Number 77 on IMDb's Top 250
It's 1939. The ebullient, playful Guido comes to town. He works as a waiter under his uncle's eye, an elegant man who is also a Jew. Guido falls for Dora, a schoolteacher, whom he calls "princess" and courts by popping up at unexpected times. Hilarity ensues. She dumps her fiancé to choose Guido. The film jumps ahead to the last months of the war. Nora and Guido have a child, Giosué, and when Guido and the lad are shipped to a concentration camp, Dora voluntarily follows. Although the men and women in the camp are separated and a child is in mortal peril, Guido finds ways to communicate with Dora, to hide Giosué, and to convince him this is an elaborate game, a special contest to win a tank.
Trivia: Roberto Benigni's Oscar for best actor marked only the second time that an actor had directed himself in an Academy Award winning performance. The other was Lawrence Olivier for Hamlet (1948), it was also the second time a performance completely in Italian had been awarded. The previous winner was Robert De Niro for The Godfather: Part II (1974). Guido's wife, Dora, is played by Benigni's real-life wife, Nicoletta Braschi. Benigni says the title comes from a quote by Leon Trotsky. In exile in Mexico, knowing he was about to be killed by Stalin's assassins, he saw his wife in the garden and wrote that, in spite of everything, "life is beautiful".
This was a very bittersweet movie, the sweet part, the first 2/3rds is a very sweet romantic comedy that could really stand on it's on. Benigni's exhuberance is very much in evidence. The second part is notable in the way Guido tries to shield his son from the horrors happening around them. (Kim should rent this and watch it in Italian an then let me know what she thinks.) Nice movie.
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1 comment:
I believe I've seen this movie but I'm not sure. I'll try to get it in Italian.
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