Cinema Paradiso as a classic narrative

David Bordwell’s “The Art Cinema As a Mode of Film Practice” attempts to provide a clear dichotomy between classic narrative cinema and “art films.” Bordwell is not attempting to address every convention of both types of films, but he does want to provide some basic framework. He gives many distinctions between, but the basic ones are these:
1) Classic Narrative Cinema has clear cause-effect logic, using conventions of editing such as the 30 and 180 degree rules (no cuts between two character should be more than 180 degrees or less than 30 degrees)
2) Art films, conversely, have much looser linkages between cause and effect
3) Fundamentally, art cinema motivates its narrative by realism and authorial expressivity
In my mind, there is no doubt that, using Bordwell’s description, Cinema Paradiso is a classical Hollywood film. Indeed, the entire point of the movie is to evoke the glory of those classic films. From the score by Ennio Morricone, who wrote the scores for Sergio Leone’s “spaghetti western” films and many, many others, to the resemblance Elena (Agnese Nano) bears to famous Hollywood sirens such as Rita Hayworth, every detail of the film illuminates the wonder created by classic cinema. The Paradiso, a theatre in a small Sicilian town, does not show Ingmar Bergman or Michaelangelo Antonioni films. It shows comedies by Buster Keaton and Charlie Chapman. Cinema Paradiso, the film and the theatre, is preoccupied with the wide appeal and simple beauty of classical films.

Yes, this may all be true, but can’t Cinema Paradiso be an art film about classical films? While this could indeed be true, it is not true of Cinema Paradiso. Cinema Paradiso may play with some of the conventions of a classical narrative, but it follows them nonetheless. At least in the shortened version, the film’s love story is not about Elena. Elena is a transient part of Salvatore’s (played, in increasing order of age, by Salvatore Cascio, Marco Leonardi, and Jacques Perrin) life. She appears in the middle of his life, his film, and leaves far before the conclusion, both in terms of the film’s length and the span of his life. His true love is the cinema. His final embrace is not with some elusive woman, but with the many embraces in movies themselves.
The narrative structure of the film is, while not strictly linear, certainly close to the structure of traditional Hollywood films. The film’s use of narrative space is traditional, and its edits are never noticeably abnormal or disorienting. As for its slightly unorthodox time structure, classics such as “Citizen Kane” utilize similar flashback structures to show the life of their protagonists. Perhaps the only sequence that toys with our idea of time is the very brief sequence of Salvatore in the military. However, brief montages that represent longer periods of time are common in Hollywood cinema. Again, “Citizen Kane” springs to mind, but the technique is a common one, used in films as different as “Rocky IV” (and, incidentally, almost every other Sylvester Stallone film) and “Casablanca.” The time structure of “Cinema Paradiso” is quite straightforward.

So, if “Cinema Paradiso” has a straightforward usage of narrative time and space as well as a love story (albeit a slightly atypical one), does it fit in with Bordwell’s fundamental dichotomy between “art films” and classical narrative cinema? Namely, is it concerned with realism and authorial expressivity? Well, “Cinema Paradiso” does not seem to be preoccupied with realism as Borwell describes it. “Cinema Paradiso’s” narrative is nothing if not focused, with a very clear progression of action. The events are completely realistic, yes, but the movie deals with Toto’s grander problems, his ultimate destiny as a successful director. As for the psychological reality, while the film certainly deals with the internal emotional conflicts Toto has, it does not preoccupy itself with any sort of existential angst that lies at the heart of art films such as “The Seventh Seal.” So while the film is certainly realistic, it does not have the same sense of realism that art films have, at least as Bordwell describes it.
The final definition of an art film, as opposed to a classic narrative, is the most troublesome when it comes to Cinema Paradiso. Does the film have authorial expressivity? Absolutely. The film is clearly a personal one. And how could it not be? Director Giuseppe Tornatore is making a film about a director who loves film. Even if the events are not drawn from his own life, there necessarily are some parallels between Salvatore and himself. However, does the film have those specific flourishes that makes Tornatore unique? This is not an easy question, as Tornatore is not a tremendously well-known director (at least on the level of a Fellini or a Woody Allen, perhaps a “Hollywood art film” director), nor have I seen any of his other movies. Judging from this film alone, though, he does not seem to use music, cuts or character in any very unique way. He doesn’t have a signature that I can discern, unlike, say, Stanley Kubrick using happy songs in depressing situations.


The unfortunate part of writing such a specific blog is that I cannot fully explain how much I love this film. It has such an emotional impact (especially the bittersweet final scene, although it is much more impactful if you have seen the director’s cut, where you find out about a link between Elena and Alfredo (Phillippe Noiret)), and the performances are almost uniformly fantastic. I actually never got to mention the beautiful relationship between Alfredo and Salvatore. In fact, I never spoke of Alfredo once before this concluding paragraph (eek!)! It clearly is a piece of classic narrative cinema, but regardless of what type of movie it is, it is one that anyone and everyone should see (not to sound like a broken record, but preferably the director’s cut. Still, both versions are fantastic.)