Nuovo Cinema Paradiso

(The work) Cinema Paradiso is Giuseppe Tornatore's second feature. It tells the story of a boy, Salvatore, nicknamed Toto, who grows up in the Cinema Paradiso, the movie house on the square of a small Sicilian town, and of Alfredo, its projectionist. The film is framed as the recollection of the grown-up Toto. It was produced by Franco Cristaldi, a senior figure of Italian cinema. (How it came about) Cristaldi is said to have asked Ennio Morricone whether he would take on the music. Morricone had just won worldwide attention with The Mission, and at first he declined. But after reading the script, the story goes, he changed his mind and took the film on. (The composer) Morricone was born in Rome in 1928. He learned music from his father, a trumpet player, and studied composition at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory. Though he made his name with the whistling and electric guitar of the Westerns, he was a man who carried on experimental music and melodic writing side by side all his life. (The commission) Tornatore asked for the themes the film needed in three parts: a theme for the cinema, a love theme, and a theme for childhood growing into maturity. For each theme Morricone brought four or five drafts and let the director choose. Of these, the love theme was written by his son, Andrea Morricone. (The scoring) Morricone read the film as the director's own coming-of-age story. So instead of a large orchestra he chose a small ensemble of strings, piano, flute, celesta and alto saxophone. The partnership the two men began with this film lasted until Morricone's death in 2020.

II. A call to Rome

(The present) The film opens on a night in Rome. When Salvatore, a middle-aged film director, comes home late, the woman with him tells him his mother has called. Alfredo has died, and the funeral will be held soon. Salvatore has not been home in nearly thirty years. (Memory) As he lies awake, time flows backward across his face. Giancaldo appears, a Sicilian town at the end of the war. The parish priest doubles as the film censor, and little Toto hovers at the door of the projection booth. Giancaldo is an invented town. (Contrast) The music divides the two timelines between them. Over the present in Rome runs "Maturity," with guitar, flute and strings laid low. This piece leans toward the sense of loss felt by the grown Toto. When the film shifts into memory, the music changes into far lighter, brighter clothes. In this way the theme the director asked for, childhood growing into maturity, pairs the two ages of one man. (Uproar) In the remembered town, the cinema is almost the only entertainment. The audience recites the lines from the screen along with the actors and greets the cut scenes with whistles and jeers. Much of the sound heard here is not Morricone's composition. It is the sound of the films playing in the theater — music on the screen that the characters hear too. Morricone's music slips in quietly where that uproar dies down, at the moments when a character's heart is moved.

III. The child in the projection booth

(Censorship) The projection booth sits at the highest point of the theater. Before each opening, Father Adelfio previews the film alone and rings a bell at every kiss. Alfredo cuts those passages out, and the snipped pieces of film pile up on the booth floor. Toto longs to have them. (Master and pupil) At first Alfredo chases the boy away, but in the end he teaches him to work the projector. Toto's father went to war and never came back, and Alfredo has no children. When Alfredo, late in life, sits the elementary-school graduation exam, Toto feeds him the answers, and in return he is to learn the trade. As small things accumulate, the two become master and pupil. (Toto's theme) What binds these passages together is the melody usually called Toto's theme. A waltz-like piece in which flute, celesta and strings sway lightly in three beats, it resembles the child's mischief and curiosity. It is used like a leitmotif (a short melody pointing to a particular character), so later, as Toto grows, it returns with its instruments and tempo changed. (Lineage) As a story of a master handing his work on to a pupil, it resembles Mr. Holland's Opus in this series. But where the teacher in that film handed music to his students, the projectionist in this one hands the child the art of handling light and darkness. And Alfredo knows early on that this skill could become a lifelong shackle.

