I am gazing at the flickering flame of my candle as I begin this meditation. The flame is unsteady because a breeze is coming in from the garden. As it is a summer evening, my kitchen door is open letting the breeze waft in. The wavering flame in front of me has reminded me of the phrase ‘the Flickers’, which was a nickname for the Movies in the very early days of Cinema. They were called ‘flickers’ because the earliest film projectors were hand cranked and the light behind the often jerky movement of the film as it went through the projector produced a slightly flickering image on the screen.
Originally, the word ‘movies’ was also a nickname but not for films themselves (as it is today) but for the people who made the films. It was a derogatory term: ‘Oh – he or she is one of those Movies’, someone might say. As with the strolling players of Shakespeare’s time, the ‘Movies’ were considered to be socially inferior, barely one step above the criminal classes. That is until the Cinema very quickly developed into the most popular form of entertainment of the time.Then its stars came to be considered as the new royalty with their Beverly Hills mansions and wealthy lifestyles. Yes: celebrity culture has been around much earlier than we think! Infact, those early days of the Hollywood were the beginning of mass culture and its celebrities, I suppose.
Thoughts about the Cinema have come into my mind because at the weekend I saw one of my favourite films on the big screen. It is the Italian film ‘Cinema Paradiso’ directed by Giuseppe Tornatore and released originally in 1989. It is Tornatore’s hymn to the Cinema and its power over audiences. What better place to see the film than at the British Film Institute on London’s South Bank, which shows movies from all cultures and all the decades over the 120 years since Cinema was born. I have been a member for many years now, when it was the National Film Theatre (a name which I still prefer).
I have always enjoyed seeing old movies on the big screen, which is their rightful place, where they can cast their magic spell once again over a large audience in the dark. It is always a more gratifying experience than seeing them on a small TV screen. You notice so much more detail in the settings and camera work and performances stand out more than on TV. Very often, friends who have shared an old movie with me at the BFI have made the same comments. I guess it is because when watching a movie at home, it is easy to lose concentration, to be dismissive even. And with so many more options for viewing now on different channels and with streaming too, I am sure that is an even more distinct possibility. After all, there is no better place to watch a film, than in a cinema.
The BFI also show new movies, of course, and sometimes in preview. They also preview new TV series occasionally and there are Q and A discussions with cast members anddirectors, which I greatly enjoy. It is quite a fillip to see new movies or episodes of a new TV series, before they are officially released. It almost makes me feel that I am part of the industry myself when I tell friends about them!
‘Cinema Paradiso’ is a love poem to the magic of Cinema. It is not about making movies. It is also not about where they are made. It is about where they are seen: the magical experience of being in an audience, in the dark watching a movie in a cinema. The director gently reminds us that watching a film in a cinema is a communal act. Just as watching a play is a communal act. They both draw people into a shared experience: be it laughter, tears or fear. Ultimately Tornatore’s film is about the power of Cinema to enhance our lives.
The film begins with a successful film producer, Salvatore, who lives in Rome, thinking back to his childhood and youth in a small Sicilian town towards the end of World War Two and the decade afterwards. The town is poor and many suffer hardships, including Salvatore’s mother, who’s husband is in the Italian army on the Russian Front and is eventually reported dead. It is the dilapidated little cinema that brings the town together, lightening their otherwise heavy daily load. The boy Salvatore wants to be assistant to the middle-aged projectionist, Alfredo, and eventually he takes him on and becomes his surrogate father. We see the wonder in the boy’s eyes as he watches the movies through the projectionist’s window in the flickering reflection from the screen. The window is situated in the gaping jaws of a stucco lion’s head in the centre of the back wall above the balcony. Perhaps an oblique reference to MGM’s lion?
One night, there is a horrific fire in the projectionist’s box. This is caused by the film itself as in those days, film was made of nitrate stock and highly flammable, especially if the projector it is running through has become overheated. Alfredo attempts to put the fire out but is severely burnt and loses his sight. Little Salvatore succeeds in dragging him to safety,
Despair rages through the community as their little cinema is no more: until one of the villagers wins the national lottery and pays for the cinema to be rebuilt. Alfredo places the mantle of projectionist, imbued with magic, on the boy’s shoulders. Several years later, however, he persuades the now older Salvatore to leave and seek wider horizons, which he does. Salvatore does not return to the village until many years later for Alfredo’s funeral. The place has completely changed of course, and the Cinema Paradiso is to be demolished a few days after the funeral.
On the surface this coming of age story centred on a village cinema may seem sentimental. However, it is not. What prevents the film from edging into sentimentality is the realistic setting which Tornatore paints with his ensemble of actors. He does not hold back on the harshness of their existence and the turmoil they are all living through in the immediate days after Italy”s defeat in the war and the end of Mussolini’s regime. They are in a desperate state of flux and one of the things they hang onto to help them through is their little cinema with its cheap tickets. Just as we hung onto our streamed channels in the recent pandemic. Entertainment gives us respite, dare I say it, hope.
Some of the film’s emotive power lies in the realistic performances Tornatore elicits from his ensemble of actors. They are very real and the scenes are very real in their simplicity. And as a result they are very emotive at times. Every time I have seen the film, I have wanted to cry at some point – at a different scene each time. I have a feeling that a Hollywood director would have made the story more melodramatic, more emotionally forced. The film works because of its gentleness and simplicity. If only some of my own directing efforts at school could have had that gentleness and simplicity!
Like Salvatore, through the movie we get to know quite a few of the village personalities, whose faces we always see, like him, in the audience in the cinema. He sees several of those faces again, now older or even elderly, as he follows Alfredo’s coffin to the church many years later. As we sit in a cinema in the dark watching them sitting in a cinema in the dark it is as if we become one with them. The circle is complete.
In my previous blog, and in earlier ones, I have mentioned the circle which can be created between performers and audience in a live performance. This would be my essential criteria for a successful performance. As I sat in the BFI cinema at the weekend that circle was achieved in scene after scene. And yet this was not a live performance. The actors were not present on stage. Some are sadly no longer with us. We were watching their performances from over 30 years ago. Yet the circle between them and us was complete. This too is the magic of cinema. A great movie, whatever it’s age, can create that circle, even if only in one scene.
When Salvatore is leaving the village, as Alfredo bids him goodbye, he reminds him that ‘Life isn’t like the movies.’ Of course he is right. Life isn’t like the movies. But movies can be as close to life as possible. And movies enhance our lives; they help us to get through. I am not sure whether the name of the cinema in the film – Cinema Paradiso’ – was intentional. But, in the film, that little cinema did give those villagers a moment of Paradise in their difficult lives. That is what the Cinema does for us all.
How wonderful that now cinemas have reopened once again we now are able to experience a little moment of Paradise.
Ave atque Vale – Hail and Farewell– until the next blog!
If you are enjoying my blog, and have not already done so, please sign up below to receive notification of each new blog by e mail. Just add your e mail to ‘Follow’ as it pops up.
And please do pass on the blog address to others who may be interested.
I would also value any feedback on nzolad53@gmail.com or my Facebook page or Twitter.
Many Thanks,
Neilus Aurelius
Meditations of Neilus Aurelius 
As ever, you have written an engaging reflection. I shall have to watch Cinema Paradiso again, albeit at home. My parents were very fond of the cinema, and would call it ‘the pictures’, ‘the flicks’, apart from cinema or film, but never movies, which is an American term. Growing up in Rhodesia, we had a film at school every Friday afternoon, or the evening for the boarders. It was called the bioscope. Sitting cross-legged on the floor watching the stars play out the plot was a weekly thrill. Happy days.
LikeLike