Introduction: Cinema Paradiso (1988, It./Fr.) - awarded the Best Foreign Language Film by the Academy, contained the euphoric, nostalgic scene of middle-aged, silver-haired, world-famous Italian film director Salvatore Di Vita (Jacques Perrin as adult) returned to his peasant childhood, small-town Sicilian home of Giancaldo after 30 years to attend the funeral of his mentor/projectionist Alfredo (Philippe Noiret), whom he succeeded as the town's movie theatre projectionist after a devastating fire blinded him. He revisited the condemned Cinema Paradiso theatre in the town square when it was destroyed to make way for a city parking lot. He was given a gift of a reel of film by Alfredo's widow; when he returned to Rome, he screened the reel, watching the long montage of romantic ("pornographic") amorous screen kisses ordered spliced, excised, and censored out of numerous films (i.e., His Girl Friday, The Gold Rush, The Outlaw, The Son of the Sheik, The Adventures of Robin Hood, etc.) by the village priest Father Adelfio (Leopoldo Trieste) when he was a boy.

The following compilation presents (in order) and identifies, as fully as possible, the films in the romantic kissing montage -- 47 segments, of which 41 were kissing scenes, and a few other snipped shots (usually partial nudes).

Note: Director Giuseppe Tornatore's script described the scene thusly: "In rapid sequence the passionate kisses between actors and actresses, names famous and names unknown in the history of movies. Greta Garbo, Gary Cooper, Alida Valli, Rudolph Valentino, Ingrid Bergman, Clark Gable, Anna Magnani, Humphrey Bogart, Marlene Dietrich, Amedeo Nazzari, Luisa Ferida, Vittorio De Sica, Rita Hayworth, Tyrone Power, Doris Durante, Massimo Gironi, Marta Abba, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Assia Noris..." (P.S. Not all of these performers were included in the montage, or were clearly recognizable in the almost 50 snippets of film.)