Director Series - Guiseppe Tornatore

Guiseppe Tornatore is an Italian director known for his nostalgic films. In his charming storytelling we are led into his world that is a blend of realism and fantasy. What adds to his films’ charms is his collaboration with the world-renowned composer, Ennio Morricone, who has composed the score for several of his feature films. In this paper I will focus on the setting, characterization, and editing of three of his feature films, which are: Nuovo Cinema Paradiso (1988), Stanno Tutti Bene (1990), and Malena (2000), to show how these elements help to create his cinematic style.

In order to examine Tornatore’s films, we need to first take a brief look at his life. He was born, May 27, 1956, and raised in Bagheria, which is a coastal city located on Sicily. As a youth he started working as a photographer and was published in several magazines. When he was sixteen years old, he staged two plays by Pirandello and De Filippo. He then started making documentaries. One of them, Il Carretto, gained acclaim at several regional and national festivals (http://www.regalis.com/giuseppe/tornatore.html 1).

In 1979, Tornatore began collaborating with RAI Television (Italy’s national network), for which he directed various programs including: Diario De Guttuso, Ritratto Di Un Rapinatore, Incontro Con Francesco Rosi, Scrittori Siciliani E Cinema—Verga, Pirandello, and Brancati E Sciascia. In 1982 he won the award for best documentary for Le Minoranze Etniche in Sicilia at the Salerno Festival. From the years 1978 to 1985 he was chairman of the CLCT Cooperative. Since then Tornatore has made seven feature films, which include: Nuovo Cinema Paradiso (1988), Stanno Tutti Bene (1990), Especially on Sunday (1991), A Pure Formality (1994), The Star Maker (1995), The Legend of 1900 (1999), and Malena (2000) (http://www.regalis.com/giuseppe/tornatore.html 1).

Nuovo Cinema Paradiso, Stanno Tutti Bene, and Malena are all set on the island of Sicily, where Tornatore grew up. Tornatore’s feelings of nostalgia for his homeland is evident in these three films. Although Stanno Tutti Bene begins and ends in Sicily, the body of the story takes place on the mainland of Italy in several modern Italian cities such as; Rome, Naples, Florence, Milan, and Venice.

At some point in each of these films we are brought to the coast where the shimmering, blue water meets the clear, blue sky. This creates a feeling of serenity for the viewer. The main characters are brought to the coast for either introspection or recreation. For example in Nuovo Cinema Paradiso, Toto and Alfredo go to the coast to talk after Toto arrives back home after being released from the military. Toto goes to the coast with Elena for a romantic interlude. In Stanno Tutti Bene, Matteo rents five bungalows on the coast of Sicily in hopes that his children will come from the mainland and visit him. Matteo goes to the coast on a senior citizens’ trip while taking a break from visiting his children. He does this to reflect on the events that have just happened with three of his children and to prepare to visit the last two of his children. He ends up discussing his grown children with a woman on the trip, who has the same experiences with her grown children. They help each other understand their lives. In Malena, Renato can be seen sitting on the wall next to the water with his bicycle watching and fantasizing about Malena as she walks by. In each of these films, Tornatore sets some scenes by the water to be a symbolic of the characters’ inner world or introspection.

The season that dominates each of these films is the summer. In Stanno Tutti Bene, we see Matteo on the coast with his wife and young children on a family vacation, which is a scene that repeats three to four times in the film. In Nuovo Cinema Paradiso, we see Toto riding in the summer sunshine with Alfredo on his bicycle. We also see the blueness of a warm, summer night when Alfredo projects the movie on the outside building’s wall. In Malena, we see her walking through the Piazza in her clinging summer dresses. Tornatore seems to be invoking a calm feeling of summer as a way to catch us off guard when the characters experience trials in their lives such as fire, persecution, rejection, and loneliness.

The main characters in these three films are men. In Nuovo Cinema Paradiso, the main characters are Toto (Salvatore) and Alfredo. In Stanno Tutti Bene, the main character is Matteo and in Malena, it is Renato. Even though the film is called Malena, she has not been given a voice. She speaks only a few words. She is the object of Renato’s desire. Women are only objects in all these films. In Sicilian culture women have not achieved the same status as men and Tornatore reflects this in his films. He is keeping up with tradition. The fact that the color blue so dominates his frames, adds to the masculinity as being dominate in this culture (http://www.insteam.com/LauraFunderburk/myColor.htm 3-4).

