If the most popular phrase today, "YYDS" (God Forever), is used to describe a movie, then Cinema Paradiso is well deserved.
It is not only a movie, but also a brief history of European and American films, a work about growth and roots.
On the Time Network, its rating is as high as 9.0 points, ranking 9th in the high score word of mouth list in film history.
For those who love movies, it is a "blessing in life" to be able to enjoy the film history classic "Paradise Cinema" on the big screen in their lifetime.
Watching "Paradise Cinema" at different stages of life will always have different spiritual gains.
Watching it as a young man, it is likely that he stepped into the door of the fan world through this film; watching it as a youth, he has a deeper understanding of the technique and creative background of the film.
When people look at it in middle age, this line alone, "Life is not a movie, life is much harder", is enough to cause deep resonance.
The reason why "Cinema Paradiso" has been able to sweep the world may be because too many audiences can see their own shadow in this movie, which can be Toto, it can be Everett, it can also be Elena.
On June 11, "Cinema Paradiso" is about to be released in Chinese mainland, and although the film is 33 years old, the classic will not fade, it will always be timeless.
We dug into the film's 10 behind-the-scenes Easter eggs, and reviewed them before watching the film, which may give you a deeper understanding of the work.
Director cameo projectionist
At the end of the film, after director Toto returns to Rome, he watches the box of film left to him by Everett in a screening hall.
That's right, it's the box of films that brings together countless kissing cuts, and the projectionist at this time is the director who cameo.
His appearance also seems to hint at the end of a cinematic era.
Director Giuseppe Tornatore's starting point for filming Cinema Paradiso was to leave a little thought for the cinema, just as the Cinema Paradiso in the film was finally demolished.
At that time, Italian audiences were not keen to go to the cinema, because the cinema was affected by the medium of television, video recorder and so on.
This is evident in the film, where Cinema Paradiso went from being crowded at first to the later Menkolo, when cinemas were going through a period of lows.
Three versions
Cinema Paradiso was a 155-minute version when it was released in Italy in 1988, but due to poor response, the director re-cut the film, which became known as the 124-minute international version.
It was with this 124-minute version that the film won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in one fell swoop. This time, the mainland re-release version is the internationally released restored version, that is, the 124-minute version.
In 2000, director Giuseppe Tornadore released a 173-minute director's cut, nearly 50 minutes more, adding details of Toto's breakup with his lover when he was a teenager, as well as a plot in which Toto and his first love continued the frontier.
The director's cut adds to Toto's old reunion with Elena
For audiences who were used to 124 minutes of story content, the director's cut was like a new movie.
Two Cinemas paradiso
There are two cinemas in paradise in the movie, the first one was built before World War II, and you can see at the beginning of the film that the door decoration is relatively simple.
Later, due to a fire accident caused by an open-air screening, the Paradise Cinema was destroyed by fire. After that, it was rebuilt at the expense of the local rich man Chichio and named "New Paradise Cinema".
This also involves the background of film iteration, when film film was invented, it used nitrocellulose film, this type of film is highly flammable, before 1948, almost every film printing plant suffered from film fire accidents.
It was not until 1948 that Kodak introduced acetate safety sheet-based film that it was considered to be free from the ranks of flammables.
In the film, the projectionist Everett is blinded by a theater fire, and when he touches the new generation of safety film and projectors, he sighs: "Progress always comes too late." ”
Kissing shots
Shortly after the opening of "Cinema Paradiso", Duoduo ran to see the movie, and the local priest was reviewing the film to be screened in advance in the theater, and found that kissing and other intimate scenes rang the bell to indicate that he would cut these shots.
The ability to see kissing footage also became a watershed moment in the film, with priest review in the 1940s, after the first Paradiso Cinema was burned down.
Chicchio, a wealthy local man, rebuilt the New Paradiso Cinema, and the first film screened was the 1951 Italian film Anna, in which the kissing scenes were preserved, and cinema screenings in Sicily came to a new era.
The cut collection of kissing shots also became the final stroke of the film.
Fan works
Director Giuseppe Tornatore was only 32 years old when he directed Cinema Paradiso, and there is no doubt that he must have a huge number of movies, and only people who love movies will cherish so many old movies.
