Cinema Paradiso

The first of several collaborations between Italian composer Ennio Morricone and director Giuseppe Tornatore, Cinema Paradiso (1988) is an unabashedly sentimental and nostalgic paean to Tornatore’s small-town cinema-centric coming of age. Morricone dollops out those feelings like musical meringue, especially in the film’s beautiful main theme, “Nuovo Cinema Paradiso”. They also pop up alongside a love theme composed by Morricone’s son Andrea, which first appears in a short, stellar arrangement featuring flute and a twinkling celeste. Strings and charming instrumental solos—the stately guitar in “Maturita’”, the violin and flute in “Toto’ e Alfredo”—individualise the townspeople within this small, tight community enthralled to movie magic. Morricone disrupts the prevailing mood with two especially dramatic moments: A projection-room fire incites a blast of strings and horns during “Cinema In Fiamme”, while the town’s libidinal uptightness gets a jazzy release as they watch onscreen kissing for the first time during “Dal Sex Appeal Al Primo Fellini”.