Showing posts with label Cinema Paradiso. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cinema Paradiso. Show all posts

8 November 2022

Salvatore Cascio - actor

Child star of classic movie Cinema Paradiso

Cascio (right) in a famous scene from Cinema Paradiso alongside Philippe Noiret's Alfredo
Cascio (right) in a famous scene from Cinema
Paradiso
alongside Philippe Noiret's Alfredo 
The actor Salvatore Cascio, who earned fame through his starring role in the Oscar-winning movie Cinema Paradiso, was born on this day in 1979 in Palazzo Adriano, a small town in a mountainous area of western Sicily.

In Guiseppe Tornatore’s nostalgic 1988 drama, Cascio was the eight-year-old child chosen to play the part of the the film’s central character as a small boy in a Sicilian village who loves to watch films at his local cinema and develops a friendship with the cinema’s grumpy but good-hearted projectionist, Alfredo.

His performance was so charming and captivating it won him the prize for best actor in a supporting role at the 1990 BAFTAs. He remains the only Italian to have won such an award. Roberto Benigni, star and director of the 1997 film Life is Beautiful, is the only Italian to have won a BAFTA as best actor.

By coincidence, the lead character in Cinema Paradiso is also called Salvatore and, like Cascio, is known as a boy as Totò, the Sicilian diminutive of Salvatore.

Landing the part was not down to just having the same name, however, although it helped when it came to filming.

Cascio was chosen for the part of his namesake Totò from more than 200 hopeful boys
Cascio was chosen for the part of his namesake
Totò from more than 200 hopeful boys
The process of choosing the right child for the part involved Tornatore searching a number of towns and villages. One of the casting sessions took place in Palazzo Adriano. Out of more than 200 young hopefuls, the director chose Cascio and a boy from a village five kilometres away - a friend, as it happened - but plumped for Cascio.

Location shooting for Cinema Paradiso - or Nuovo Cinema Paradiso as it was called in Italian cinemas - took place almost entirely in Sicily, with several scenes shot in Tornatore’s home town of Bagheria, near Palermo.

The principal location was Palazzo Adriano, where the central Piazza Umberto I was chosen as the main square of Giancaldo, the fictional town where the Cinema Paradiso picture house was located. The cinema’s facade was built on the square and some of the interior scenes were constructed in the nearby church of Maria Santissima del Carmelo.

Tornatore’s crew remained in Palazzo Adriano for three months. Cascio recalled that the days were long and tiring, often starting at 7am and going on until late in the evening, with some scenes requiring 20 or more takes before the director was satisfied.

As an adult, Cascio chose a different life, running a restaurant with his father
As an adult, Cascio chose a different
life, running a restaurant with his father
Yet Cascio formed a close relationship with Tornatore, who ensured the process remained fun and who he came to regard as a second father, and with Philippe Noiret, the French actor who played Alfredo.

Cascio found himself in demand after his success with Cinema Paradiso and found himself playing opposite some major stars in films such as Breath of Life, with Vanessa Redgrave, Franco Nero, and Fernando Rey; C’era un castello con 40 cani (There Was a Castle with 40 Dogs) with Peter Ustinov; Stanno tutti bene (Everybody’s Fine), with Marcello Mastroianni; and Jackpot with Christopher Lee and Adriano Celentano.

He also appeared in a number of TV dramas yet by the end of the 1990s his life was moving in a different direction. A star almost by accident, having never really had ambitions to make a career in acting, he decided ultimately that the life that beckoned was not for him.

Instead, he went into partnership with his father in opening a restaurant with rooms. They found a property in Chiusa Sclafani, a village not far from Palazzo Adriano, and called it L’Oscar dei Sapori - the Oscar for Flavours. 

The restaurant is themed with Cinema Paradiso memorabilia and Cascio remains willing to talk about the film that played such a huge part in his life, even though it is now 34 years since it was made. He is often invited to movie events.

Earlier this year, he published his autobiography, entitled La gloria e la prova - The Glory and the Test -  written with the help of journalist Giorgio De Martino, in which he enthuses about the glory of the cinema and also talks about the challenges he has faced since being diagnosed, in his early thirties, with retinitis pigmentosa, a progressive, hereditary disease that will ultimately deprive him of much of his peripheral vision.

Piazza Umberto I in the Sicilian town of Palazzo Adriano featured prominently in Cinema Paradiso
Piazza Umberto I in the Sicilian town of Palazzo
Adriano featured prominently in Cinema Paradiso
Travel tip:

Palazzo Adriano, where Cascio was born and grew up and which forms the backdrop to many scenes in Cinema Paradiso, is an inland town situated on the slopes of Monte delle Rose in western Sicily, almost equidistant between Palermo, on the northern coast of the island, and Agrigento, on the southern coast.  A settlement has existed at the site since at least the 11th century, Between the 15th and 19th centuries, the area was populated by a large community of Albanians, speaking a version of the Albanian language known as Arberesh. Just off the central Piazza Umberto I is a small museum dedicated to the film, Cinema Paradiso. The town also has the remains of a Bourbon castle. As well as Cascio, Palazzo Adriano also claims to be the birthplace of Francesco Crispi, the first Sicilian to be Italy’s prime minister and one of the major protagonists of Italian unification, along with his friends Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi.

Bagheria is famous for its wealth of Baroque villas, such as the Villa Palagonia
Bagheria is famous for its wealth of Baroque
villas, such as the Villa Palagonia
Travel tip:

Bagheria, the birthplace of Cinema Paradiso’s director, Giuseppe Tornatore, can be found 15km (9 miles) southeast of Palermo, occupying an elevated position a short distance from the sea. A traditional Sicilian town that descends towards the fishing village of Aspra, in the 17th and 18th centuries it was a favoured by the aristocracy of Palermo as somewhere to spend the summer months, the legacy of which is some 20 or more Baroque villas that add to the town’s charm.  Tornatore employed locations in the town both in Cinema Paradiso and his 2009 film Baarìa - which is its Sicilian dialect name - which told the history of the town from the 1930s to the 1980s through the life of a local family.  Parts of The Godfather Part III were also shot in Bagheria.

