David Bordwell, in his essay Classical Hollywood Cinema: Narrational Principles and Procedures, explained the structure and elements that dominated American film through the period 1917-1960. This style has become so common in film that directors today have two options, either follow the classical style or to try to “rebel” against it. In short, the classical style consists of a protagonist, some sort of dual plot line (a quest or challenge and some sort of romance), and a film technique called causality (which is maintained through continuity editing as to not disrupt the film experience). A classical Hollywood film sequence has a beginning that is called an exposition where the characters, place, and spatial time are all explained, a middle that involves crisis, and an end or the resolution which involves the conquests of the main goals of the movie. What’s a classical Hollywood film without some action and romance?
“Life isn’t like in the movies, life is much harder. Get out of here the world’s all yours.” This quote summarizes the wonderful film Cinema Paradiso, directed by Giuseppe Tornatore. The film is a celebration of the movie-going experience and begins like a classical Hollywood movie. We are introduced to Salvatore (nicknamed Toto), the movie’s protagonist. Toto is a cute and likable boy raised by a single mother. Just as Bordwell describes it, Toto becomes “the chief object of audience identification.” The film narrates through his daily life and we are able to identify and relate to Toto. His school and home atmosphere is not pleasant and for Toto film becomes his break from reality. We see his love for film develop and we want Toto to succeed. An element in Cinema Paradiso unlike classical Hollywood film is the unconventional relationship between Toto and the town’s film projectionist Alfredo. In my opinion, they are both each other’s guardian angels. Alfredo is the father figure that Toto never had and Toto is his son he never had. They remain woven together throughout their lives and have a complex friendship the audience can appreciate. Ultimately, Alfredo’s funeral at the end of the movie and the destruction of the town’s Cinema Paradiso combine to form a sort of conclusion of Salvatore’s past, however, it is not complete.
Salvatore lived his life too much through the lens of a film. In the scenes where he is an older man, the colors are dreary and grayish, showing that he was unsatisfied living in his reality. He lived in this fantasy throughout his youth as seen in another scene when Toto says aloud “If this was a movie, this summer wouldn’t be so long.” Another scene that shows him striving for a fantasy life comes right after his mother finds out her husband has died. Toto walks with his crying mother and as they walk by a movie poster he excitedly looks on at that poster forgetting that his own father had just died. He turned to the movies to forget his reality.
Cinema Paradiso contains many elements like the Classical Hollywood movie, but it also has modern deviations. Tornatore wanted his audience to relish in the love of film, but also realize that film is not reality. The audience in essence is able to experience a guilty pleasure because we get to enjoy Toto being completely lost in film and we almost lose ourselves in it. According to Bordwell, often in classical Hollywood movies the ending is positive and the protagonist reaches both goals- the quest is complete and he has passionately kissed the beautiful girl in the most terrific way. Tornatore’s film is realistic. There is no major quest- only life itself. The film plays in between realities. By doing so, it picks up elements of the classic Hollywood structure, but it does not follow the path completely because reality sets in at the end. Elena, this beautiful, yet mysterious girl (the audience never learns much about her personality, we only see her for her looks) is the love object in Toto’s teen years. Though for a short while, Toto and Elena live blissfully through a fantasy and dreamlike world complete with frolicking through the grasses, it does not last. Crushed by reality, Toto turns his full attention to the experience he feels through film and is never fully able to feel the deep love he felt for Elena with any other girl. Bordwell calls the ending in the classic Hollywood cinema “the cliché happy ending.” However, Toto never gets the girl and thus does not fit the criteria for the traditional happy ending so often seen in the classic Hollywood cinema. In my opinion, the biggest deviation of Cinema Paradiso from classical Hollywood film is in the resolution. The last scene is so beautiful when Salvatore cries as he watches all the kissing moments that were censored in the Cinema Paradiso (as seen in this youtube clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEFugVbzsSo). The one thing he missed out on in his life, what Alfredo had wanted him to find all along, was true love. In my opinion, the film shots make Salvatore realize he missed out on reality all along.
Hmmm, interesting take on the ending--its funny that different people can take different meaning from the same movie! I always thought that Salvatore was perhaps crying tears of joy, and vicariously embracing his choices, but your interpretation is much more melancholy. Its weird because throughout the movie, I sort of felt like Elena was almost a figment of the imagination. She fit into all the stereotypes about leading ladies--her beauty, her sudden appearance and disappearance from the screen, her unresolved ending with salvatore, etc. Everything about her bordered on an ephemeral dream. Salvatore seems to be given a paradoxical choice between reel love and real love.
