- Directed by
- Giuseppe Tornatore
- Year
- 1988
- Running time
- 124 min (international cut)
- Country
- Italy
- Language
- Italian
- Music
- Ennio Morricone
- Starring
- Philippe Noiret, Salvatore Cascio, Marco Leonardi, Jacques Perrin
Salvatore is a successful director in Rome. One night his mother calls: Alfredo is dead. He hasn't been back to his village in thirty years.
The film goes back with him: a small boy who sneaks into the booth of the village cinema, a projectionist who pretends to be annoyed and teaches him everything, a whole town laughing and crying in the dark at the same time, a first love, and the choice to leave.
why this one.
It's a film about why cinemas matter: not the films alone, but the room, the people, the shared silence before everyone talks at once. That's the whole idea of this club, in 124 minutes.
The kiss montage
The village priest rings a bell at every kiss, and Alfredo cuts them out. Thirty years later, Salvatore watches a reel Alfredo left him: every kiss, spliced back together. Three minutes, no dialogue, Morricone. Few endings in cinema hit this hard.
the fun fact.
The first Italian release ran 155 minutes and flopped. Tornatore cut around half an hour. The shorter version won the Grand Prix at Cannes in 1989 and the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.
