
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, June 29, 1990                   TAG: 9006290041
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: E1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Chris Gladden
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

MOVIE EVOKES MAMORIES OF A TIME LOST

In Guiseppe Tornatore's "Cinema Paradiso," the lone movie theater plays a major role in the life of in a small Sicilian village. Only the Catholic Church is as important to the villagers as the theater called the Paradiso. They go to the church for spiritual enrichment, the movies for entertainment, social interaction and an escape from the provincialism of the village.

In both the church and the theater, class divisions are erased. Everyone is the same in the eyes of God and the projectionist.

So important is the theater to the villagers, that its destruction by fire traumatizes the entire community and its resurrection is a cause for unrestrained joy. When the Paradisio finally goes the route that seems the universal destiny of old movie houses - from proud first-run house to porno parlor to decrepit vacant building and finally to rubble - a way of life has passed.

In "The Last Picture Show," Peter Bogdanovich's beautiful and melancholy adaptation of the Larry McMurtry novel, a movie theater serves as a similar symbol.

The young inhabitants of a small Texas town undergo their rites of passage and lose their innocence while their way of life and the town itself fades. The failure of the movie theater is the ultimate signal that something is lost that will never be regained.

As a fellow movie enthusiast recently pointed out, there's nothing sadder than a boarded-up movie theater on a small town's main street. It's the one landmark accorded universal affection by those my age and older. A good portion of my youth in Salem was spent at a time before shopping malls changed the complexion of small town life. As I look down Salem's Main Street, I regret that my children won't have the same kind of small town to enjoy. Then, there were two dime stores, a couple of family-owned groceries, at least three drug stores to hang out in, along with a pool hall, a hobby shop, a couple of record stores and, of course, the Salem Theatre.

It wasn't just a place that showed movies. It was a place where you met up with your friends. You went to see people and sample the dizzying array of junk food. If there happened to be a good double feature playing, you got a bonus.

While today people have a variety of theaters to attend, and generally drive to the one showing the particular movie they want to see, then the theater was a destination in and of itself. For youngsters, it was the fulcrum of small-town life.

At the end of Friday's first show of "Cinema Paradiso," audience members were reaching for their hankies. I suspect that the movie made many of us reflect on a time when the marquee of a movie theater lit up the busy streets of small-towns everywhere.

by CNB