Life Is Beautiful is a
1997The year 1997 in film involved some significant events.-Events:*The Star Wars original trilogy's 20th Anniversary Special Editions are released.*Production begins on Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace....
Italian languageItalian is a Romance language spoken by about 60 million people in Italy, and by a total of around 70 million in the world. In Switzerland, Italian is one of four official languages. It is also the official language of San Marino, as well as the primary language of Vatican City...
film which tells the story of a
Jewish ItalianItalian Jews can be used in a broad sense to mean all Jews living in Italy or in a narrower sense to mean the ancient community who use the Italian rite, as distinct from newer arrivals who use the Sephardi or Ashkenazi rite.-Divisions:...
, Guido Orefice (played by
Roberto BenigniRoberto Remigio Benigni, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI is an Italian actor, comedian, screenwriter and director of film, theatre and television...
, who also directed and co-wrote the film), who must employ his fertile imagination to help his son survive their internment in a Nazi concentration camp.
The first half of the movie is a whimsical,
romantic comedyRomantic comedy is a hybrid genre of fiction, especially motion pictures, in which a story about romance is presented in a comedic style. Works in this genre are generally considered light-hearted, and are sometimes associated with the vaguely derogatory terms "chick lit" or "chick flick", meaning...
and often
slapstickSlapstick is a type of comedy involving exaggerated physical violence or activities which exceed the boundaries of common sense and sometimes includes ironic situations, such as a character being hit in the face with a heavy frying pan or running into a brick wall, or going mad while searching for...
. Guido Orefice (
Roberto BenigniRoberto Remigio Benigni, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI is an Italian actor, comedian, screenwriter and director of film, theatre and television...
), a young Italian Jew, arrives in
ArezzoArezzo or Arretium is a city in central Italy, capital of the province of the same name, located in Tuscany. Arezzo is about south-east of Florence, at an elevation of 296 meters above sea level. In 2009 the population was about 99,000 people....
where he plans to set up a bookstore, taking a job in the interim as a
waiterWaiting staff, wait staff, or waitstaff are those who work at a restaurant or a bar attending customers — supplying them with food and drink as requested...
.
What kind of place is this? It's beautiful: Pigeons fly, women fall from the sky! I'm moving here!
Buongiorno, Principessa! (Good Morning, Princess!)
My husband and son are on that train. I want to get on that train. Did you hear me? I want to get on that train.
Mom, we won, we won! (Referring to the tank)
Life Is Beautiful is a
1997The year 1997 in film involved some significant events.-Events:*The Star Wars original trilogy's 20th Anniversary Special Editions are released.*Production begins on Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace....
Italian languageItalian is a Romance language spoken by about 60 million people in Italy, and by a total of around 70 million in the world. In Switzerland, Italian is one of four official languages. It is also the official language of San Marino, as well as the primary language of Vatican City...
film which tells the story of a
Jewish ItalianItalian Jews can be used in a broad sense to mean all Jews living in Italy or in a narrower sense to mean the ancient community who use the Italian rite, as distinct from newer arrivals who use the Sephardi or Ashkenazi rite.-Divisions:...
, Guido Orefice (played by
Roberto BenigniRoberto Remigio Benigni, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI is an Italian actor, comedian, screenwriter and director of film, theatre and television...
, who also directed and co-wrote the film), who must employ his fertile imagination to help his son survive their internment in a Nazi concentration camp.
Plot
The first half of the movie is a whimsical,
romantic comedyRomantic comedy is a hybrid genre of fiction, especially motion pictures, in which a story about romance is presented in a comedic style. Works in this genre are generally considered light-hearted, and are sometimes associated with the vaguely derogatory terms "chick lit" or "chick flick", meaning...
and often
slapstickSlapstick is a type of comedy involving exaggerated physical violence or activities which exceed the boundaries of common sense and sometimes includes ironic situations, such as a character being hit in the face with a heavy frying pan or running into a brick wall, or going mad while searching for...
. Guido Orefice (
Roberto BenigniRoberto Remigio Benigni, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI is an Italian actor, comedian, screenwriter and director of film, theatre and television...
), a young Italian Jew, arrives in
ArezzoArezzo or Arretium is a city in central Italy, capital of the province of the same name, located in Tuscany. Arezzo is about south-east of Florence, at an elevation of 296 meters above sea level. In 2009 the population was about 99,000 people....
where he plans to set up a bookstore, taking a job in the interim as a
waiterWaiting staff, wait staff, or waitstaff are those who work at a restaurant or a bar attending customers — supplying them with food and drink as requested...
. He lives with his uncle Eliseo. Guido is both funny and charismatic, especially when he romances Dora (Italian, but not Jewish (portrayed by Benigni's actual wife
Nicoletta BraschiNicoletta Braschi is an Italian actress, best known for her work with her husband, actor and director Roberto Benigni.She has also collaborated with American director Jim Jarmusch....
), whom he steals – at her engagement – from her rude and loud fiancé. Several years pass, in which Guido and Dora have a son, Joshua (written Giosué in the Italian version; portrayed by
Giorgio CantariniGiorgio Cantarini is an Italian child actor who, to date, has appeared in two Academy Award winning films: 1997's Life Is Beautiful and 2000's Gladiator....
