The Techniques Of Cinema Paradiso example essay topic

English Q: Explain how the techniques used by the author were effective in shaping your understanding of the central ideas in Cinema Paradiso. Cinema Paradiso is about a character in his middle years reflecting on the influences on his life as he grew up in a small village. Flashbacks, bells, movie clips, lighting, imagery and silence were all used in Cinema Paradiso were effective tools in helping to shape my understanding of the central ideas in the movie, about Toto growing up. Most of Cinema Paradiso is told through flashbacks, which I think are the most significant technique. The movie starts with Toto receiving news that Alfredo has died, and before he goes back to the village he reminisces about his childhood and growing up in Giancaldo. The flashbacks go back to key points in Toto's life and then it goes straight back to the middle aged Toto.

The first, and I think the most important flashback scene goes back to Toto at church as an altar boy, and we see his early infatuation with cinema and movies when he watches the priest censor the film before the rest of the village can watch the movie. As a young child he would use the milk money to go to the cinema. There, he let his imagination run wild and grew to appreciate everything about movies, even how Alfredo operated the film projector. This is shown in the scene where a man drags him away from the back of the cinema. It is in the cinema where his imagination can run wild, and we see this when he looks up towards the back of the cinema and sees the roaring lions mouth. We can see during these flashbacks what influences Toto's life, the two main things being the cinema in the village centre, and the father figure Alfredo.

We know how Toto ends up; he is a successful director / producer, but we do not find out what happens in between that time. It is not important. A part of the flashbacks are some vignettes, small scenes where we see Toto fake an injury to have Alfredo ride his bicycle with him on it, as well as changing the film while Alfredo goes to relieve himself. A very important vignette is when Toto runs back through the crowd to try to save Alfredo from the fire. It is after this, he becomes projectionist and so ends his childhood.

These help us to understand the nature of the relationship he had with Alfredo, whom we see is a father figure and a friend to Toto. The use of lightning and the sounds of the different kinds of bells, such as the grandfather clock accentuate and clearly show us the different times in Toto's life when he is thinking about them. They are used to cut from one scene to another. The next flashbacks are Toto's teenage years and his first love, Elena, whom he eventually loses and never finds her again, or true love again.

He has to go to Rome for military service, and wants desperately to see her again, but she never arrives to see him and goes to Rome lonely. After returning, he finds everything to be different. A stray dog greets him, and it is the same one that he saw before he left. He goes to see Alfredo, and takes him to the beach.

Alfredo is dying and wants Toto to go off somewhere else, to find something he loves doing and to do it to make himself happy. He leaves the village never to return until Alfredo's death. We never see what happens during the years in between the time Toto left and Alfredo's death. Movie clips are also useful in helping to understand the main ideas of Cinema Paradiso. In a flashback, we see the young mischievous Toto annoying Alfredo about the countless number of clippings that he has in a part of the projection room. Toto promises to keep the clippings for Toto, if he leaves him alone.

This is before the fire burns down the cinema. In death, Toto keeps his promise and the clippings are given to Toto, who views them in his own private screening at the very end of the movie. This is significant, because Alfredo kept his promise and had to have done it for him while he could still see. Silence is a powerful technique used in the movie. There are two or three scenes in which the middle aged Toto wanders around the old cinema before it is to be torn down, and there is no talking.

It is a very reflective scene that movies of today could not do well without some form of dialogue. It is during this scene that he sees the old lion's head, and more clippings hanging about the place. We do not know what Toto is thinking, but we can guess it is sadness that the cinema is going to be destroyed. It was here where he fell in love with every aspect of cinema, and where he saw his first movie. These techniques help enable us to understand the main idea of the movie, growing up. It allows us to see what Toto has become, and is not concerned with how he got to be what he is.

It only shows us the most important points in his life that shape our understanding of what it was like for him growing up in Giancaldo, and some of the trials he had to go through as a young child, and as a teenager.