IV. Burning film

(Fire) One night the theater cannot hold the crowd that has flocked to it. Alfredo turns the projector's beam out the window and shows the film on the wall of a building across the square. While the people in the square cheer, flames catch on the old, highly flammable nitrate film and engulf the booth. Toto drags the fallen Alfredo out, but Alfredo loses his sight. (Upheaval) "Cinema on Fire," from this passage, is the most violent piece on the soundtrack. Over an ostinato that relentlessly repeats a short figure, the strings surge and the trumpet stabs. The sudden shattering of a sound that had been small and tender as chamber music itself announces the size of the event. (Rebuilding) The theater is reduced to ashes. Spaccafico, a Neapolitan who has won the football pools, uses the money to rebuild it. Its name is Nuovo Cinema Paradiso, the new Paradise cinema. Now the only person in town who knows how to run a projector is young Toto, and Toto becomes a boy projectionist. (Threshold) The new theater no longer cuts the kisses. The age of censorship ends, and the child who played becomes a person who works. In the following "After the Destruction," the film's main theme is sung slowly by strings alone. It sounds like music mourning a loss, and also like music hesitating on the threshold of a new era.

V. Winter beneath the window

(First glimpse) Now a young man, Toto is filming the town with a small movie camera when he first catches Elena, the bank manager's daughter, in his lens. From this moment the heart of the film moves from the projection booth to one person's face. (Waiting) Toto confesses his feelings and tells her he will wait beneath her window every night until she answers. All winter long the window stays shut. Just as he returns, worn out, to the projection booth and tears a page from the calendar, Elena opens the booth door and walks in. (The love theme) Here the love theme written by Andrea Morricone unfolds in full for the first time. The flute and celesta bring out the melody tentatively, and the strings take it up and let it swell. If Toto's theme pointed to a child, this melody points to a young man who has fallen in love for the first time. (In the rain) On a summer evening, in the middle of an open-air screening by the sea, rain pours down. Where the audience has scattered, the two kiss. In “For Elena,” the same melody is sung small and close by a string quartet. (Parting) Elena's family drives the two apart, and Toto is drafted into the army. When he comes home from service, all word of her has ceased. Alfredo, now blind, tells him not to stay in this town but to leave, and never to come back. Toto boards the train, and the film returns to the present in Rome.

VI. Back to the square

(Homecoming) Arriving for the funeral, Salvatore sets foot on his native soil for the first time in thirty years. His aged mother, a square changed beyond recognition, and the Nuovo Cinema Paradiso, long since closed, are there to meet him. The theater is soon to be torn down to make way for a parking lot. (Demolition) Among the old audience gathered in the square on demolition day are faces that once laughed and wept together before the screen. The film simply shows their aged faces and adds few words. That silence speaks for what the cinema was to the town. (Keepsake) Alfredo's widow hands him a reel of film, saying it is what Alfredo left behind. What it holds is revealed only in the final scene. (Resolution) In the last scene, when Salvatore, back in Rome, projects the film alone, the love theme flows once more. Here the music takes the place of dialogue entirely. Whatever appears on the screen, what we hear is the melody once written for Elena. That melody now seems to widen beyond one person into a longing for a mentor, for home, and for cinema itself. (Afterglow) This is why people remember this music long after the film ends. A melody that began as music for a movie house moved on to countless concerts and recordings and came to live again outside the cinema.

Lesser-known stories

This film, now a worldwide classic, was a box-office failure on its first Italian release. The 155-minute original drew no audiences, and even when it was put back in theaters in a shortened version, it was soon pulled. Only after the 124-minute international cut, trimmed by the director and the producer Cristaldi, won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film was it rereleased in Italy, where it finally found its audience. Before Cannes, it had also been entered at the Berlin Film Festival and then withdrawn. The portions cut from the original included the story of the adult Salvatore and Elena, and this material was released again in 2002 in a 173-minute director's cut. The soundtrack album also contains cues whose matching scenes are hard to find in the international cut, and collectors trade the theory that the album bears traces of a longer version. The working method Tornatore later described is intriguing as well. Morricone would bring four or five options for each theme, and once the director chose one, the rest were discarded. The director recalled that choosing was always agonizing. The orchestra recorded first, the director edited the recording to the scenes, and then the lengths were adjusted; the production team reportedly did not much welcome this approach. The most famous of the themes, the love theme, is the work of his son Andrea. Yet because the album and sheet music were commonly issued under Ennio Morricone's name, this fact is not widely known. Depending on the edition, the composer credit is even written differently.