THE FIRST TAKE CLUB

Classic movies, seen for the very first time

ONE OF THE reasons I’d never seen Cinema Paradiso is that I felt like I’d already seen it. There are certain films — Reservoir Dogs and Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels, say — that popular culture so frequently borrows from, it’s like you already know them. Cinema Paradiso felt like such a film, although I assumed there would be fewer brutal executions by armed robbers in sharp suits. As a result, it was a film that did little more than make me fancy a pint of Stella Artois.

Another reason was the word “heartwarming”, often used when talking about Cinema Paradiso, and a description — like “zany” or “starring James Corden” — that’s guaranteed to put me off a film.

So while I knew it was well-regarded, I’d never had a burning desire to see it. It didn’t come up during my pretentious-pseud student phase, unlikely as it was to feature any tasteful-andentirely-necessary nudity. In the intervening years there was always something else I’d rather be watching.

It tells the story of Salvatore

— ‘Totò’, now a famous film director — and his life growing up in a post-war Sicilian village where his greatest passion is the eponymous local fleapit.

His constant companion is the cinema’s projectionist Alfredo, an Italian Mr Miyagi dispensing pearls of wisdom, often via the words of Gary Cooper, John

Wayne and other Hollywood idols. It ticks a lot of the comingof-age boxes along the way: the parent who doesn’t understand her child’s obsession (Totò’s mum is played by Antonella

Attili, an actor who looks so unnervingly like Ronni Ancona

I expected her to chide Totò in the voice of Victoria Beckham); a montage of the child learning his craft from a gruff but loving mentor; first love, first heartbreak, the first brush with death.

It’s sometimes a bit ponderous and can often lapse either into picture-postcard sentimentality or overly broad comedy. It also tries to have its cake and eat it — Alfredo tells teenage Totò to leave town and never return — “Don’t look back. Don’t give in to nostalgia” — despite being steeped in the stuff.

Those reservations aside, it’s every bit as good as its reputation. It looks gorgeous, from the bucolic depictions of Sicily to the close-ups of doe-eyed young Totò’s face watching the glowing cinema screen. And despite being imitated to death, when Alfredo projects the over-subscribed film for the villagers outside the Paradiso onto a wall, it’s still a moment of pure magic.

The romance between Elena and teen Totò — played by Marco Leonardi, so superfluously handsome you’d think he’d have to barricade shut the projection-booth door to stop the village’s girls from giving themselves something to talk about in confession — is also really touching. Life inevitably gets in the way, and the film hints that it’s a loss Salvatore never got over. On returning to his home village, his mother chides him for living a life leaping from one woman to the next. Although being a handsome, successful Italian film director with a string of glamorous lovers doesn’t seem the worst fate in the world.

Now was exactly the time for me to watch

Cinema Paradiso. Two things I enjoy, and two things Covid has denied us all, is to travel and to go to the cinema. I love Italy, having visited many times and having married there, so watching it shot so beautifully gave me an ache of longing. In lieu of being there, this was the next best thing.

Cinema Paradiso is a love letter. Not to cinema as much as going to the cinema. The Paradiso is the centre of the village, physically and spiritually, every aspect of life shown amongst the rowdy regulars. Newborn babies, food, sex (a standing pair of patrons surreptitiously get up to something that would get you banned from Cineworld) and even death. It’s all there, and it tells us cinema is best as a shared activity.

And the cinema’s fate — they literally pave Paradise and put up a parking lot — couldn’t help but remind me of the possible fate of our own cinemas, given the current situation.

So, maybe it was a good thing I’d taken this long to see

Cinema Paradiso, coming along as it has at absolutely the right time for me. My only gripe is that it did make me really fancy a pint of Stella, and at the time of writing, the pubs are still shut. ANTI-SOCIAL: THE SECRET DIARY OF AN ANTI-SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR OFFICER IS OUT NOW IN HARDBACK, DIGITAL AND AUDIOBOOK