Is Alfredo the most evil movie villain ever?

you are led to believe that, but after the final scene Toto realises that Alfredo was his true friend

"Hence the reason it's a bad film. It proposes a philosophy that's entirely vulgar and bogus. You must sacrifice human love, in order to create great art? Give me a break."

To quote Orson Welles in "The Third Man": "In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love -they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

I really don't see Alfredo as a villain, I tend to think of him more as a kind of "Ogre Father." He pushes Toto, essentially a sort of adopted son, away from one love and towards another. In this sense, he causes Toto pain, but at the same time allows Toto to realize a potential far greater than anything he could find in their small town.

Had Toto stayed, he would have known romantic love with Elena, but he would have remained "in a box," in the tiny cage that was this small town. I think Alfredo saw greater things in Toto, a potential that couldn't be realized in such a small box. And he certainly saw that Toto's first, greatest love was film, even if Toto was too young to realize it at the time. I think it's pretty significant that Alfredo says to Toto, at the train station, to do what he loves:

"Whatever you end up doing, love it. The way you loved the projection booth when you were a little squirt."

Alfredo may not have much education, but here I read him as having the wisdom of age. He sees that Toto is in a difficult situation - does Toto stay behind and pursue romance, or leave this small world and stretch his potential (and his love of film) to greater heights? And that's why I think Alfredo is an "Ogre Father" - he's old enough (and wise enough) to see the potential and love for film in Toto that Toto himself is perhaps too young to see. Alfredo may have to cause pain to Toto by forcing him to choose. But no matter what Toto chose, he would have sacrificed something. Alfredo forces Toto to give up his innocence, the way an Ogre Father would, but at the same time opens up a whole new world for Toto that allowed him to realize an even greater potential.

To Alfredo, and I think to Toto at the end when he sees the montage, there is a realization that, even though the love and pursuit of film required the personal sacrifice of Elena (and the small town), the "choice" yielded great rewards and allowed Toto to fall in love with film over and over again through the course of his life. And, that love blossomed with as much power as anything he could have had with Elena. Toto was always going to the movies, even as a "little squirt," and I think Alfredo believed this was Toto's true calling and first love. If this is a story about falling in love with film, and about the passion it can bring to someone, I think the final scene encapsulates that beautifully.

As I read the ending, Toto sees a montage that fully reminds him that film is his first love and his true love. He may have regrets over losing Elena, and in that case Alfredo may have been the cause of great pain to him, but at the same time Alfredo led him to something wonderful as well. The final scene is as close as you can get to the final powerful on-screen kiss between a couple - Toto is sharing a romantic, intimate moment with his first and true love. He smiles, and he cries, all his passions coming to the forefront as he realizes both the sacrifice and the joy of being in love with the movies for his whole life.
And, he comes full circle; All of the love of film he had during his youth is reignited - he is reminded of Alfredo, his guide and friend, and he recalls the projection booth where he helped edit out these very scenes (hence, the space where he created some of his dearest memories). In a way, I see it as a powerful epiphany, as every single wonderful memory he has had in relation to the movies comes flooding back. His love of film - a love he experienced in past and present - is condensed into a single montage, like the way lifelong love is compressed into a single kiss.

My perspective about the movie is that Alfredo saw himself in Toto. In somewhere in the film, I thought Alfredo said about his love of the movies from very early age. He saw that love in Toto also. He saw Toto's joy of merely projecting movies to people. He didn't want that Toto would also end up imprisoned in the small town like him, so he did what he had to do, even though it meant Alfredo had to lost Toto, a very charming companion, for the rest of his life. So no, Alfredo was not a villain.. rather, he was closer to a Hero.

[deleted]

IMO, Obsidian451's comments on the motives delineated in the CP narrative are very good.

