Cinema Paradiso
You know how you notice a film in the ‘coming soon’ slot before the screening for which you are in your seat? The film that for years kept getting my attention was Cinema Paradiso.
It seemed to be popular with The Odyssey staff and patrons. The clip captured the excitement of the Sicilian community as they gathered in their town’s cinema, Cinema Paradiso.
‘Film’ was one of my first interests that made me stand out from my family. I recall as a seven or eight-year-old taking myself, just before the Saturday Matinee on BBC2, to the local sweet shop getting ‘a mix’ and returning home to an armchair. I pulled it close to the TV and imagined I was at the cinema.
I always felt our town was lost without a cinema and imagined how it was when the older folks pointed out the old cinema. I also had an unusual interest for one so young in the local paper. It was on reading it that I learned that a film was to be shown in the Town Hall, this was a rare event. My father would take us swimming on a Saturday morning but this Saturday I asked could I go to the film. It was agreed and he dropped me at the Town Hall. The seats filled up and they were all gone while I stood in the queue. The others left as they were turned away but I had to wait for ‘my da’ to collect me in 90 minutes. I stood outside the closed door wondering what I would do to pass the time when the door opened and a man asked me why I was still there. I told him and he told me to come inside and watch the film. I can’t remember the film but I remember how a situation turned from disappointment to appointment.
The closest we got to a cinema was once a month on a Friday when my primary school showed a film. I was so excited on those Fridays it was like the world was transformed from the mundane to the extraordinary simply by turning off the light and projecting a film on a wall.
Cinema Paradiso conveys what everyone who loves cinema recognises the communal experience of watching a film on the big screen. The kids at the front, the grown-ups at the back and those with a little more in the gallery.
Amongst the communal experience, there is also a personal story being told between Toto and Alfredo. Toto is the youngster who befriends Alfredo the Projectionist. In the absence of a father lost in the Second World War Alfredo fills the gap.
The cinema and its films give context to a friendship that moves beyond it.
Films are like memories they can only be replayed and so it with their friendship as life separates them yet they have the memories to replay.
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