Member-only story
DILLON ON FILM
The ‘Cinema Paradiso’ Effect
Why I mourn the closure of my childhood cinema.
There’s a scene near the end of Cinema Paradiso (1988) when the older Salvatore “Toto” Di Vita (Jacques Perrin) witnesses the demolition of the beloved titular cinema, which is being destroyed to make way for a car park. The older people from the town watch in sombre silence. Some of them cry, overwhelmed with the quirky, funny, touching memories that we’ve seen unfold in flashbacks over the last two hours (three if you watch the superior extended cut). At the same time, teenagers drive their motorbikes in and around the rubble, laughing. It is the end of an era and a terribly sad moment in this bittersweet, beautiful film.
Anyone who eats, sleeps, and breathes cinema the way I do cannot help but feel heartbreak at this moment. It’s doubly heartbreaking in the aforementioned extended version, given the extra footage revealing the mystery of what happened to Salvatore’s long-lost love Elena (Agnese Nano), which includes a key reaction shot missing from the shorter version. But I digress. The main point is this: The demolition of the cinema is devastating.
I felt a similar way when I recently learned of the closure of what used to be the ABC Cinema Magdalen Street, Oxford. This lovely, single-screen, Art Deco venue…