Many of the films shown in Cinema Paradiso are masterpieces/hits from the 1910s to the 1950s and popular among the local people of Sicily.
The film involves more than 30 old film clips, which not only show the cinematic tastes of Sicilian audiences at that time, but also show the changing times.
Classic cinema elements are everywhere, making Cinema Paradiso a true fan work.
For example, Chaplin's film "Knock Down" was used in the film, as the most prestigious comedy master, Chaplin's two films had been available for many years at the time, but each screening still received applause from the audience, and the charm can be imagined.
The theater also showed Italian realistic films such as "The Earth Is Fluctuating", "The Mill on the Wave River", "In the Name of The Law" and so on.
Remember the guy who could recite all the dialogue?
After World War II, the rise of Italian realist cinema, Lukino Wisconti, Federico Fellini and a large number of film masters gradually emerged.
Entertainment works such as "God Created Women" will also be screened in the theater, and the film's lead actor Brigitte Bardot's bold performance in the film will stunned the audience.
In this way, the films shown in the Paradise Cinema have achieved elegant and common appreciation, faithfully portraying the cinema style of Sicily in that era, and condensing a period of European and American film history.
Jacques Behan
In the film, Toto is a successful middle-aged director after becoming an adult, and his actor is named Jacques Behan. The documentary films he directed, "Migrating Birds", "Oceans", and "Four Seasons of the Earth", presumably many fans know about it.
In the field of French documentary, Jacques Behan is an unavoidable name, although he directs a small number of documentary films, but it is a masterpiece. "Ocean" and "Four Seasons of the Earth" have all been released in mainland theaters.
Jacques Behan also has a deep fan base in the mainland, and it was a small surprise to be able to enjoy his performance in Cinema Paradiso.
Projectionist Everett
Counting down, Philippe Novire, who plays Everett, is the second French actor in the film's starring cast.
Philippe Novire is a French film emperor actor, who starred in the World War II film "The Old Gun" was released Chinese mainland and received a good response.
Cinema Paradiso brought him worldwide applause, and he played the projectionist Evert like a loving father, bringing a lot of growth and strength.
Clark Gable
Dodo was not impressed with his father, who had been fighting on the front lines.
One day when I asked Everett about his father, Everett said, "He's tall, thin, cheerful, with a beard as handsome as mine, smiling, much like Clark Gable." ”
Gone with the Wind poster
Regarding Clark Gable, everyone should know that he is the male protagonist of "Gone with the Wind", and later there is a photo of Duoduo's father in "Cinema Paradiso", and at first glance, there is really Clark Gable's style.
There was also a poster of "Gone with the Wind" in the film, and when duoduo saw this poster, he smiled.
Thinking by extension, in fact, Dodo regards Everett as his father, while Everett, who has no children, regards Dodo as his own child, and the feelings of the two are indeed like father and son, taking care of each other.
The poster hides a mystery
The elements of the film paying tribute to the classics can be seen almost everywhere, especially the posters on the theater wall, which may be that the director wants to put too many classic clips, but there is not so much time, so many posters, stills, and promotional photos of classic films are posted on the wall of the Paradise Cinema for the audience to discover.
In the theater screening room, you can see "Hidden Woman", "As You Wish", "Gone with the Wind", "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", "Casablanca", etc., basically Hollywood movies from the 1930s to the 1940s.
The film opens in the late 1940s, and these films may not have had the opportunity to be screened in Paradise Cinema, so the director made these classics appear in the form of posters.
Morricone's soundtrack
If the best film scorers in the history of film in the world are selected, then Enio Morricone will definitely be among the best, and he is undoubtedly the iconic figure of European and American film soundtracks.
In Cinema Paradiso alone, his soundtrack is deep enough to penetrate people's hearts, and the long music is injected into the audience's ears, and every note echoes in the mind for a long time.
Morricone has collaborated with Giuseppe Tornadore many times, except for this "Cinema Paradiso", the subsequent "The Pianist of the Sea" and "The Beautiful Legend of Sicily" are all composed by Morricone, and the soundtrack of each work can make people fall for it.
Text/Tritin