Inspiration: Cinema Paradiso

Cinema Paradiso has to be in my top five of favorite movies. The 1988 Italian film is about a successful Italian movie director who returns home for his mentor’s funeral, and revisits his childhood growing up in a cinema, learning from his mentor, and falling in love with film. And of course there’s this girl… The music is incredible, and if you don’t mind watching an Italian film in subtitles, I would recommend this movie to anyone.

The part of the movie I always come back to is when the boy has just fallen in love, and his mentor tells him the story of the Italian soldier to explain what being in love is all about.

Alfredo (Mentor): Once upon a time……a king gave a feast. The most beautiful princesses were there. A soldier who was standing guard saw the king’s daughter go by. She was the loveliest one, and he fell instantly in love. But what is a simple soldier next to the daughter of a king? One day he managed to see her and told her he could no longer live without her. The princess was so taken by the depth of his feeling that she said to the soldier:”If you can wait for 100 days and 100 nights under my balcony, I shall be yours.” With that, the soldier went and waited one day, two days……then ten, twenty. Each evening the princess looked out and he never moved! Always there, come rain, come thunder. Birds shat on his head, bees stung him, but he didn’t budge. After 90 nights, he had become all dry and pale. Tears streamed from his eyes. He couldn’t hold them back. He didn’t even have the strength to sleep. And all that time, the princess watched him. When the 99th night came……the soldier stood up, took his chair, and left.

Toto (Boy): How come? Right at the end?

Alfredo: Right at the end, Toto. Don’t ask me what it means, I don’t know. If you figure it out, you tell me.

It took me about 2 years to figure out why the soldier walked away at the very end, though I’m sure everyone has their own explanation for it.

shivs

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 at 10:47 am. It is filed under All Blogs, My Inspiration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.