Also on this day:

1830: The death of Francis I of the Two Sicilies

1931: The birth of film director Paolo Taviani

1936: The birth of actress Virna Lisi

1942: The birth of footballer Sandro Mazzola

1982: The birth of golfer Francesco Molinari


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27 May 2018

Giuseppe Tornatore - writer and director

Oscar winner for Cinema Paradiso


Giuseppe Tornatore set many of his films in his native Sicily
Giuseppe Tornatore set many of his films
in his native Sicily
The screenwriter and director Giuseppe Tornatore, the creator of the Oscar-winning classic movie Cinema Paradiso, was born on this day in 1956 in Bagheria, a small town a few kilometres along the coast from the Sicilian capital Palermo.

Known as Nuovo Cinema Paradiso in Italy, Tornatore’s best-known work won the award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 62nd Academy Awards following its release in 1988.

The movie, written by Tornatore, tells the story of Salvatore, a successful film director based in Rome who returns to his native Sicily after hearing of the death of the man who kindled his love of the cinema, the projectionist at the picture house in his local village, who became a father figure to him after his own father was killed on wartime national service.

Much of the film consists of flashbacks to Salvatore’s life as a child in the immediate post-war years and there is a memorable performance by Salvatore Cascio as the director’s six-year-old self, when he was known as Toto, as he develops an unlikely yet enduring friendship with Alfredo, the projectionist, played by the French actor Philippe Noiret.

The movie is accompanied by a wonderful soundtrack by the composer Ennio Morricone, whose haunting theme captures the beautiful poignancy of the movie.

Morricone worked with Tornatore on many of his films, including two other magically crafted works in Baarìa, set in his home town of Bagheria, and Malèna, which has the model and actress Monica Bellucci in the title role, another Sicilian story of a 12-year-old boy’s obsessive love for a beautiful young woman.

Philippe Noiret and Salvatore Cascio in one of the most famous screenshots from Nuovo Cinema Paradiso
Philippe Noiret and Salvatore Cascio in one of the most
famous screenshots from Nuovo Cinema Paradiso
Tornatore initially worked as a photographer, seeing his efforts published in various photographic magazines. By the age of 16, he staged had staged two plays, by Luigi Pirandello and Eduardo De Filippo, and then began making documentary films for TV, beginning a long association with Rai in his early 20s.

In 1986 he made his debut in feature films with Il camorrista, starring the American actor Ben Gazzara, taken from a book by Giuseppe Marrazzo about a petty criminal in Naples, Raffaele Cutolo, who uses a spell in the Poggioreale prison to form the mafia organisation Nuova Camorra Organizzata, which would go on to become one of the most powerful criminal groups in Italy.  The movie earned him a Silver Ribbon as best new director from the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists.

Cinema Paradiso was only his second film, confirming the arrival of a new talent to rival some of the greats of the post-War era of Italian cinema, although the movie was almost written off as a flop.  When it was released in Italy in 1988, it did little to excite Italian audiences and takings were poor.

Yet the manager of a small cinema in Sicily, who had warmed to its theme, kept it on, inviting cinema-goers to watch it for nothing and then pay at the end if they liked it.  The offer was taken up in increasing numbers and gradually the film acquired almost a cult following. It won the Grand Jury Special Prize at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival, which gave it the springboard that would eventually lead to the Oscars the following year.

Tornatore’s body of work is not huge, amounting to only a dozen feature films in more than 30 years. The love of his native Sicily is a recurring theme and inevitably his movies are beautifully crafted.

In addition to the Oscar and Golden Globe for Cinema Paradiso, Tornatore has won four Best Director awards at the David di Donatellos - the premier awards ceremony in Italy - for L’uomo delle stelle (The Star Maker, 1986), La leggenda del pianista sull'oceano (The Legend of 1900, 1998), La sconoscuita (The Unknown Woman, 2006) and his English language film The Best Offer (2013).

The Villa Cattolica is one of Bagheria's characteristic Baroque villas. It now houses a museum.
The Villa Cattolica is one of Bagheria's characteristic
Baroque villas. It now houses a museum.
Travel tip:

Just 15km from Palermo in a southeast direction along the coast, Bagheria, which occupies an elevated position a short distance from the sea, has an atmosphere of a traditional Sicilian town and as well as featuring both in Cinema Paradiso and Baarìa - which is its Sicilian dialect name - it was also used for some scenes in The Godfather Part III. In the 17th and 18th centuries, it was a favoured by the aristocracy of Palermo as somewhere to spend the summer, the legacy of which is some 20 or more Baroque villas that add to the town’s charm.

The Greek Theatre in Taormina is a regular venue for open-air concerts in the summer months
The Greek Theatre in Taormina is a regular venue for
open-air concerts in the summer months
Travel tip:

Very much mimicking the Oscars, the David di Donatello awards were conceived in 1955 as a way to recognise the best of Italian cinema and promote the movie industry. Like the Oscars, the award itself is a gold-plated statuette, in this case a replica of the statue of David sculpted by Donatello, probably in around 1430-40, and currently housed in the Bargello museum in Florence. Between 1957 and 1980, the awards were presented at the open air Greek Teatre in Taormina.

Also on this day:

1508: The death of Lucrezia Crivelli, the 'mystery' woman of a Da Vinci painting

1944: The birth of Bruno Vespa, the face of Italy's long-running late night politics show Porta a Porta

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