Cinema Paradiso ending explained

What happens

Salvatore goes home for Alfredo's funeral and finds the old cinema condemned. Alfredo has left him one reel. Back in Rome he watches it alone: every kiss the priest ever cut, joined together. It shows how deeply Alfredo loved him.

The last image

Salvatore sits alone in a dark screening room, watching the strip of cut kisses, crying and smiling at once.

What it says

The film is an elegy, and this ending lets the past answer back. Alfredo sent Totò away so he could live, yet kept the cut kisses for him. Memory here both comforts and wounds, and the reel is Alfredo's last act of love.