A valentine to all movie lovers. Or else a blackmail note. Part-Truffaut and part-Fellini (part-Day for Night and part-Amarcord), it's a sentimental flashback to a post-war Italian village where, in the eyes of one altar boy, the movie theater supplants the church as the religious house of choice, and the local projectionist becomes a kind of subversive high priest (with a bin full of censored hot parts). Inasmuch as the director, Giuseppe Tornatore, is Italian, it leans more toward, and even a bit beyond, Fellini: broad, loud, vulgar. Also in the Fellini way, it rambles on episodically, and it loses its bearings after the projectionist is blinded (and retires to the sidelines) and the protagonist grows up. And Morricone's mawkish little "love theme" gets repeated and repeated until you want to scream. Plenty of nice old film clips, even though a little skimpy on Hollywood ones, and even though Vadim's And God Created Woman, made in 1956, appears chronologically prior to 1954. With Philippe Noiret and Jacques Perrin. (1989) — Duncan Shepherd