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• 1 media/kiss34.jpg media/Cinema-paradiso_love-projected-and-screened.jpg 2016-03-15T11:39:11-07:00 "The Blue Eye Ones Are the Worst" 38 Lost Dreams and the Absence of Love image_header 2016-11-14T12:59:55-08:00

  Encountering Elena

  Later in the film we find a now teenage Salvatore shooting footage with an 8mm camera. He takes pictures of a cow being slaughtered, a homage to Sergei Eisenstein's Strike (1925). and then takes pictures of a lovely young woman who arrives to attend school. Salvatore shows some of his friends the young woman of his dreams. When she drops something, Salvatore and a friend race to be the first to retrieve it. He introduces himself to her as Salvatore. Her name is Elena.
  
  After an extended courtship, Salvatore wins over Elena. The two spend time together and enjoy each others company. However the sudden appearance of her father one day, while their car is broken down at the side of the road, seems to put a damper on the love affair. In the next scene Salvatore sets up an outdoor movie for a large crowd on the seaside. He reads a letter from Elena, as the letter is read we follow seen Salvatore in different scenes as time passes.

  Then to a scene at the cinema. Salvatore works in the booth as the crowd views Kirk Douglas in Ulysses (1955). Then the same film being shown in the outdoor theater by the seaside. Salvatore seems restless and despondent. He lies down. Suddenly it begins to rain. Salvatore lies on his back and is drenched. Out of nowhere Elena appears in the frame and begins to kiss Salvatore. They share an ecstatic reunion.
  
  Next the film cuts to close-up of the adult Salvatore still in his bed in Rome in the present. More inter-cuts of the two kissing in the rain. Then a voice-over of the two conversing. Salvatore tells her he goes into the military soon. She tells him she will arrive on the bus before he leaves. Salvatore waits, but Elena never arrives.