Feature Presentation as Film's Protagonist

“The film raises many interesting questions regarding the interplay of film and life, and in doing so, creates an obvious yet still intriguing additional dimension in which the viewer is watching a film within a film and seeing the impact of cinema on other fictional characters.” - Tyler Infinger



Michael Jacob brought up that while Toto does not get the classical Hollywood resolution of the lovers’ kiss, the film acknowledges it’s importance to cinema by it’s place as subject of the final montage. In addition to this point, I would like to claim that this decision on the part of the director should be viewed as an encapsulation of the film’s relationship with the viewer. In the final sequence, all of the true feeling is created by five minutes of clips of the classical Hollywood ending while the character that one presumes to be the protagonist passively receives it.

But it occurs to me that I cannot accept Toto as the protagonist any more than I can accept the classical “getting the girl” to be the focus of the plot. Bel Destefani noted that “for the most part we do not see a clear cut problem that needs to be resolved by the end of the film.” I agree that this is the case upon the first viewing but I would like to propose that the reason we do not see a clear-cut problem is that we are used to the problem being one of a human. The archetypes of a plot’s problem usually fall into a few main categories: self vs. other, self vs. self, and self vs. society. I believe that the problem in this plot is quiet clear – it is a problem of coping with one’s identity and purpose in society. What is more difficult to apprehend upon the first or second viewing is to whom the problem belongs to, whom is the protagonist?

Film – as a living, changing entity with a role in society - is the true focus of this plot. Throughout Cinema Paradiso, Film changes as Toto (and the other audiences) perceive it in that time and place. One might say that it is developing to better itself and its situation. The challenge for Film (and the cinema) is to find a place in this city in Italy in face of the changes in its environment. Toto, rather than truly fulfilling the role of a versatile character that changes over time, functions more as a reflective object by which to chart the progress of Film.

I believe that Film actually has more agency in its environment than many of the character’s appear to. It is a leader – creating community and connections; from the cinema’s function as a social microcosm with class warfare, to the two people who’s eyes meet because they are not scared of Boris Karloff in the 1941 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It, even more so than Toto, bears witness to the changes in the society around it: its original freedom is hindered by the religious influence of the priest, its safety is improved by technology, its content is shifted by the war, its wholeness is undermined by the distributor, and its existence is risked by the video. Its importance is shown most directly by its intervention into the physical world of the plot – when the flammability scars one of its co-stars – Alfredo the projectionist.

Film is Toto’s way to get at something that makes him happy – a girl who has even less of a personality – and who is seen almost entirely through the context of film. This is exemplified throughout the prototypical love story: in the introduction to her is seen through the lens, the amour is held through the projection, the pursuit of her is done through a plot line, their embrace occurs to music from a film he is projecting, their reuniting takes place as a theatrical climax, and even Toto’s confession is held through a screen. Yet I would say that even this is evidence of Film’s goal to achieve an acceptable role in society; I believe this is one case of Film’s failure to cope with the sometimes disappointing events that happen in real reality rather than its’ constructed one.

Earlier I stated that I believed that in the final sequence, all of the true feeling is created by five minutes of clips of the classical Hollywood ending – essentially that any resolution one might feel at the end of Cinema Paradiso is caused by the late event of Film’s becoming complete. Yet this film ends with a distinct dissatisfaction – while the film now has that lost part of itself, we find ourselves in the place of Toto- with disconnected images floating in front of us. And as the Film reaches one deadline we are left with the realization that we are not even close to ours – for as much as Toto loved the cinema – it could not kiss him back.

Watching Myself Watch Herself

There is one scene in Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amélie in which our protagonist, Amélie, is sitting on her red bed watching her green television set play what appears to be a documentary. We assume it’s a documentary because we are shown a black-and-white montage sequence with a voiceover. These elements are just a few of the many audio-visual cues that we, as life-long watchers of movies, news, and television, expect to indicate reality. The cognitive dissonance occurs when the voiceover begins lecturing about the life of Amélie Poulin who recently died after a life of service for the good of humanity. She appears, in black-and-white -what Turner called the “guarantor of ‘truth’”(28) and not long after there is a cut back to our color Amélie who is crying with guilt at her own disappointing tale. We, the viewers of this viewing, are led to wonder if we are seeing “the news” through the filter of the mind of Amélie whom we can assume to be projecting herself onto the heroic and tragic story of a woman who spent her life helping strangers while she allowed her loved ones to suffer.

            It is not that we are surprised to find her watching TV, nor to find a young woman crying at what she is witnessing on screen but the style of faux-documentary that catches one off guard. Especially considering the president which Jeunet has already build for us – sampling from our own sense of reality (with color footage of figure skaters and the death of Lady Diana) and our collective recognition of a past reality (black-and-white stock footage of bull fights and crying athletes) – Amélie’s appearance in black-and-white at the faster speed of film (that usually indicates old footage) appears first to us as yet another trip back into our own reality – the style of film that is “accepted as real” (Buscombe qtd in Turner 27). As much of a fantasy as this appears to us – just as impossible as her paintings talking to her lamp – it is an unreal visual manifestation of a reality we can all relate to.

Walter Benjamin, in his essay “Art in the Age on Mechanical Reproduction,” through his examination of the growing role of the viewer, declared that one of the most important thing about the mass reproducibility of film was it’s ability to reproduce the masses – allowing people through “camera and sound recording, the masses are brought face to face with themselves”(684). Yet, Benjamin implies, this role from the viewer is not as much one of narcissism as it is one of criticism, and so we find Jeunet’s Amélie – sitting as critic of her own “more real” reality.

And there I sit – absorbed in 122 minutes of an unreality that I will use in the creation of my own reality.  That I have used to create my own reality. From the fact that I notice more when a room has complimentary colors to the fact that when I saw the film Juels et Jim I started jumping around my living room yelling “This is that part from Amélie! Where they kiss and the bug flys in her mouth!” One of the things that I find most valuable about film though is that not only can it change the way you see the world but you can also use it to share an experience of with someone you relate to. Amélie  is actually my favorite movie, and the reason why is more because of the fact that it, more than any other movie I’ve ever seen comes the closes to approximating the way I see the world.  It’s blend of color, light, magic, sampling, and nostalgia is a very good approximation of the products of my own imagination and hopes – essentially it is the world I occupy at my happiest. And become of film’s ability to be so encompassing – the camera forcing you to share it’s outlook on life, I feel like I can, by recommending this movie to a person – transport them into my own outlook on life – at its best.