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One would expect the film to sober up at this point, and it does, but it never sacrifices the lyricism and humor which are integral to both the story and to Guido's personality. Marital bliss is interrupted a few years later when Guido, Dora and their son Giosue (Giorgio Cantarini, a wonderfully precocious little actor) are taken to a Nazi concentration camp three months before the end of the war. In another scene, Guido pretends to be chief inspector at a school so he can turn an intended lecture on the superiority of the Aryan race into a discussion of the superiority of his own "Aryan" ears, feet and bellybutton.
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When Guido's family horse is spray-painted green and covered with anti-Semitic slogans, he uses it to carry Dora away from her Fascist husband-to-be. There are also, however, hints of what is to come, but it's not in Guido's nature to let these threats impede his lifestyle. Benigni's talent as a wordsmith is also evident: no knowledge of Italian is necessary to understand that he has a way with the language that is highly amusing in itself. There's a good deal of slapstick humor (flower pots and eggs falling on the heads of government officials, Benigni paying so much attention to Dora in his restaurant that he ends up carrying a live poodle on his serving tray), complemented by a lyrical and occasionally surreal style. The first hour of the film passes like a dream. Dora, who is engaged to a Fascist official, falls for his antics from the start, though it takes time for her to decide to leave her other life behind. The first half of the film-which takes places against the beautiful landscape of a Tuscan village in the early 1940s-follows Benigni's character, a hapless, intelligent and endearing waiter named Guido, as he courts a local schoolteacher, Dora (Nicoletta Braschi). Love is the seed from which the story germinates. "I was scared, but you're always scared when you're in love." Benigni knew he was taking risks in making the film, but he "was obsessed, in love with this idea," he says. The best way to describe Benigni is as a mime who speaks-his broadly funny body and facial movements complement a mellifluous, mile-a-minute verbal style, and, in the case of Life is Beautiful, a script that is wise, sympathetic and very often hysterically funny. He's been dubbed by some as Italy's Robin Williams, though this comparison hardly seems adequate.
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Benigni is a major national celebrity in Italy here, his previous films (mostly high-concept slapstick comedies like Johnny Stecchino) have never found much of an audience, and his attempts to break into the American film market ( Son of the Pink Panther) have fallen flat. At the Cannes film festival, where Life is Beautiful won the Grand Jury Prize, Benigni kissed Martin Scorcese's shoes when he came to the podium to accept his award and hugged members of the jury. Life is Beautiful is a species of film that hasn't quite been categorized yet and that might be difficult for fans of Benigni's extraordinary work to reproduce.īenigni believes in his film's title, and it is this optimism that makes the movie's unlikely concept work. And though the humor has some dark undertones, it's as far as can be from a black comedy. One of several miracles that writer, director and actor Roberto Benigni performs in this film is to convince the audience that this is not a contradiction in terms. Life is Beautiful is a truly rare and unexpected creation: a comedy about the Holocaust. Written, directed by and starting Roberto Benigni