Another cinematic gem from Giuseppe Tornatore, director of Cinema Paradiso,
The Star Maker takes us once more to post-war Sicily. While Cinema Paradiso
circled obsessvely around an absolute and renewed love for movies, in The Star Maker
the cinema is instead presented as a source of illusions.
The great pretender is Joe Morelli (the brilliant Sergio Castellitto) who ekes out a
living selling "screen tests" to gullible locals lured by the hope their faces will
find favour at the Cinecitta studios in Rome, or even Hollywood. In front of Joe's
battered camera - running with out of date film stock - they expose their pitiful
dreams: some are heart-warming, most are tragic and all will be left unfulfilled.
Unwittingly, the charlatan film scout becomes witness to the island's inhabitants' desire
to remake themselves. If the movies are their new god, Joe is now their confessor and he
is left irrevokably moved by what he hears.
Charmingly observed and beautifully filmed in either dramatic chiaroscuro or with the
help of Sicily's glorious sunlight, Tornatore's The Star Maker is lyrical,
elegaic and endearing. While narrative drive is sacrificed in favour of prosaic
detail, the film is finely structured and gently affecting. The StarMaker's
premise may disparage the illusion of the movies, but the film itself is a
touching testimony to the enduring power of cinema.
Reviewed by Monika Maurer
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