Cinema Paradiso: A Typical Hollywood Narrative?

Bordwell introduces two significant concepts integral to the narrative structure of classical Hollywood cinema, concepts that I would like to discuss in contrast to the film Cinema Paradiso. Both Russian formalist concepts, fabula refers to narrative events that occur in “causal chronological sequence,” and syuzhet refers to the “systematic presentation of fabula events in the film;” both terms have been translated respectively as the “story” and the “plot.”(18). Cinema Paradiso’s narrative structure and character development do not fit perfectly with this classical Hollywood form and its reliance on these two concepts to construct a linear narrative. The film uses a retrospective narrative form, which reconstructs a story that has already occurred, and where the events do not occur in a traditional causal pattern. In the case of this film, the story of how the main character Toto meets and learns from his mentor Alfredo has already occurred, and is told from the retrospective view of an older, middle aged Toto in a different spatial time and condition.

Despite the retrospective structure of the narrative that alternates between temporal locales, certain images and characters throughout the film establish continuity between the narrative. Because the narrative is Toto’s life, this allows Toto to re-connect between past and present, and on a formalist level allows the narrative to re-connect amidst a retrospectively punctuated causal structure. In one case, when young Toto loses Elena after she leaves for college, he sits on the steps of his town square in a tormented pose of loss, his head in his hands, the sky a dark and intense blue. The scene then cuts to the older Toto, in his metropolitan and modern Roman flat, sitting in the exact same position, in the dark on the side of his bed. This paralleled posture and state of mind serves to symbolically and physical connect these two scenes although they span two different spaces and times.

Just as similar postures and expressions connect this narrative, the presence of familiar faces evoke the same continuity, such as the character of the crazy man in the square. He remains a constant peripheral presence in many of the scene’s of Toto’s youth, and is still present as an older man maneuvering around the cars when the older Toto returns home for the funeral. In addition to the crazy man, the presence of other familiar faces at Alfredo’s funeral, such as the theater owner and usher, serve to re-connect Toto to his past, just as they re-connect the temporal discontinuity of the narrative without relying on the classical Hollywood linear structure.


In addition to the previous two examples, the most apparent to me was the connection between the first shot of the film, which shows an idyllic scene of the azure Mediterranean Sea through the breezy window of a house. The camera pans out to reveal a bowl of lemons sitting on an austere wooden table, and then to reveal Toto’s mom who is, as we soon learn, on the telephone calling him in Rome. Then, in the first retrospective scene of Toto’s home as a boy, the camera focuses the beginning of its shot on a bowl of lemons sitting on the seemingly same wooden table, with a few of the peels skinned this time. The omnipresence of the bowl of lemons in the present and past cleverly connect the two scenes, and convey to the audience that these two locations are both Toto’s home—or at least, his mother’s home. Because if home truly is where the heart is, both as a boy and as an adult Toto’s true home is the Cinema Paradiso. But I digress. The consistent image of the lemon bowl in both of these scenes, despite the different temporal contexts, lends continuity to the narrative without embracing the prototypical linear structure.

In addition to the retrospective narrative style, the character development in Cinema Paradiso differs from the classic Hollywood style. According to Bordwell, the classic paradigm of character development presents characters as “psychologically defined individuals who struggle to solve a clear-cut problem or attain specific goals.” (18) This goal-oriented character fleshes out a “rough prototype” by embracing underlying themes, habits, and behaviors that remain consistent throughout the film. (18) Toto does not completely fit this paradigm. In his precocious youth, he does strongly pursue the goal to help his mentor Alfredo run the projector in the local Cinema Paradiso. However, once he has achieved this goal, he is content, causing Alfredo to insist that he not settle for mediocrity and be content as an “imbecile”. He also has a goal to woo his love, and stands outside of her door for days, and achieves that goal. But both of these are intermediate goals, and neither result in the climax or resolution of the film. Instead, Toto loses his love, and is told to “forget the past.”

Contrary to the goal-driven Hollywood prototype, he does not initiate a quest to find her. He is then “pushed” out by Alfredo, who tells him never to return. The film does not center on Toto’s rise to success and wealth, instead focusing nostalgically on his life in the Cinema Paradiso and how it shaped his youth. Every scene, except the present ones, is seen as a memory. We as an audience must trust Toto’s objectivity, and commit to his eyes and ears in living through his memory.

In the present, Toto is a middle aged wealthy filmmaker, floundering, with no real goal or objective in life but to forget his lost love. He is not trying to find her, nor is he introspecting to find himself. He seems lost, yet complacent about his place in life. However, when he gets the call about Alfredo’s death, the initiating factor of the film, he is not the classical Hollywood character driven forward by a goal that is to be achieve or failed, but is instead is driven regressively towards a nostalgic retrospection of his life in the Cinema Paradiso, and the qualities and passion of his youth that lay latent in his mind.

