Cinema Paradiso (1988)

              ‘Cinema Paradiso’ is an Italian film directed by Giuseppe Tornatore in 1988. The film had won several awards including Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1989. The film portrays the friendship between the main character, Salvatore Di Vita (Toto) and his fatherly figure cinema projectionist, Alfredo. The film illustrates how the whole villagers are being kept unity by one common entertainment media, the Cinema Paradiso. It was the place where Salvatore Di Vita developed his passion towards film and spent a lot of his free time watching movies and eventually became a famous filmmaker in later part of his life.

In this film, Classical Conditioning can be seen in the scene where Father Adelfio scold young Toto for fall asleep and not rings the bell during the prayers in church as he mentioned “I cannot remember if you don’t ring the bell”. This shows that his memory was classically conditioned to the bell that Toto supposed to ring during the prayers. Without the bell, his mind can’t recall what he supposed to do next. Yet there is another scene that portrays classical conditioning is that during at the Cinema Paradiso, the priest rings the bell for any romantic kiss or embrace scene and projectionist Alfredo automatically marked that particular sections of film to be censored later without the priest says any word. This shows Alfredo conditioned to mark any particular scene whenever he listen to bell’s ring.

Based on Erikson's stages of development, Generativity vs. stagnation shown clearly by Alfredo when he wanted Toto to succeed in his life rather than ended up being in their village, Giancaldo. Since Alfredo spent most of his life in cinema projection room, so he doesn’t want Toto to have same fate as him even though he knew Toto have passions towards the films. He knew Toto can’t find his dreams in their village. So, that is the reason why he asked Toto to leave their village of Giancaldo permanently and never returning back again even to visit his biological mother and sister including write or think about them. Since Toto lost his father to the war at the very early stage of his life and Alfredo himself didn’t have any child, he become a father figure for the six-year-old Toto and consider him as his own son. For example in one scene, when Toto pretend to injured his leg and succeed to have ride with Alfredo, he asked question regarding his father’s physical appearance. And to which Alfredo replied “He was tall, thin and have a big moustache just like me!” Yet in another scene Alfredo show his fatherly love toward Toto by helping the poor Toto from being punished by his mother, Maria for not buying milk for his sister but instead uses that money to watch cinema. Year later when Toto now as successful filmmaker returns Giancaldo for Alfredo’s funeral, he notices that Cinema Paradiso is now to be demolished to make way to a parking lot. Then, he understands why Alfredo thought it was important that he leave Giancaldo.

              The romantic relationship between Toto and Elena Mendola left incomplete at the end of the film. It is understood that Elena’s father doesn’t like their relationships and they lost contact to each other as soon as Toto leaves town for military service. This hurts Toto very much and he never get involved in any marital relationship in his later part of life. It can be assumed that Alfredo had tell Elena to keep distance from Toto so that her romantic attachment won’t become a barrier for him to become success in his life. Having loved him so much, she might just give up her love in order to see Toto become success in future.

              At the very last scene of the film, Salvatore Di Vita watches montages from Alfredo's reel which Alfredo's widow gave to him. As he watches all the scenes in the reel, he smiles as it reminds him that Alfredo had promised to give all the censored romantic scenes to him when he was a kid and now Alfredo had full-filled his promise even after his dead.