The Star Maker [L'Uomo Delle Stelle]

Giuseppe Tornatore, Italy, 1995, 107 minutes

Like the earlier Cinema Paradiso, The Star Maker is a film about films. A man in a van (Sergio Castellitto as Joe Morelli) goes about Sicily, persuading villagers that he is a talent scout for the big producers in Rome, and if they pay him for the film he uses, he'll show their two- minute screen tests to the men who can complete his business of making them stars.

Of course, it's a terrible con, and the passionate, honest, beautiful and unique screen tests the town-dreamers perform for him aren't even filmed. However, one village girl (Tiziana Lodato as Beata) stows away with him as he drives on, and he gets something of a conscience attack, though the consequences aren't very conscientious.

Visually, narratively, and philosophically, this film lulls across the viewer easily and prettily, though there are moments of crisp comedy and terrible sadness too. The best scenes for me were the "screen tests" themselves, as the huge variety of villagers we first see as all-the-same show their individual motivations, talents, joys and fears through confessions, diatribes, lyrical-waxings and fame-seeking.

Everybody wants to be a star of course and the film subtly shows the political, monarchical and identity confusion specific to Sicilly as well, which gives ample reasons why the villagers might want to leave their homes and lives here, but in actually doing so Beata becomes the most tragic character.

A pretty, heart-tugging film the story of which the rising director wrote himself, The Star Maker fits in with his other home-land homages, mixing nostalgia and pity for an age gone, but... Nah probably still up there in the hills actually.

Review by Jed Picksley
Written for EUFS Programme Spring 2001