But additionally, there are quite a few characters in CP that are following an "either/or" or a "one at the expense of another" type of inner guiding, self-fulfilling principle, and the longer (original), director's cut version shows the outcomes of being guided by such a principle or "compass"-- (e.g., not only Alfredo & Toto but the priest & his insistence on deleting kissing scenes, the movie goer who often spits on others, her parents treatment of Elena, the nun-teacher who hits students, etc.)

Many people see and live their lives yoked to such guiding principles; in better forms, e.g., when one person profits, they always share with others.

But in more primitive, limiting forms, some people see life as constantly demanding responses of revenge or retaliation so, if someone else profits, it must've somehow deliberately been at their expense; or, if someone hurts me or mine, they must be hurt back. Toto's grade school teacher probably followed some similar principle: 'if you didn't learn the correct answer to what 5 X 5 equals, you must be doing it to hurt me, so I'll hurt you back.'

AND, there are certainly decisions that one makes in life in which by choosing one path, one gives up the possibility of taking another. The choice between making a life career in the military service vs. being a profesional ballet dancer is possibly one although certainly a colonel or sargeant could attend some ballets or collect and watch movies of them.

Alfredo was obviously living by a rule something like: 'IF you go into something you love, you MUST absolutely give up ALL other loves' --and, equally obviously, he influenced Toto into doing likewise:

So, IF Toto was to make something of himself (we saw in grade school he was obviously quite bright) he MUST do it at the expense of any further warm relations with Alfredo, or in visiting Toto's home town to see his friends, his mother, sister & her kids, or any contact with Elena. It's apparently Alfredo's/Toto's rule that if you get the one thing you most want, it must be at the price of giving up satisfactions or pleasures from all other really significant wants.

BUT, life does NOT have to be that way -- UNLESS we CHOOSE to make it our own internal law and insist on it.

COULD Toto have been a successful film director AND returned to visit friends and relatives? OR, was it impossible for him to have found love among other women he dated and bedded, and raise a family with one of them, while being successful?

Yes, it IS impossible IF HE SEES it as impossible. (But not if he doesn't -- after all, many people before him have shown they CAN walk AND chew gum at the same time.)

COULD Elena have found some means of communicating with Toto beyond writing her address on the back of a small piece of paper and posting it among hundreds of other similar papers on a wall? Never!!-- if SHE'S also following some self-defeating inner guiding principle.

So, IMO, while the extended, director's cut, original version of "Cinema Paradiso" is sadly, broadly representative of SOME lives, it's NOT the rule or model by which ALL of us HAVE to live our lives.

And, quite importantly, since CP's director, Giuseppe Tornatore, also wrote the CP screenplay (in his thirties, IIRC), the CP narrative HAS to have a number of autobiographical features, doesn't it? A successful film director writing the screen play about the early and later life of a successful film director and NOT including something of his own life? Not very likely.

I'm VERY curious as to what significant experiences in HIS life, what were HIS losses and gains that his narrative of "Cinema Paradiso" apologizes or atones for. I'm sure "CP" is so much more representative of HIS view of HIS life experiences than it is of life in general. (While that's true, come to think of it, there is the possibility that CP's narrative was intended to be a message to an Elena in his earlier life.)

P.S. -- Unfortunately, I couldn't find out much about this director. Wikipedia has a brief article on him but it lacks any details about his personal life. And I saw nothing in IMDb about his personal life.

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"If not, who is it else?"

Not sure, but there are plenty of movie characters who break up relationships for their own selfish reasons (i.e. to get with one half of the couple) and NOT for the presumed benefit of the couple themselves. They are more evil than Alfredo.

Toto never found real love after Elena...but how was Alfredo to know that? In fact, it was almost as much Toto's fault as it was Alfredo's. A man in Toto's position would have met many eligible bachelorettes, they can't all have been gold-digging, casting-couch hopping starlets. He wasn't pining for Elena all this time either; I doubt he even thought of her much until he heard Alfredo had died.

Not saying what Alfredo did was right, just that Toto cannot blame his entire loneliness on this one twist in life.

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Challenging Endeavours: A tale of two shuttles http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-8CR6i5a5Y