It’s impossible not to cry at the end of this movie, made 34 years ago

Spoilers – Warning, the article below contains potential spoilers. If you do not want to know its contents, please do not read the following…

From Singing in the Rain to The Artist Who Framed Roger Rabbit or Empire of Light, feature films that aim to declare their love of cinema are often great films themselves.

Among all these memorable tributes to The Seventh Art, however, one work stands out from the rest and—thanks in large part to its masterful final sequence—holds a special place in the memories of viewers who know it. This is Cinema Paradiso, directed in 1989 by Giuseppe Tornatore.

The ending of Manon des Sources is one of the most moving in the history of French cinema

Philippe Noiret and Jacques Perrin bring this masterpiece (let’s not be afraid of the word) to the tender youth of Salvatore, a little boy from a modest village in Sicily, whose first memories are written in the light of a projector. The parish cinema, Cinema Paradiso, whose reels are lovingly managed by his friend the projectionist Alfredo.

As he discovers the works of Jean Renoir, Frank Capra and Charlie Chaplin, the man affectionately named Toto also discovers friendship, love and life. So many memories that return to him passionately thirty years later, in Rome, where he works as a famous film director and when he learns with sadness of the death of his old friend Alfredo.

Tender and tinged with nostalgia, this edgy dramatic comedy with Panolesque accents sweeps away everything in its path with a final scene that remains one of the most beautiful in the history of cinema, and which we recommend you discover in the best possible conditions. To read the following lines.

After Alfredo’s funeral and after helplessly witnessing the destruction of the Cinema Paradiso, Salvatore returns to Rome with the last reel in hand: the film his projectionist friend insisted he leave behind before his death, and which his widow gave him. him.

As he starts the film in his private screening room, Toto gradually realizes what he is talking about. A childlike smile gradually forms on his grown-up face as Ennio Morricone’s masterful score plays, and a few tears begin to bloom in his eyes, which are still shining.

The images that were forbidden in childhood pass before him. All the censored scenes – hugs or kisses – that were scrupulously cut from the films to preserve the young audience of Cinema Paradiso, but which Alfredo carefully preserved and put together from beginning to end to send the final cinematic wink at its best. friend.

(re)discover this scene Kylie Minogue told…