Cinema Paradiso

If you only watch one tonight, watch Son of Saul first. But if you have a second hour, watch this one — they are two faces of the same coin.

In Son of Saul the Sonderkommando risk everything to photograph the burning pits, because an image is evidence. In Cinema Paradiso the village priest vets every screening and orders every kiss cut; the projectionist keeps the frames in a pile on the floor and splices them back before the print moves on.

One insists on being seen; the other forbids it. Both endings are about the same thing: who ends up holding the footage that was kept, and the footage that was cut.

It opened in Italy on 17 November 1988 to a disappointing domestic box office; only the shortened version succeeded abroad. That story is very close to the one the film tells.

西西里，一个叫 Giancaldo 的虚构小镇。二战结束没几年，八岁的萨尔瓦托雷——所有人都叫他托托——是战争寡妇的儿子，机灵、顽皮，把所有空闲时间都花在镇上唯一的电影院里。

放映员阿尔弗雷多是中年人，一开始对这个总往放映室钻的小孩很不耐烦。影院归本堂神父管，神父会在每场放映前先审一遍，凡是接吻和拥抱的镜头一律要剪掉。阿尔弗雷多剪下来的胶片不扔，堆在放映室的地板上，等片子要送去下一个镇子时再接回去。

后来阿尔弗雷多教会了托托放电影。

It opened in Italy on 17 November 1988 to a poor domestic box office; cut to 124 minutes, the international version became a success abroad — and that shorter cut is what made the film visible outside Italy.

Awards: the Grand Prix at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival (shared with Bertrand Blier's Too Beautiful for You), and Best Foreign Language Film at the 62nd Academy Awards. It received 11 BAFTA nominations and won five, including Best Actor for Philippe Noiret, Best Supporting Actor for Salvatore Cascio, Best Original Screenplay and Best Film Not in the English Language — a nomination record for a foreign-language film until All Quiet on the Western Front in 2023.

The score is the other half of the film. Ennio Morricone wrote it with his son Andrea, beginning a collaboration with Tornatore that ran until Morricone's death in 2020.

The versions matter: 155 minutes in Italy, 124 for international release, and a 173-minute director's cut issued in 2002 — which is in fact the original version screened at the Europa Cinema Festival in Bari on 29 September 1988.