Once upon a time in Sicily, that chip off Italy's boot heel, a holy-seeming figure roamed the island offering benediction to peasants and war heroes, police chiefs and mafiosi. He did not promise deliverance, only its possibility - in the form of a screen test. It was, after all, 1953, an era when talent scouts put a spotlight on a Neapolitan urchin who blossomed into Sophia Loren.
The Star Maker, an Oscar nominee for best foreign film, is a heartbreaker from Giuseppe Tornatore, whose Cinema Paradiso took the 1989 prize. As with the earlier movie, Tornatore's passionate new film explores the parallels between the church of Jesus and the church of Cinema and likewise depicts the isolation of Sicily from the mainland.
For just 1,500 lire, Joe Morelli (Sergio Castellitto), a slick italian films man from Rome, will shoot a screen test that might make an obscure Sicilian village girl the next Loren. With bills folded in their sweaty palms and hope in their thumping hearts, the townspeople queue up to audition before Joe's camera. Since everybody regards this figure who patiently hears their confessions as someone who can confer stardom and therefore is something of a faith healer, it does not immediately occur to them that he might, in fact, be a faith stealer.
Filmed in the neorealist style of so many Italian films in the postwar period, The Star Maker is an homage to the 1951 Luchino Visconti movie Bellissima, the one with Anna Magnani as a hungry Roman who hopes against hope that her little girl will be Italy's answer to Shirley Temple - and the family meal ticket.
In the unglamorous but magnificent faces of Joe's auditioners, Tornatore conveys the despair of postwar Italy, a nation betrayed by Mussolini, bombed by Hitler, trampled by the Allies and now torn between political factions.
They are downtrodden but uplifted by the possibility of fame. Who knows? If one of them achieves stardom on the mainland, they can send money home to their family to buy land on which other townspeople can build. A stroke of good fortune for one can mean payday for the entire village.
While Joe trains his spotlight on these unfamiliar faces as a deity might illuminate a chosen soul, Tornatore reminds us of the movies' basic pleasure: discovering a new face that you fall in love with. Adoration on the most elemental level.
Played with John Turturro-like naturalism by Castellitto, Joe is an unexpected candidate for redemption. Because Tornatore wisely has abandoned golden-lit nostalgia for gritty realism, his film of rocky landscapes, rugged faces and harsh sinners may be closer to Cinema Purgatorio than to Cinema Paradiso.
THE STAR MAKER * * * Produced by Vittorio and Rita Cecchi Gori, directed by Giuseppe Tornatore, written by Giuseppe Tornatore and Fabio Rinaudo, photography by Dante Spinotti, music by Ennio Morricone, distributed by Miramax Films. In Italian and Sicilian with subtitles.
Running time: 1:53
Joe Morelli - Sergio Castellitto
Beata - Tiziana Lodato
Brigadiere Mastropaolo - Franco Scaldati
Princess - Jane Alexander
Prince - Salvatore Billa
Parent's guide: R (nudity, sex, profanity, violence)
Showing at: Ritz at the Bourse
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