20 February 2025
Last night was movie night with Tucker and Chris. We opted for Cinema Paradiso, a 1988 release and Academy Award Winner for Best Foreign Language Film. It was a collaboration between Italy and France and is a film about the love of movies.
It traces the lives of Salvatore Di Vita (Toto) and Alfredo, the projectionist at the local movie theater. Young Toto saves Alfredo from a fire in the projection booth due to the nitrocellulose film stock which was extremely flammable. Toto, who learned from Alfredo, replaces Alfredo as projectionist because Alfredo is blinded by the fire.
As Toto matures, Alfredo convinces him to leave their small town and go to Rome. Toto becomes very successful as a director of movies under his legal name Salvatore Di Vita. True to his promise, he has not returned to his home town for 30 years.
His mother reaches him and informs him of Alfredo’s passing. He returns for the funeral only to find out Cinema Paradiso is scheduled to be demolished. In the end, it’s a happy ending and you’ll have to watch the film for the story’s main points and end. Be sure to watch it until the very end.
The small town theater reminds me of my hometown theater that we called Glick’s who owned and ran it. It was pretty basic. It had a balcony where blacks had to sit (my cousin Jimmie and I both agreed we wanted to sit in the balcony). The first floor would fill in the front with kids throwing popcorn, laughing, giggling, and shouting at the film and Mr. Glick would have to come in and calm them down during the film. About once every two months he’d had to throw someone out due to bad behavior.
My favorite candy was Milk Duds. I would buy a popcorn, and orange drink, and a box of Milk Duds for every movie. I quit the orange drinks when I saw them filling the container from the water in the men’s bathroom. Both the men’s and ladies’ bathrooms were disgusting. When you walked down the aisle of the theater, your shoes would stick to the floor from all the drinks spilled over the years. That’s pretty much the same in the Cinema Paradiso film.
When I first started going to movies, I think I paid 15 cents for admission. Later, we were hit by inflation and the price was raised to 25 cents. Outrageous! I think the popcorn, drink and Milk Duds cost me 50 cents. I still like Milk Duds and popcorn but I’m leery of any place that has drink dispensers where you can see the liquid in the dispensers.
The first thing on the screen was an episode of a thirteen reeler. Either Flash Gordon or some cowboy or FBI agent who always seemed to be at death’s door when the reel would end so you would come back next week to see what happened. We called them thirteen reelers because there were 13 episodes for some. The number of episodes varied but we called them 13ers.
As a small town theater, you never got first releases. Not even second or third. I think I saw The Creature from the Black Lagoon in black and white even though color films were common. Come to think of it, most of the places I lived never showed first run movies, even in Oxford at Ole Miss. Today, some movies go directly to streaming and there’s no wait whatsoever. Homes often have their own theaters built in and even if they don’t the new tv’s are so large they are like movie screens.
I haven’t been in a theater since Covid. Nor have I been tempted. The main reason is I’m not interested in the films but I also don’t like to be in large crowds. I’ll stay at home and do movie night with Chris and Tucker.
Stay tuned!
