse wall. But the version that won its way into the hearts of millions of filmgoers and critics alike in 1990 was not the original film. Originally called Nuovo Cinema Paradiso, it made its bow in Italy at 156-minutes to appalling reviews and bad business before being cut by half an hour for the foreign markets and taking the Cannes Film Festival by storm and later causing a minor storm of controversy after it won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film (since then, films re-edited from their original version are no longer eligible for the award). Such was the film's success that by the mid-90's, Giuseppe Tornatore was able to not only restore the deleted footage but add other scenes he was forced to cut in a near three-hour director's cut. While some of it is merely additional shots or, in a couple of cases, redubbed dialogue, the film's last act was massively extended as the grown-up Toto (Jacques Perrin) meets his first love Elena (Brigitte Fossey, cut out of the two hour cut entirely) and learns what really happened and gets the chance to give their love story a proper ending... Is it a better film? In many ways yes, though it is a much darker, more melancholy one with more of a sense of loss and missed opportunities. The cuts had the effect of making sections of the film give in to nostalgia, which this version undercuts more adeptly. This is more about the terrible price that the love of cinema exerts - Alfredo's sight, Toto's one true love. When Salvatore returns from the village at the end of the picture, he has no-one to return to or anything to return to but a film award, the glittering prizes of work devalued as he realises he has no life but film. One of the all-time great endings, the stolen kisses at the end of the film now seem that much sadder and carry a much more real and painful sense of loss. This recent 4-disc UK boxed set from Arrow is at least the fifth time round on DVD for Giuseppe Tornatore's perennial, though if you already have it you may be able to rationalise buying it yet again on the grounds that it was worth it for the CD of Ennio Morricone's hauntingly emotional score or the extras. Containing remastered transfers of the two-hour overseas theatrical version and the superior three-hour version (both now bearing the original title Nuovo Cinema Paradiso, unlike previous issues) as well as a disc with a good documentary on Tornatore's Sicilian films, a half-hour retrospective on the making of the film featuring Phillipe Noiret and a grown-up Salvatore Cascio, a featurette on the kissing sequence, stills gallery and director's cut trailer, it's certainly the best presentation of the film to date - but with the original two-and-a-half hour version that played to disastrous business in Italy still unreleased, don't be surprised if somewhere down the line there'll be a sixth issue `ultimate edition' to get people to buy it all over again. And now Arrow have released their second Blu-ray version, which includes all the features from their 4-disc DVD set except for the CD of the score and adds an audio commentary by Giuseppe Tornatore on the shorter version. Unfortunately the new 2K scan for the theatrical version of the film is mildly disappointing - not terrible but with rather more digital noise in places than there should be in a specially sourced scan taken from the original negative. Black and white sequences from old movies shown in the Paradiso suffer particularly badly from the 'firefly effect' in parts of the frame that should be either pure black or grey, though it's nowhere near as bad as some of their earlier releases of Italian movies like Deep Red.

`Cinema Paradiso', this new 25th Anniversary Edition Blu-ray release from Arrow Films arrived just before Christmas and what a wonderful Christmas present from the wife that didn't quite make it to the tree! Though the other reviews are useful they are misleading and do not apply to this vastly superior product.Most of you will be familiar with the storyline of this highly acclaimed Italian film. It comes in a two-disc version `The Directors Cut' 170 mins rated Cert 15 on one disc and a 124-minute theatrical cut rated PG version which has the sexual content, removed from the story on the other disc. Also on the Theatrical disc is an excellent selection of extras. Many may find The Directors Cut a bit over long and some of the sexual content, perhaps rather unnecessary to what is a very moving romantic love story set around a cinema in Sicily, in the period just after the war. This release was delayed presumably to allow for a theatrical showing at a few selected Cinemas. The previous UK Blu-ray release of the theatrical cut was only marginally better than the DVD, and I kept my DVD of The Directors Cut pending this release; incidentally I sold it on Amazon the day I listed. The original negatives have had a 2K scan and though the new version is not perfect, there is still a small amount of damage and some of the dark scenes have noticeable grain, but it really looks gorgeous projected on my 8ft screen and a very noticeable improvement on the previous releases. Also the musical score adds to the romance and nostalgia for an age gone forever. Having been to Sicily on holiday this year it was lovely to see the beautiful scenery and the soak up the vista of the typical Sicilian atmospheric villages. This is really an excellent two-disc package that comes with a thirty two-page booklet, which has high repeatability. I highly recommend it to anyone who loves this film and to those few who have never seen it!