Toto, Matteo, and Renato watch the people they love go through tragedy. In Nuovo Cinema Paradiso, Toto saves Alfredo from the fire. Alfredo then becomes blind and thus suffers from isolation because he can no longer work. In Stanno Tutti Bene, Matteo watches his children lie to him in their desperate attempt to please him. He is aware of their deception the whole film, but goes along with it. In Malena, Renato watches Malena being persecuted by the village women. Her hair is cut off, she’s beaten, and then is outcast from the village. The main characters are affected by these tragedies, because of their emotional involvement with the characters going through them.

The main characters in these films also all long for the past. The present is not fulfilling them. They each have loved a woman and lost her to either death or ignorance of their whereabouts. They have all placed meaning on these women that goes beyond a companion. These women represent the virility of these men. In these men’s eyes there will never be a woman like the first woman they loved. Their idealism of the past creates their unhappiness in the present. We can only hope that they will get over it, so they can find happiness in the future.

In Nuovo Cinema Paradiso, Toto longs for Elena, the woman he first loved. Countless women spend time in his bed in the present, because none of them evokes the feelings that Elena did in him. Alfredo even saved the film of her that Toto filmed while he was a teenager. We see Toto watching the film near the end of the movie. In Stanno Tutti Bene, Matteo still talks to his dead wife, Angela, and refers to her in the present while talking to his children. It is clear that he hasn’t accepted her death. In Malena, Renato states in his narration that the only woman he will never forget out of all the women he has loved is Malena, the woman who never asked him to remember her. In all these characters pining over their lost loves Tornatore is creating a romance that is epic, because it has been lost and not accepted that it has been lost.

These three films of Tornatore have the common element of flashbacks in their editing. These flashbacks help us to feel the emotional trauma the characters are going through. They evoke our sympathy for them. We cannot help but feel sorry for them, because some events in their lives have been holding them captive. This adds to the nostalgia of the films. The flashbacks involve still photographs, clips of movies, and images of fantasies that they have had.

In Nuovo Cinema Paradiso, almost the whole film is told in flashbacks. There is no narrator, but we view the events as if they were happening in the present. We know they are flashbacks of Toto’s memories, because we see him as a middle-aged man in the beginning of the film. We then see him as a child with his mother and Alfredo. The flashbacks include clips of films he saw while growing up and working at the local theatre in Giancaldo, Sicily. We flip back to Toto in the present day after the more traumatic flashbacks, such as the fire that almost kills Alfredo. Toto lays awake thinking about the events of his life before he boards the plane to go home for Alfredo’s funeral.

In Stanno Tutti Bene, the flashbacks happen in an unrealistic manner. Matteo flashes back to when his children are young, but he imagines them young going through the events of the present day. He asks them why they lied to him as he is imagining them young. He has an image of his wife and children on the coast that is shown to us as if he were having a flashback, but it is a nightmare. It is repetitive, so we aren’t sure whether it was an actual event or his imagination.

In Malena, the whole film is told in flashback images. We know this because the main character is the narrator of the story. By knowing the images are in the past it puts the viewer at ease to watch them. After all we know the main character survived whatever is going to happen to him. The flashbacks include images of his fantasies, which we view in black and white as if they were old Hollywood films. The editing allows us to feel the desire of this young man through his fantasized interludes with the object of his attention, who is Malena.

Tornatore’s style shows through each of these three films using common elements found in his setting, characterization, and editing. When we see a Tornatore film we expect to watch a nostalgic story about the good old days. We expect the main characters to be sentimental and to be men. We know that women are merely the supporting characters in the film or the objects of desire for the men. The color blue dominates the frames even in its softest nuances to create a calm, masculine, and reflective feeling. These are all the marks you will find in a Tornatore film. If you love nostalgia, I would suggest you watch Nuovo Cinema Paradiso, Stanno Tutti Bene, and Malen