Film Diary: Cinema Paradiso (Giuseppe Tornatore, 1989)

[enitharmon]

I might have mentioned, in my comments on The Philadelphia Story, that nobody ever made that kind of romantic comedy like Hollywood could. That Hollywood has forgotten how to do it is part of the premise of Cinema Paradiso, which on one level is a celebration of a golden age of cinema passed into history.

Hollywood could also celebrate that too. The older American cousin of Tornatore's film is one of my favourites, Peter Bogdanovitch's The Last Picture Show, which we'll be coming to in due course I'm sure. The two have much in common, but also they are very different. Hollywood could not have made Cinema Paradiso like this, even in its prime. For one thing, Hollywood would have made something sentimentally nostalgic. There is little of sentimentality or nostalgia about this.

For another thing, Cinema Paradiso is a film about love and loss, but it's more than that. It's a film about deferred gratification, something that is anathema to the "must have it now" culture of consumer capitalism which underwrites the funding of Hollywood almost totally from The Godfather onwards. And its great, and immensely powerful, moment of explosive eroticism comes from the eventual consummation of passion in - heaven forbid - middle age. Unthinkable in a cinematic culture driven by youth.

This is a long film but one without any longeurs. I loved every minute and I susopect this will appear on my perennial Christmas list!