). In the film, Joshua is around four and a half years old. However, both the beginning and ending of the film are narrated by an older Joshua.
In the second half, Guido, Uncle Eliseo and Joshua are taken to a concentration camp on Joshua's birthday. Dora demands to join her family and is permitted to do so. When Dora boards the train she is the only one wearing red, as everyone else is wearing dark coloured clothes. Guido hides Joshua from the Nazi guards and sneaks him food. Uncle Eliseo is gassed to death, though the others do not know. In an attempt to keep up Joshua's spirits, Guido convinces Joshua that the camp is just a game, in which the first person to get 1000 points wins a
tankA tank is a tracked, armoured fighting vehicle designed for front-line combat which combines operational mobility and tactical offensive and defensive capabilities...
. He tells Joshua that if he cries, complains that he wants his mother or complains that he is hungry, he will lose points, while quiet boys who hide from the camp guards earn 1000 points. To further prove that the camp is a game he pretends to translate the guard's instructions. a very powerful scene showing the extent a father will go to to save his son from the horried truth of the camp.
He convinces Joshua that the camp guards are mean because they want the tank for themselves and that all the other children are hiding in order to win the game. He puts off every attempt of Joshua ending the game and returning home by convincing him that they are in the lead for the tank. Despite being surrounded by rampant death and people and all their sicknesses, Joshua does not question this fiction because of his father's convincing performance and his own innocence.
Guido maintains this story right until the end, when – in the chaos caused by the American advance – he tells his son to stay in a
sweatboxThe box, also known as a hot box or sweatbox, is a method of solitary confinement used in humid and arid regions as a method of punishment. Anyone placed in one would experience extreme heat, dehydration, heat exhaustion, even death, depending on when and how long one was kept in one...
until everybody has left, this being the final test before the tank is his. After trying to find Dora, Guido is caught, taken away and is shot by a Nazi guard, but not before making his son laugh one last time by imitating the Nazi guard as if the two of them are marching around the camp together. Joshua manages to survive, and thinks he has won the game when an American tank arrives to liberate the camp, and he is reunited with his mother, not knowing that his father was dead. Years later, he realizes that the sacrifice his father made for him gave him the chance to live on.
Awards
The movie was shown at the
1998 Cannes Film Festival- Jury :*Martin Scorsese *Alain Corneau *Chiara Mastroianni *Chen Kaige *Lena Olin *MC Solaar *Michael Winterbottom *Sigourney Weaver *Winona Ryder *Zoe Valdes...
, winning the
Grand Prize of the JuryThe Grand Prix is an award of the Cannes Film Festival bestowed by the jury of the festival on one of the competing feature films. It is the second-most prestigious prize of the festival after the Palme d'Or...
. It then went on to win the Academy Awards for
Best Music, Original Dramatic ScoreThe Academy Award for Original Music Score is presented to the best substantial body of music in the form of dramatic underscoring written specifically for the film by the submitting composer.-Winners with multiple nominations:...
and
Best Foreign Language FilmThe Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film is one of the Academy Awards of Merit, popularly known as the Oscars, handed out annually by the U.S.-based Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences...
; Benigni won
Best ActorPerformance by an Actor in a Leading Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actor who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry...
for his role. The film was additionally nominated for Academy Awards for
DirectingThe Academy Award for Achievement in Directing is one of the Awards of Merit presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to directors working in the motion picture industry...
,
Film EditingThe Academy Award for Film Editing is one of the annual awards of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; it was first given for films released in 1934. The name of this award is occasionally changed; in 2008, it was listed as the Academy Award for Achievement in Film Editing. The New York...
,
Best PictureThe Academy Award for Best Motion Picture is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to artists working in the motion picture industry. The Best Picture category is the only category in which every member of the Academy is eligible...
, and Best Original Screenplay.
Reception
The film was financially successful, earning 23 million euro in
ItalyItaly , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares its northern, Alpine boundary with France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia...
(1997-1998). In the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, the film earned $59 million.
The film currently holds a 78% approval rating on
Rotten TomatoesRotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films. The name derives from the historical cliché of throwing tomatoes and other produce at stage performers if a performance was particularly bad.- History :...
. Despite a strong performance at the box office, many reviewers were critical of the film for its use of humor in depicting the Holocaust.
See also
- Train of Life
Train of Life is a 1998 French language tragicomedy film. It tells the story of an eastern European Jewish village's plan to escape the Holocaust.-Plot:...
(1998), Directed by: Radu MihaileanuRadu Mihăileanu is a Romanian-born French film director and screenwriter. He left Romania in 1980 and graduated the IDHEC cinematographic institute in Paris.-Filmography as director:...
- The Day the Clown Cried
The Day the Clown Cried is an unfinished and unreleased 1972 film directed by and starring Jerry Lewis. It is based on a scriptment of the same name by Joan O'Brien, who had co-written the original script with Charles Denton 10 years prior. The film was met with controversy regarding its premise...
(1972), an unfinished film by Jerry LewisJerry Lewis is an American comedian, actor, film producer, writer, film director, singer and humanitarian. He is best-known for his slapstick humor in stage, screen, television, radio, recording and is also known for his charity fund-raising telethons and position as national chairman for the...
External links