A significant aspect of Cinema Paradiso that actually conformed with the classical Hollywood structure, however, was its conclusion. Toto’s screening of Alfredo’s gift creates a cathartic crescendo that elegantly brings the film back full circle. According to Bordwell, the classic Hollywood ending functions as “the crowning of the structure, the logical conclusion of the string of events, the final effect of the initial cause.” (21) This is fundamentally what the last scene accomplishes. The initial cause of Toto’s narrative (his life),was the draw of Cinema Paradiso and the passion of film and love that it invoked in him as a young boy and adolescent. The frames of forbidden love scenes spliced out form the basis of Toto and Alfredo’s relationship. This film effectively collects all of the pieces of Toto's narrative, culminating in a unifying montage of images that re-connect Toto, and thus the audience, fully and comprehendingly to his past. In this way, Cinema Paradiso, an untraditional film relative to the classical Hollywood narrative structure, uses the traditional ending, the “final effect of the initial cause,” to lend a satisfying and emotional conclusion. (21)

Fight Club: Challenging Reality

What makes "Fight Club" such a rewarding movie-going experience? To me the film's success stems from its ability to engage the audience in an artificial reality while reinforcing our "natural distance" from the character's story; the film simultaneously blurs and defines the line between artificiality and reality(Benjamin, 678). Like a snail's unique movement, the viewers both invest in the film and retract into the comfortable boundary between what  is  and what seems. Direct David Fincher achieves this dynamic through subtle and clever shifts in the camera's perspective, rapid splices of the lead character's alter-ego at seemingly arbitrary times, and the "disruption" of the film loop in a later scene that re-affirms its artificiality. 

The medium of film expands our  limited perspective to include a world that explores richer nuances of  human experience and emotion. Walter Benjamin, in his essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," calls film a mode of reception in which the public stands as an "absent-minded examiner" (683). While this is often the case, "Fight Club" breaks the norm by forcing the audience to explore  the same questions of reality that plague the lead character, and therefore invest themselves more completely into the film. Fincher's insertion of single-frame images of Tyler Durden initiate this exploration. Suddenly we, like the narrator, are no longer absent-minder examiners of the film and its presentation of reality; we now are subjects of it. You see the fleeting image of something in the corner of the screen, and you ask yourself: did I really just see that? Perhaps you turn to a companion to verify that they also noticed the blip. In this way you begin to question what is real and what is illusion, and your anxieties and questions mirror those of the narrator. The genius of this effect is that while the audience engages more actively in the film and its theme of actual reality vs. artificial reality, they are simultaneously reminded that "Fight Club" is in fact a constructed reproduction subject to hiccups in the reel, thus reinforcing our distance and objectivity from the film. 

The film operates on two levels; one based on the storyline, and a subtextual level questioning the nature of film itself. Film portrays reality in a context of artificiality, drawing the audience into a world where situations and perception that seem real are in fact a carefully planned fabrication that selectively presents the nuances of the human experience. According to Benjamin, "the cameraman penetrates deeply into [reality's] web" (678). The images we see on screen are the shadows on the cave---selective representations of what truly is. The strategic use of colours in the mis-en-scene, for example, visually represents two worlds and the characteristics that saturate each one. The reality of the narrator is one of bland, washed-out whites and mint greens, mirroring the monotony of his quotidian life. In his alternative reality, he becomes Tyler Durden, a colorful character who wears vibrant reds and yellows. Durden's world is one of lurid grittiness, and the colours in these scenes are brighter, the lights and darks contrasted more dramatically. This heightened contrast awakens our visual sense in the same way the alternate reality awakens the narrator from his mediocrity. 

Benjamin, who wrote his essay during the nascence of film culture in 1936, states that with the medium of film, "the audience takes the position of the camera," identifying with it instead of the actors (674). This dynamic is true of my experience when viewing "Fight Club." As the story climbs towards its climax, the narrator converges with his alter-ego who claims that Tyler was "starting to make sense." He changes from a passive observer into an active participant, and so do we through the strategic set-up of camera shots. The camera, originally a passive observer of the fights, becomes a participant, mirroring the narrator's descent into his dystopian alternate reality.  Fincher, by shifting the point of view of the camera, commits the audience to Fight Club just as the narrator has committed himself. 

When the narrator begins to lose his intimacy with his other world, he stars to question his place in it. To bring us to this similar place of detachment ,Fincher returns us to the position of spectator in the pivotal scene where Tyler addresses an unseen audience on film, stating "You are not your job. You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet." you're not you're fucking khakis. You are the all-singing all-dancing crap of the world." These lines are first delivered as if the camera were a passive bystander, yet when he delivers the final line, he looks directly into the camera. As he looks directly into the lens, or our eyes, the film frames shake, exposing the bright white of the projector light and  presenting the effect of a corrupted loop.  By addressing us, Durden breaks the natural spacial plane between film and audience, and we temporarily lose our place in between reality and artificiality. The exposure of the film's side perforations and the white projector light, however, ultimately  ground us in the reality that we are mere observers of something artificially constructed. 

The paradoxical dynamic of "Fight Club" alters how we perceive reality within and outside the movie theater. What is real, and what seems real? Through strategic shifts in camera perspective, we related closely to the anxieties of the narrator and engaged in the story line, to the point of becoming the character. At the same time, the blips and discrepancies in the film re-enforced our role as passive observers occupying the "real" world. In this way, we further invest ourselves  in the character and his anxieties  that explore this convoluted line between "real" reality and "artificial" reality.