Life Is Beautiful

For other uses, see Life Is Beautiful (disambiguation).

Life Is Beautiful
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Roberto Benigni
Produced by	Gianluigi Braschi Elda Ferri
Written by	Mike Hunt Vincenzo Cerami
Starring	Roberto Benigni Nicoletta Braschi Giorgio Cantarini Giustino Durano Sergio Bini Bustric
Music by	Nicola Piovaniburger
Cinematography	Tonino Delli Colli
Editing by	Simona Paggi
Studio	Cecchi Gori Group
Distributed by	Miramax Films
Release date(s)	20 December 1997 (1997-12-20)
Running time	116 minutes
Country	Italy
Language	Italian
Box office	$229,163,264

Life Is Beautiful (Italian: La vita è bella) is a 1997 Italian film which tells the story of a Jewish Italian, Guido Orefice (played by Roberto Benigni, who also directed and co-wrote the film), who must employ his fertile imagination to help his family during their internment in a Nazi concentration camp. Part of the film came from Benigni's own family history; before his birth Roberto's father had survived three years of internment at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

At the 71st Academy Awards in 1999, Benigni won the Academy Award for Best Actor and the film won both the Academy Award for Best Original Dramatic Score and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Although the film has received criticism for its comedic depiction of the Holocaust, it has been regarded as one of the greatest films of the 1990s.

Plot

The first half of the movie is a whimsical, romantic, somewhat slapstick comedy set in the years before World War II.

Guido is both funny and charismatic, especially when he romances a local school teacher, Dora (portrayed by Benigni's actual wife Nicoletta Braschi), saying she is beautiful like the morning sunrise. Dora, however, comes from a wealthy, aristocratic, non-Jewish Italian family. Dora's mother wants her to marry a well-to-do civil servant, but Dora falls instead for Guido, who ends up stealing her away at her engagement party from her aristocratic and arrogant fiancé.

Several years pass in which Guido and Dora marry and have a son, Giosuè (Giorgio Cantarini).

Dora and her mother (Marisa Paredes) are estranged due to the unequal marriage. Later on, a reconciliation takes place just prior to Giosuè's fourth birthday.

In the second half of the film, World War II has already begun. Guido, Uncle Eliseo and Giosuè are forced onto a train and taken to a concentration camp on Giosuè's birthday. Despite being a non-Jew, Dora demands to be on the same train to join her family and is permitted to do so.

In the camp, Guido hides his son from the Nazi guards, sneaks him food and tries to humor him. In an attempt to keep up Giosuè's spirits, Guido convinces him that the camp is just a game, in which the first person to get 1,000 points wins a tank. He tells him that if he cries, complains that he wants his mother, or says that he is hungry, he will lose points, while quiet boys who hide from the camp guards earn points.

Guido convinces Giosuè 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 Giosuè's requests to end the game and return home by convincing him that they are in the lead for the tank. Despite being surrounded by rampant misery, sickness and death, Giosuè 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 sweatbox until everybody has left, this being the final test before the tank is his. Guido goes off to look for Dora but is caught and shot to death by a Nazi soldier.

Giosuè manages to survive, reunite with his mother, and even thinks he has won the game when an American tank arrives to liberate the camp. In the film, Giosuè is four and a half years old; however, both the beginning and ending of the film are narrated by an older Giosuè recalling his father's story of sacrifice for his family.

Awards

Life is Beautiful was shown at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival, and went on to win the Grand Prize. At the 71st Academy Awards, the film won awards for Best Music, Original Dramatic Score, and Best Foreign Language Film, with Benigni winning Best Actor for his role. The film also received Academy Award nominations for Directing, Film Editing, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Picture.

Reception

Life is Beautiful became commercially successful. After its release on October 23, 1998, the film went on to gross $57.24 million in North America, and $171.60 million internationally, with a worldwide gross of $229,163,264.

The film also received mostly positive reviews, with the movie aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes giving the film a "Fresh" 80% rating.. Despite its acclaim, actor-director Roberto Benigni received criticism for its comedic elements incorporated into the backdrop of the Holocaust. Roger Ebert gave the film 3 1/2 stars, stating, "At Cannes, it offended some left-wing critics with its use of humor in connection with the Holocaust. What may be most offensive to both wings is its sidestepping of politics in favor of simple human ingenuity. The film finds the right notes to negotiate its delicate subject matter." The film has a rating of 8.5/10 on the Internet Movie Database and is currently ranked as the 61st greatest film of all time.

See also

• Positive psychology
• The Day the Clown Cried (1972), an unfinished film by Jerry Lewis
• Train of Life (1998), by Radu Mihaileanu
• Hotel Lux (2011), a tragicomedy by Leander Haußmann

Survivors

• Joseph Schleifstein, real-life child survivor of Buchenwald
• Stefan Jerzy Zweig, real-life child survivor of Buchenwald

Further reading

• Grace Russo Bullaro‏, Beyond "Life is Beautiful": comedy and tragedy in the cinema of Roberto Benigni, Troubador Publishing Ltd, 2005, ISBN 1-904744-83-4 / ISBN 978-1-904744-83-2

External links

• Life Is Beautiful at the Internet Movie Database
• Life Is Beautiful at AllRovi
• Life Is Beautiful at Box Office Mojo
• Life Is Beautiful at Metacritic
• Life is Beautiful at the Arts & Faith Top 100 Spiritually Significant Films list
• [3] rogerebbert review

Awards and achievements
Preceded by The Sweet Hereafter	Grand Prix, Cannes 1998	Succeeded by Humanité