Bnice

I just got done watching the "extended" version of the film, I haven't watched the original. I haven't gotten that emotional over a film in years! Is the difference between the two that you get to see what happened to Elena in the longer one? I referred to an old post that stated that the film was shot in Cefalu, is this correct? What version do others who have seen both prefer?

marktynernyc

I love Cinema Paradiso.

However - I like the original better - at least regarding how his lost love was played out. For me, in the original, the lost love is what brings him his success as a film director - the pain of this lost love is what drives him, inspires him.

It's one of my all time favorites.

And that ending with all the kisses...the new years eve scene with the bottles being tossed out the window....when he shifts the mirror and moves the image across the wall out to the square...

cigalechanta

That is a great film!

Chatters

I know what you mean--- that movie stayed with me for a while. It was absolutely breathtaking. I did read that the movie was based on the director's real childhood life growing up in a very small village in Palermo, Sicily, where the movie was filmed.

The movie was one of the few movies that have won the Cannes Film Festival Grand Jury Prize, the Oscar for Best Foreign Film and the Cesar Award for Best Movie (France) in 1989. I bought a video copy in 1991 and definitely would love to find the extended DVD version.

Chatters

This is some info if you ever in the neighborhood: "Cinema Paradiso was filmed in Bagheria, the Sicilian village in Palermo where director Giuseppe Tornatore grew up". Apparently, the village of 55,000 people still remains as seen in the movie, including the Saturday nights public movie showings. Nice.

Peggyann

Have seen both original and recently the extended version. Must admit, I cried copious tears during the latter. BUT, I liked the original so much better. The longer version to me was way too long, had a most unrealistic "getting reaquainted love scene" and left me too sad. However the scene between the mother and the returning son was beautiful and this is where i was most affected. I just love the depiction of rural Sicily and the sense of comminity the Cinema Paradiso showed.

RufusTFirefly

Isn't 55,000 a bit large for a village?

cmt

I love that movie, too, and actually I love all the movies I've seen by Tornatore. The long version of Cinama Paradiso is the original one. It did not go over so well, so he trimmed it down into the final, shorter version that is generally commercially available. I enjoyed the details about the boy's childhood in the original (long) version, but found the ending just too too disproportionately drawn out. (The friends who attended the movie with me had the same impression.) I guess Tornatore thought so, too, since he removed all that for the revised, shorter version.

In the summer of 2002 there was a free retrospective of Giuseppe Tornatore's movies in a nearby university town. I attended as many of the movies as I could. The night that the original long version of Cinema Paraediso was shown, Tornatore spoke to the audience and answered questions.

cmt

Not that it matters, but the retrospective was this past summer, 2003, not 2002.

cigalechanta

I saw the film when it was first released and agree with Carol the first part was much more interesting. Did you see the "tree of wooden clogs?"

klondike

Haven't seen the movie yet, but I sure do like Josh Groban's version of the title song.

mcmrjm

I saw the original many times (it's the only video we own) and I just need to hear a few bars of the music and it brings tears to my eyes....Mary

KathrynT

Wonderful movie - just reading this makes me want to go rent it again!

KT

I've been to Bagheria (to see some of its incredible decaying Baroque villas), and it is definitely not an unspoiled village. It's now an urban-sprawl suburb of Palermo. For a different perspective on the place, "Bagheria" the memoir of novelist Dacia Maraina, includes some discussion of how the formerly lovely seaside town was subjected to uncontrolled and shoddy overbuilding, thanks to the machinations of corrupt government and ruthless developers. Not exactly Paradiso.

Chatters

I got my info on Bagheria from the local government website.....should had known....