Splendor (1989)

The owner (Marcello Mastroianni) of a movie theatre (the family business since the 1920s) in a small Italian town struggles to keep his cinema open as ticket sales fall and people turn to their TVs for entertainment. Directed by Ettore Scola (A SPECIAL DAY), this movie is often unfairly dismissed in comparisons to the popular but similarly themed CINEMA PARADISO. I must confess I am not one of that film's admirers (it left me cold) but I found myself warming to SPLENDOR's nostalgic look at the way the movies were and it's never more timely than today with movie theatre attendance drastically dropping, not only because of Covid but streaming keeping people happy on their couches but it's not cinema. For those of us old enough to remember movie palaces with red velvet curtains, where you didn't have to sit through loads of advertisements (and I'm not talking previews) before the movie, where audience members were enraptured with what was going on up on the screen and not checking their cell phones every 10 minutes, SPLENDOR is bittersweet. Whether it's a 1920s audience watching Lang's METROPOLIS on a white sheet fluttering in the wind or snowflakes falling on a 1980s audience's farewell to a movie house, Scola's affection for the movies is palpable. With Marina Vlady and Massimo Troisi.