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ReplyDeleteAs to the unconventionality of the paternal relationship with Alfredo and Toto, I can't help but wonder if perhaps that was indeed acceptable in Italian classical cinema. (We can't forget that this film is Italian, not technically Hollywood.) I don't know what constitutes Italian classical, but on p.31 of the Bordwell reading does put forth that classicism of other countries may use different narrational devices.
These themes of yours, "Tornatore wanted his audience to relish in the love of film, but also realize that film is not reality." & "There is no major quest- only life itself. The film plays in between realities." are quite good. I do believe you are right about this lesson to be learned in the film, although I disagree with you on the classicism.
I also had a little bit of a different interpretation of the ending (though I like yours a lot too). As Anne put it, Elena is very much treated as a sort of figment of the imagination. Throughout the whole movie, it seems like Salvatore is in a constant struggle between the realities of the movies and his love for Elena.
ReplyDeleteThe film treats the two as mutually exclusive, as Salvatore's focus is never on both at once (remember the make out scene?). It's as if the struggle of the movie is Salvatore's need to chose between film and Elena. Elena was a symbol of love that Salvatore went through life thinking that he needed (perhaps influenced by cinema). However, seeing the passionate kissing scenes at the end makes Salvatore realize that the love he has always been after was in the movies all along, not the girl. This is why I think those were tears of joy.
I liked how you mentioned the relationship bettween Toto and Alfredo, for at first it does appear as if it excceds the bounds of classical cinema. However, just as the classical film narrative is compared to the literary classical tradition, Alfredo actually fulfills the archetype of the fatherly savant. However, the irony is that this archetype cannot fully describe Alfredo because the man was an illiterate yocal stuck in a mediocre job and dissatisfied with his life.
ReplyDeleteThis brings in your discussion of reality serving as a means of contradiction to the classical form. In the case of Toto and Alfredo, Toto and Elena, and Toto and film, I agree that there is a certain disconnect between the romanticism Toto would expect in a film and the harsher reality he must constantly face.
Your description of Alfredo and Toto's relationship as a "complex friendship" is right on the money. Watching the film once, I only really saw Alfredo's role as a father figure but as you point out, he needs Toto as much as Toto needs him. Thinking back now, it seems obvious and I'm somewhat surprised I missed it. Must have been due to the fact that I was mostly focused on Toto (he is the protagonist after all).
ReplyDeleteI don't agree with Cassidy's description of Alfredo as "an illiterate yocal stuck in a mediocre job and dissatisfied with his life." From my take on the film, Alfredo was very happy with his life - he had a loving wife, a good friend, a job he loved - he just didn't want that life for Toto. He was satisfied with what he had done but he knew that Toto was capable of more and pushed him to do it. It led to another classical archetype: the student surpassing the master.
I agree with the point you made of Tornatore wanting his audience to relish in the love of film, but also realize that film is not reality. However, I disagree with your point of Alfredo crying tears of sadness at the end for missing out on true love. I interpreted it as tears of joy, almost as an ephiany as Toto realized all what Alfredo had done for him. To have kept the film strips all these years was a sign to Toto, that Alfredo had never forgotten him even though he had left for thirty years. I do not think it had anything to do with true love or missing out on reality.
ReplyDeleteI think your interpretation of a film that can be so simple and so complex is very good. This is a great reading of the film and Bordwell's article. However, I have to disagree with some parts of your analysis. I wonder how much Tornatore would actually agree that this is a warning not to invest yourself completely in film, as filmmakers do. It seems to me from the ending, that as Toto enjoys the scenes cut from the films at the Paradiso the message is to simply find something you love and to follow it, whether that be a romantic love or something else. I think Toto follows this example, as he is a very stubbern boy (which often gets him in trouble!), but it gets him what he wants, first Alfredo, then the lessons on projection, then Elena, and finally a job in the film industry (I'm not sure we're every told what exactly he does). I think that we are trained by Hollywood to think that the only ending that is really happy and suitable is to "get the girl," however, this film would seem to argue that in fact, "happily ever after" has many meanings, and they don't have to include romantic love. Is a life really empty without someone to love you and to love? Especially if there is something there (like film) to fill the void. It may not be a classical film, but it certainly plays off of those ideas.
ReplyDeleteLove the final scene. Thanks for linking to it.
ReplyDeleteI think you're right on that Toto is a kind of stand-in for the audience writ large -- but there is also the constant inclusion of an actual audience, which I find fascinating. I'm also interested in your point that there is no life quest depicted in the movie. Isn't Toto's life journey a "quest" in some sense? He has to self-realize -- the question is what will take him there: love for father? for home? for woman? or for cinema?
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