Screen:
Baumann, Paul
SCREEN A WEALTH OF GRACES 'LEFT FOOT' & 'PARADISO' The poor, absurdly prolific, Irish working-class Catholic family Christy Brown grew up in would seem to be as constricting and stultifying as...
...In the projection room, the shaggy, obedient Alfredo cuts out the offensive pictures and then splices the film back together...
...In the darkened precincts of this notorious "pleasure dome" he sits in hypnotic devotion...
...Like any other person, Christy struggles to overcome pride and disappointment...
...Director Sheridan fills his movie with indelible, essentially iconic moments, from the footsteps echoing in the hospital corridor as the father arrives to hear news of the troubled birth to Christy's improbable instigation of a brawl at the local pub...
...Cinema Paradiso'% worst sin is a precious elegiac tone...
...You will not see a more ardent lover in any bedroom scene...
...Fair warning: you may go into insulin shock after watching Giuseppe Tornatore's Cinema Paradiso...
...Few dramatic confrontations in memory rival the scalding emotional warfare of Christy's doomed declaration of love for his doctor and the violent recrim -inations that follow...
...Life in this Sicilian postcard, with its congenial village idiot, Catholic folk pieties, and palpable Mediterranean sensuality is very seductive indeed...
...Philippe Noiret, the venerable French actor, is unaffected as the hapless projectionist...
...As a child Christy must seek refuge under the staircase, partly to make sure he is not trampled underfoot...
...He sees to it that any hint of licentiousness is excised...
...The music pulsates achingly...
...Sheridan has a masterly touch and a sure sense of what to leave unsaid...
...Money is an uncertain prospect given their father's belligerent pride...
...Village life is intrusive, yes, but essentially benign...
...Not even his dreams promise as much as these evanescent images of exotic places and melodramatic romance...
...Even those allergic to sweets will find Cinema Paradiso hard to resist, especially given the movie's brilliant and exultant ending...
...Fricker is large-boned and sturdy, and she gives a large-souled performance...
...My Left Foot does not camouflage the cost of poverty or ignorance, just as it does not turn away from the grotesque and demeaning aspects of cerebral palsy...
...Tornatore has wit and a sure comic sense...
...Tornatore builds his story with great, if sometimes wearying patience...
...Or at least that's easily enough said before seeing director Jim Sheridan's wondrous My Left Foot, the Academy Award-nominated film taken from Brown's autobiography...
...One colorful transparent drama is laid over another until the canvas is suffused with emotional life...
...Director and writer Tornatore has a weakness for the fulsome poignant moment that Frank Capra would admire...
...SCREEN A WEALTH OF GRACES 'LEFT FOOT' & 'PARADISO' The poor, absurdly prolific, Irish working-class Catholic family Christy Brown grew up in would seem to be as constricting and stultifying as the cerebral palsy that crippled his body and distorted his speech...
...Here ordinary men and women retain a dignity conspicuously absent in the mass modern society pressing in on every side, but which beckons irresistibly from the movie screen...
...Daniel Day-Lewis, as most critics have noted, gives a miraculous performance as the adult Christy...
...the sun-bedazzled Sicilian town is oh-so pristine and pastel...
...PAUL BAUMANN...
...Sly wit informs nearly every scene, and wit, after all, is often the best revenge...
...Privacy is an unknown luxury in a house where children sleep five or six to a bed...
...Like refugees in steerage, Christy's unnumbered brothers and sisters, his hard-drinking, quick-tempered father, and his overworked, superstitious mother are packed into a dingy row house in Dublin...
...Yet this fervently traditional household, where a wife does not contradict her husband and dutifully steps aside when he threatens to beat his children, is not only teeming with life but teems with life itself...
...Cinema Paradiso follows Toto's life as he accedes to the job of projectionist, suffers the operatic pangs of first love, and ultimately follows the dream of the movies beyond the known horizon...
...Ray McAnally ("A Very British Coup") plays Christy's father with his customary understated power...
...An unquestioned allegiance binds the family together, and somehow out of this seemingly meager mixture of raw poverty, chronic disappointment, and stubborn human faith, spontaneity and affection abound...
...At the moviehouse, like in the church, the history of the village is enacted...
...It smothers you with kisses, and that is not an entirely unpleasant sensation...
...As one villager later complains, "I haven't seen a kiss in twenty years...
...Memory, longing, and loss are lovingly entwined and beautifully evoked...
...Mama is lovingly abusive...
...In some innocent way, Cinema Paradiso wants us to believe that life is indeed just like in the movies...
...His hoard of transparent images becomes a tangible symbol of his inchoate longings and ambitions...
...In the early years, the local priest is given a private screening of each new movie...
...But his physical and suspected mental incapacity are no obstacle to his inclusion in the family...
...Tornatore infuses this fertile atmosphere with an appealing wistfulness...
...A wealth of graces flows from such forbearance...
...PAUL BAUMANNon...
...In the beginning our hero, known as Toto (Salvatore Cascio), is an adorable but mischievous little boy with large brown eyes...
...She gives perfect physical expression to an earthy mixture of maternal affection and stern motherly wit...
...At home his beautiful young mother, like Penelope, faithfully awaits the return of her husband from the war...
...My Left Foot is not an invalid's hagiography, but the story of a man's life...
...the local padre agreeably daffy and forever scandalized...
...Toto finds a surrogate father of sorts in Alfredo, the simple but decent projectionist at the movie house...
...Toto is drawn to the makeshift local moviehouse like a pony to sugar cubes...
...Lewis is not alone...
...On this rock, Christy Brown's story is built, his life reclaimed...
...By any progressive or enlightened standard, the Browns are economic and social liabilities...
...They adore each other...
...Less flamboyant but equally imposing is Brenda Fricker, who plays Christy's uncomplaining mother...
...His place is unquestioned, and what is demanded of others is equally demanded of him...
...All of this said, Tornatore's pipe dream of a movie works its way under your skin, luxuriantly enfolding you in the life of its hero...
...There is not an ounce of pity or piety in the movie's treatment of Christy's affliction, and in this way he emerges as a fully human character, not a case study in spiritual encouragement...
...The spiritual lethargy, however, is closer to the ennui felt after a long day at the beach than to the frustrating constraints of provincial life or the ambiguities of leaving home and family...
...If Cinema Paradiso never quite earns its voluptuous melancholy, it still enchants...
...In doing so his contorted body seems to become an almost visible expression of his soul-indeed, of everyman's soul...
...A restless, clever boy, Toto gives Alfredo no end of misery...
...Toto rummages through these discarded treasures, taking the strips of film home for further review...
...Brown is an arbitrary Old Testament patriarch, and his crippled but fulminating son inherits a good measure of his father's temperament...
...But neither does it adopt the popular sentimentality that writes off lives blighted by social, material, or physical handicaps...
...Lewis gives no quarter, and as his head pounds the table you fear his whole body will somehow come apart in anguish...
...A few sweets never hurt anyone, but, as your mother used to say, there are limits...
Vol. 117 • April 1990 • No. 7
