Totò’s new ring

It was in the early 1990s. It was the Italy of the three Totòs. Schillaci, hero of Juve and Squadra Azzurra. Cutugno, master of variety. And Cascio, the kid from Cinema Paradiso (Italian: Nuovo Cinema Paradiso). Giuseppe Tornatore’s film sent the world racing and lined up awards like Schillaci piled up goals and Cutugno collected hits: Grand Jury Prize at Cannes, Oscar and Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film, Best European Actor (Philippe Noiret), Bafta de the best music (Ennio Morricone)…
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It was in the early 1990s. It was the Italy of the three Totòs. Schillaci, hero of Juve and Squadra Azzurra. Cutugno, master of variety. And Cascio, the kid from Cinema Paradiso (Italian: Nuovo Cinema Paradiso). Giuseppe Tornatore’s film sent the world racing and lined up awards like Schillaci piled up goals and Cutugno collected hits: Grand Jury Prize at Cannes, Oscar and Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film, Best European Actor (Philippe Noiret), Bafta de the best music (Ennio Morricone)… The story is that of Salvatore (Jacques Perrin), a famous director who learns of the death of Alfredo (Noiret), the projectionist of the small cinema in his native village, which he left for thirty years. We live there memories. Him, high as three reels. The priest who cuts the kissing scenes, and obviously the hottest ones. Alfredo taking Salvatore under his wing in the projection booth. The fire where Alfredo loses his eyes. Salvatore who takes up the torch in the reconstructed cinema (hence the Nuovo of the Italian title). A romance gone wrong, and Salvatore leaving. Until Alfredo’s funeral. A nice film, which moved a lot, especially its final scene (the resuscitated kisses, the tears of Jacques Perrin and Morricone full pot on the tear gas). Salvatore as a teenager was Marco Leonardi, still an actor. He notably interpreted Maradona, in La Mano de Dios, by Marco Risi, and played in All the Money in the World, by Ridley Scott. Salvatore as a child was Totò Cascio: special prize for best young actor in a foreign film at the Young Artist Awards, Bafta for best supporting role, close-up portrait on the poster and darling of critics and the public. There will be a few roles afterwards, notably in Stanno tutti bene, still from Tornatore, then nothing. We are in 1996, he is 17 years old and his career is over. “Grazie, arrivederci.” Finally, “goodbye” is quickly said. In his autobiography published these days, Totò Cascio recounts his degenerative eye disease, diagnosed thirty years ago. His eyesight fading, gradually. His blindness now. Like Alfredo. That he lived in hiding, because he was ashamed, working in his father’s supermarket in Palermo. That “for years, he only waited for the time to go to sleep, to be able to dream, because when I dreamed, I saw, I saw well”. That it was the abyss, until this therapy in an institution in Cavazza, near Bologna, where the experience of others, their friendship, including that of Andrea Bocelli, freed him. That “I was blind before I became blind and I didn’t know it. I didn’t realize I had it all.” That “I learned to dream awake”. That he has “found serenity”, which he wears like a precious ring. And that at 42, he “finally understood the meaning of Alfredo’s phrase, in the film: ‘Whatever you do, love it as you loved the cabin at Cinema Paradiso.’ My rebirth is therefore called New Cinema Paradiso 2.0”. Ennio, “musica per favore”.