Spotlight On World Cinema: Cinema Paradiso (Italy)

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Director: Giuseppe Tornatore
Writer: Giuseppe Tornatore
Principle Actors: Salvatore Cascio, Philippe Noiret, Marco Leonardi, and Jacques Perrin
Cinematographer: Blasco Giurato
Music by: Ennio Morricone

Academy Awards: Best Foreign Film (Italy) (Won)

Cinema Paradiso is a 1988 Italian film about romance and the movies and the way both affect people's lives. The main character is Salvatore, a filmmaker the audience watches grow up in Italy. He is portrayed exquisitely as a child (Salvatore Cascio), adolescent (Marco Leonardi), and adult (Jacques Perrin). It is a testimony to the great acting the picture features that all three roles can be so powerful to the audience.

Salvatore grows up with the movies, and the audience grows up with him. His love for film and his home town's love for film is inspirational. These people go to the movies to maintain their sanity and to find love and hope in themselves, which is reason enough for anyone to go to the movies. The greatest thing about Cinema Paradiso is that while it's showing us the grand impact the movies have on people, it's leaving the same kinds of impact on us.

This is the kind of movie that has everything that I feel like an audience would hope for. It has comedy, romance, and a deep sense of nostalgia. And, most importantly, it got a very heavy emotional response out of me. This is the type of movie that can really stick with people. It's the kind of movie that reminds me why I go to the movies.

Cinema Paradiso is for lovers of film, lovers of childhood, lovers of community, and lovers of love. It's the kind of movie that will make people cheer, cry, laugh, and swoon with passion within a space of two-and-a-half hours. Absolutely one of the best foreign language films out there.