On Finding and Losing Love: Flashback Elements and the Universality of Remembrance in Giuseppe Tornatore's "Cinema Paradiso"

 It feels strange to go back to old musings and writings I did years ago (in this case, over 25 years now).  But there's something far more nostalgic than observing one's bad writings from the past.  There's a quality of watching progress unveil right before one's eyes; looking at a rear-view mirror and seeing a younger version of one's self in the backseat, while presently at the wheel of new interests and a new life.  It is something I have decided to include in this blog for the year of 2017.

"Cinema Paradiso," written and directed by Giuseppe Tornatore, is a classic example of the flashback story telling technique. In the film, Tornatore utilizes literary parallels to convey a young man's coming of age. The protagonist, Salvatore DeVita, or affectionally known as "Toto," is a successful movie director in Rome. The movie begins when Toto is informed of the deal of his friend Alfredo, the old projectionist in Toto's hometown theater, and his inspiration for following a movie industry career. As Toto tries to sleep that night, the lights from the street lamps come into his room to illuminate the beginning of the sequences of flashbacks.

The audience is transported back to Toto's childhood in the village-town of Giancaldo. At the little town, the only source of entertainment is the small theater operated by the Catholic church.  Censorship is taken very seriously by the local priest, and all of the kissing scenes of the great classics are cut out of the films. Tornatore orchestrates this humorous element early in the film to emphasize the value of innocence in the isolated village.

Sound an music create an atmosphere of nostalgia, which is essentially what the film is all about; it is about longing for first loves and old friendships. All the sound in the film, as far as the first audience can tell, is synchronous, adding to the feeling of authentic film techniques. The music is a love theme capable of making a rock cry; however, it is not a sad melody but one that evokes the memory of first love.

The protagonist loses his first love at a young age but still holds on to her memory all of his life, never marrying or pursuing serious relationships. His memories of Elena, his first love, become the quintessential element holding together the series of flashbacks. Toto falls in love with Elena at first sight. However, Elena does not love him. The protagonist proposes then that he will stand by her window until she changes her mind; something which she eventually does. Here, director Tornatore is able to represent the elements of chivalry traditionally embedded in the European romantic theme of the film.

The young hero goes off to Rome to serve his military duty; he loses contact with Elena forever. Coming back to the town, he is first received by his old dog, just as Homer's Ulysses was received by his dog after his adventures abroad. He finds his old friend Alfredo bedridden.  Alfredo asks Toto to take him by the sea, and it is here, where surrounded by rusty anchors (symbolic of Toto's state of being), that he asks the young man to leave the town and never come back. With Alfredo's advice, Toto picks up and goes to Rome in search of fame and money, both of which he finds with success.  The flashbacks end as Toto reaches the funeral of his friend and is recognized by all of those left from the old days at Cinema Paradiso.  Flashbacks, sound, acting, and superb directing from Giuseppe Tornatore make Cinema Paradiso a story for all who still believe in growing up and falling in love deeply, even at the risk of losing and carrying the pain forever.   

 

The Nostalgia of New Things

It is with a sense of nostalgia for new things that I have to keep reminding myself of who I used to be, and who I became, after I left my beloved U.S. Marines in 1992. I was already a cellist before I enlisted. I became a "man of letters," and a "writer of sorts" (for the lack of better terms) after I left the military in 1992.

From 1996 to 1999/2000 I played with the Washington Symphony Orchestra and met an incredible number of amazing people. I taught cello privately on and off while in the DC area and then for a brief stint when I moved back where I am today. This past summer I got a brush with my past again when I gave a lesson to a former writing student who has recently picked up the cello in college. So she begins now to see me with different eyes, I suppose, and I get engrossed in this feeling of nostalgia in my new role with her. She is a fast learner, and has her own teacher where she goes to school, but we'll be having lessons on and off when she comes home to visit.

This morning I was listening to Mozart's Requiem, which was the last piece I actually played in DC with the orchestra. I remember feeling it was a fitting piece for my departure. I was giving my farewell concert, and it seemed that another stage in my life was coming to an end. That was in the spring of 2000!

Nostalgia...

This is a debate that has been brewing in my classes for a long time. What is nostalgia? How can we describe the feeling of longing-yet-happy-bittersweet emotions? Manguel's book defines the term for us once and for all. It is fascinating how one comes across information like this by just opening a book. Here's the most concrete definition of nostalgia I have read up-to-date:

"The word 'nostalgia' was invented on June 22, 1688, by Johannes Hofer, an Alsatian medical student, by combining the word nostos (return) with the word algos (pain) in his medical thesis, "Dissertatio medica de nostalgia," to describe the sickness of Swiss soldiers kept far away from their mountains."

What do we feel nostalgia for? A loved one. A place or time. A country. That I believe is particularly the one that applies to me. Even though I was born here there are times when I feel I live in exile. The search for home is never ending. A passage fron Ovid's "Tristia," .... a country created by layers and layers of memory, embroidered, corrected, reshaped.... the places we live in become transformed through our prejudices, whims, limited experience, through the fact that we walk one route and not another." And as in yesterday's post, when I took refuge in literature, perhaps I can find a country in it as well. Manguel includes some of the finest quotes about literature I have ever read. From Josef Skvorecky: "To me literature is forever blowing a horn, singing about youth when youth is irretrievably gone, singing about your homeland when in the schizophrenia of the times you find yourself in a land that lies over the ocean, a land--no matter how hospitable and friendly--where your heart is not, because you landed on those shores too late." Literature can do that, and this book is making me more and more aware of the possibilities.