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Roberto Benigni's acting
and directing in
"Life is Beautiful"
"MLA 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 Halloran, “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.”
(Milvy, 1998)
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.”(Okwu, 1998)
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.
Works Cited
Halloran, David: Review: Roberto Benigni's Life is Beautiful.
http://www.leisuresuit.net/Webzine/articles/life_beautiful.shtml
Milvy, Erika: Review on Life Is Beautiful: SALON. Oct.
30, 1998
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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