Not much else to say but that I liked it very much.

I watched my very first films in an open air garden next to the church of a Spanish village in the early fifties. The projectionist obviously didn't know how to splice the reels to avoid showing kisses, but somebody (probably the priest) obstructed the lens every time the scene was verging towards the indecency of a kiss or other deemed salaciousness. I remember well the laughter, comments, cries and full-throated moans and protests whenever the audience got excited, angry or terrified (somehow there was a disproportionate number of horror films). Cinema Paradiso which I saw recently for the third time but for the first time in its director's cut form, is a splendid tribute to the films that have enchanted me since my summer days in Spain. Everything about it is wonderful: the village life, the characters, the beautiful facades of the village houses, the hot sleepiness of the days, the sultry nights, the measured pace of the inhabitants' life. This is nostalgia at its best, without melodrama: nostalgia for the more gentle ways of days gone by, nostalgia for the great cinema giants. They are all there: Vittorio de Sica, John Wayne, Visconti, John Ford, Greta Garbo, Kirk Douglas, Ben Hur, Bogart.. Philippe Noiret is wonderful and the supporting cast equally good. There is laughter, mixed with emotions and tears, like in all the best Italian films. This is cinema to savoured: It runs for close to 3 hours but I wouldn't want a single minute of it to be cut .. or blacked out.

One of the best films ever made.

When I heard that the score to this film had been the one Ennio Morricone had been proudest of it seemed like a good opportunity to buy this set. I had seen the theatrical release a long time ago and was keen to see the director's cut and how the extra 50 minutes changed the film. ( I was in the mood for some good world cinema. ) Whilst still being visually stunning and life affirming the longer version definitely seemed to have more contrasts than I remember. There were many more ribald, absurd and amusing moments than in the original and more dark moments too, which went a long way toward removing the cloying sentimentality from the shorter film. The music is perfectly integrated - apparently the film was made to the score rather than in the usual way - and is Morricone at his most lyrical and conventional. This was a great buy. It was marvellous to see the directors original intentions and hear Morricone's full score. Recommended.

Correspond exactement à ma demande

The death of dear old friend prompts a nostalgic looking back at the boyhood memories of a poor Italian town that shaped Salvatore, a now famous film director. The characters and events in this portrayal are very reminiscent of Fellini's "Armacord". Taken under his wing by Alfredo, the movie Projectionist of the only Movie Theatre in town, because of his fascination with the silver screen the young boy becomes, in time, a very short but accomplished projectionist. All the characters of a small town, their joys and tragedies are portrayed exuberantly and with loving care. The loss of Elena, his first love is a very poignant highlight in his life. But it is the community's love for the cinema, that projects all their own hopes and dreams as portrayed on the screen that really permeates his boyhood memories. After a 30 year absence, it is with great fondness and love that he looks back at the events that shaped his life and his future. Loved this film!

Seen it before and it is a wonderful movie.

cinema paradiso is a minor classic. worth viewing regularly. acting great; music fantastic. i mistakenly got a copy with spanish subtitles. so, watch closely. the italian was fine. i was taken by the "looseness" of the director's cut. there were scenes that were unnecessary to the story, and some explanations that weakened the tale. but it holds up after all these years. i strongly recommend it to anyone.

Wunderschöne Hommage an das Kino mit sympathischen Charakteren. Klare Kaufempfehlung.