The manager tells him it closed because the economy changed and because of television and videos. What this really means is that the theater closed when the audience left, emphasizing the close community relationship involved in film. In the old days, when Toto was a boy, the people would line up for every show. This was the only entertainment they could find, and they were loyal. They did not even mind the way the old priest cut parts out of the film. They did not seem to care a great deal what kinds of film they were to see, so long as there was a film to be seen. When Alfredo manage to project a film out of the window onto a large building and so makes the entire community into a theater, this becomes a visual metaphor for the hold film has over the people and for the way in which the people immerse themselves in the world of film every time they go to the theater. In the new world, they are instead liked to the world by their television set. They do not share an experience in the same way they did when they went to the theater and sat together in the dark. While the manager states the change in a matter of fact manner, the film clearly gives the sense of something vital having been lost. This raises the issue of why the now-wealthy and famous Toto does not try to save the theater. He visits the theater and sees how decayed it has become. He knows it could be rebuilt, all that requires is money, but only the building could be restored to its former look. He would not be able to recreate the link to the community that once...

The rest of the world has changed, and he cannot make the world now the way it as then. That would require far more than money.
He also has a talk with his mother about the way he has reacted to coming home and what he has found there. His mother accepts the importance of his memories but also notes that the was right to leave when he did and to pursue the life he has followed. Memory is always important, but one reason it is memory is because the time has passed and the old world only lives in memory. Toto has to let the past go even as he keeps it within himself. He has a life that he has created for himself, and he cannot give that up to return to a world that no longer exists anyway. He might save the building, but he could never save the theater the way it was. Since the audience is now somewhere else, the theater building would be empty. Without the audience, the theater is only a hall.

Cinema Paradiso links the past to the present in a way that suggests ways in which each could benefit the other. For Toto, the present is good to him, and the past remains a meaningful memory that helped shape who he is and that infuses his life. He may also be able to extend himself as an artist because the past has reminded him of what he most loved in film, something he has not kept in mind as he makes films today. He may now be able to do so and will be better for it. This does not mean rebuilding the old theater or relying on the audience to be there the way the filmmaker once could. It rather means keeping in mind what is important and the effect film can have. He is reminded of this at the last as he looks at the reel of film Alfredo has left him, a reel made up of all the kisses cut out of films by the censor, now edited together in an endless steam of missing moments that are not really missing and that persist the way memory does.

Works Cited

Tornatore, Giuseppe. Cinema Paradiso. Radiotelevisione Italiana, 1988.