| 2nd | Top drama films: 1997 |
| Life Is Beautiful | |
|---|---|
 Film poster |
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| Directed by | Roberto Benigni |
| Written by | Roberto Benigni Vincenzo Cerami |
| Starring | Roberto Benigni Nicoletta Braschi Giorgio Cantarini Giustino Durano Sergio Bini Bustric |
| Editing by | Simona Paggi |
| Distributed by | Miramax Films (USA) |
| Release date(s) | Italy: 20 December 1997 United States: 23 October 1998 Australia: 26 December 1998 United Kingdom: 12 February 1999 Hong Kong: 4 March 1999 New Zealand: 5 March 1999 Taiwan: 12 March 1999 Thailand: 19 March 1999 |
| Running time | 116 minutes |
| Country | Italy |
| Language | Italian, German, English and Spanish. |
Life Is Beautiful (Italian: La vita è bella) is a 1997 Italian language 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.
At the 71st Academy Awards, 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.
Contents |
The first half of the movie is a whimsical, romantic comedy and often slapstick. Guido Orefice (Roberto Benigni), a young Italian Jew, arrives in Arezzo where he plans to set up a bookstore, taking a job in the interim as a waiter. He lives with his uncle Eliseo. Guido is both funny and charismatic, especially when he romances Dora (Italian, but not Jewish, and portrayed by Benigni's actual wife Nicoletta Braschi), whom he steals—at her engagement—from her rude and loud fiancé. Several years pass in which Guido and Dora have a son, Joshua (Giorgio Cantarini). 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 1,000 points wins a tank. 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 1,000 points. To further prove that the camp is a game he pretends to translate the guard's instructions.
Guido 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 sweatbox 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 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. He is reunited with his mother, not knowing that his father has died. Years later, he realizes the sacrifice his father made for him and also, that it was for that sacrifice that he is still alive today.
The movie was shown at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival, winning the Grand Prize of the Jury.[1] It then went on to win the Academy Awards for Best Music, Original Dramatic Score and Best Foreign Language Film; Benigni won Best Actor for his role. The film was additionally nominated for Academy Awards for Directing, Film Editing, Best Picture, and Best Original Screenplay. Benigni's win for Best Actor made him the second person to direct himself in an Oscar winning performance. The first was Laurence Olivier, who won an Oscar for his performance under his own direction in Hamlet (1948).
The film was financially successful, earning 23 million euro in Italy (1997-1998). In the United States, the film earned $59 million.
The film currently holds a 78% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
| Awards and achievements | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by The Sweet Hereafter |
Grand Prix, Cannes 1998 |
Succeeded by Humanité |
| Preceded by Character |
Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film 1998 |
Succeeded by All About My Mother |
| Preceded by The Full Monty |
European Film Award for Best European Film 1998 |
Succeeded by All About My Mother |
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Life is Beautiful is a 1997 film about an Italian Jew - Guido - who helps his son survive the Holocaust by pretending it is all a game. The film leads us from the relatively normal existence Guido had before the war, during which he worked for his uncle, Eliseo; met his wife, Dora; and had a son, Joshua (Giosué). Then leaps forward into the persecution during the second world war followed by the incarceration in a German concentration camp, where the young Joshua is kept from the horror of the Holocaust by the promise that if he plays the game, he will earn a real tank.
The film is in Italian (although some lines are in German or English), and it's original title is La vita è bella. The following quotes are taken from the official English subtitles.
Contents |
Note: these riddles are translated from the original Italian rather than taken from the official English subtitles. For this reason, though the meanings of the words are retained, the meanings of the riddles as a whole may not be.
The more there is, the less you see. (Darkness) Snow White amongst the dwarves. Stubborn people solve this riddle in the time which gives you the solution. (In seven minutes) If you say my name there is no more. Who am I? (Silence) Fat, fat, ugly, ugly / truly all yellow / if you ask me where I am / I tell you: "Here, here, here (quack, quack, quack)". / When I walk I go "pop" / Who am I? tell me a little. (Guido does not answer what this riddle means, because the riddle refers to a Jew)
   | Arts & Faith Top100 Spiritually Significant Films - Top 100 Spiritually Significant Films |
| | Grand Prize of the Jury - IMDb: Cannes Film Festival: 1998 |
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