Roberto Benigni's acting and directing
in "Life is Beautiful"
[The Name of Writer Appears Here]
[The Name of Institution Appears Here]
"Chicago/Turabian
Format"
Abstract
Several humorists have made an effort to tread that delicate
line between humor and tragedy. A small number of them
have ever been successful. Jerry Lewis, in ‘The
Day the Clown Cried’, featuring Lewis as a circus
clown trying to cheer up children in a WWII prison camp
even tried his hand at making a prison camp comedy. Most
recently, Billy Crystal has injected his films (Father's
Day, My Giant) with a cloying dose of schmaltz and even
Chaplin got the mixture right in films. Roberto Benigni
in his film, ‘Life is Beautiful’, applies
his tragedy with an eyedropper of a precise mixture of
optimistic humor and touching emotion. The idea of a comedy
set against the backdrop of the tragedy begs the question:
Are there subjects too dark to be dealt with comedically?
Perhaps comedy is the best way to deal with tragedies,
and besides all criticism Benigni has shown us so.
Roberto Benigni's "Life is Beautiful"
An unlikely comedy about a father's effort to shield
his son from the dreadfulness of the Holocaust. According
to Halloran1, “La Vita e bella is most disturbing
in the context of actor/director Roberto Benigni's filmography.
And it's plenty disturbing on its own, as it will forever
go down in film history as ‘that comedy set in
the concentration camp’.”
Benigni never considered writing and directing a movie
about Fascist Italy until he tried to envision the most
intense circumstance in which to position his comic
alter ego. He could reflect of no darker time in our
entire history than the Holocaust. Benigni read something
that struck his heart, it was a line ascribed to the
revolutionary Trotsky. At the time, Trotsky was trapped
in bunker, waiting for Stalin’s hit men to kill
him, yet, in that very instant of dread, Trotsky wrote
that he still considered, “Life is beautiful.”
While Benigni states that he is the first comedian to
make a film about the Holocaust, he's well aware that
Charlie Chaplin lead him by more than 50 years with
his 1940 spoof on Adolf Hitler, "The Great Dictator."
In fact, the number on Guido's prison uniform in "Life
Is Beautiful" ‘ 0737’ is a nod to Chaplin,
who wore the identical number in ‘The Great Dictator’.
“Charlie Chaplin has influenced everything I've
ever done. Just everything,” Benigni says. “He
is the prince of each comedian in the world. Chaplin
is like our Michelangelo.”
But many a critics don’t agree on this, during
the press conference at Cannes, one French journalist
stood up to blame Benigni of scorning the victims of
the Holocaust, pronouncing that he was “scandalized”
by the movie. A reporter from the International Herald
Tribune vocalized that she “loathed this film”,
and the London Guardian wrote that it was a miserably
insufficient memorial to the vile events of the Holocaust.
‘Life Is Beautiful’ is not a comedy about
the Holocaust; it's a movie by a comedian about the
Holocaust. The character he portrays might horse around,
but the Holocaust is never played down. “There's
been some people, not a lot, but some people who felt
in a very, very strong way, like I touched something
untouchable,” Benigni says. “The last thing
I wanted was to hurt somebody or be offensive with the
memory of the Holocaust, because I started from the
opposite idea, of course. I wanted to make a beautiful
movie, and especially to say something poetic.”2
Benigni and Braschi declare that the intention of the
movie was to make audiences laugh and cry. “That
cry is purifying," says Braschi. "It makes
you feel better because there's something that gets
near to the essence of the life and the death. So it's
a good cry.”3
Conclusion
Humor can be used as a salve and a leveler; it also
helps shape an understanding of events that are otherwise
beyond comprehension. The grimmest of national tragedies
inevitably triggers a backwash of sick jokes, the vileness
of which increases in proportion to the seriousness
of the incident. With his newest film, however, Benigni
seems to have locked onto a no-lose combination of humor
and pathos. Life is Beautiful is, ostensibly, a comedy
about life in a Nazi prison camp. That isn't a comic
subject most folks would dare to touch. We're not talking
about a foolish POW camp a la "Hogan's Heroes"
either. We're talking a real deal Jewish death camp.
Benigni has crafted a wonderful, funny and life-affirming
little gem.
Endnotes
1. Halloran, David: Review: Roberto Benigni's
Life is Beautiful. http://www.leisuresuit.net/Webzine/articles/life_beautiful.shtml
2. Milvy, Erika: Review on Life Is Beautiful: SALON.
Oct. 30, 1998
3. Okwu, Michael: 'Life Is Beautiful' through Roberto
Benigni's eyes. Friday, October 23, 1998 http://www.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/Movies/9810/23/life.is.beautiful/
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