1998 Screen Actor's Guild Actor in Lead Role 1998 Academy of Motion  Pictures Award Foreign Language Film Actor in a Lead Role Original Dramatic Score

                          LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL (La Vita E Bella) (1997)
                          MPAA: Rated PG-13 for holocaust related thematic elements.
                          Runtime: Italy:122 / USA:114 / Germany:124
                          Country: Italy
                          Language: Italian / German
                          Color: Color (Cinecitta)
                          Sound Mix: Dolby Digital
                          Certification: USA:PG-13 / Finland:K-12 / France:U / Germany:6 /
                          Portugal:M/12 / Sweden:11
 
 

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  Roberto Benigni’s “Life is Beautiful,” undertakes — and succeeds to an improbable degree a seemingly impossible task: making a comic fable about the holocaust. But for all of Benigni’s often brilliant physical and verbal play, the movie deals with tragic historic events and the movie derives, by its end, a surprising emotional power from them.

Absurdity and surreal comedy may in fact be one of the most effective means of describing the racial persecutions of fascist Italy. Through most of the first sixteen years of Italian fascism, Mussolini had openly ridiculed the racial doctrines of Nazi Germany. “National pride has no need of the delirium of race!” he said in 1933, after Hitler took power. Then in 1938, when Mussolini decided to cement a military alliance with Hitler and Italian fascism had to perform verbal somersaults to explain away Mussolini’s anti-racist statements.

It is at this moment of transition in 1938 that the movie opens. Ironically, some of its most outlandish comic stunts have a basis in fact. There actually was a “Manifesto of Racist Scientists” which Benigni spoofs, impersonating a fascist official and showing off the various parts of scrawny body in order to demonstrate the superiority of the Italian race. The signs in the storefronts shown in the movie “No Jews or dogs allowed” were, in fact, common in most Italian cities after 1938.

Italy’s Jews were excluded from public jobs, public schools and many professions. But persecution did not lead to extermination until toward the end of World War II. In September of 1943, the Italian government, seeing that the war was lost, ousted Mussolini, made a separate peace with Allies and tried to withdraw from conflict. The Germans quickly occupied most of Italy and began hunting down and deporting Jews. In the eighteen months of German occupation some 3,000 of the roughly 45,000 Italian Jews were arrested and deported. Compared to most countries in Nazi-occupied Europe, a very high percentage of Jews survived, in part because of their close knit relations with their non-Jewish neighbors. But the vast majority of those deported never returned.

Obviously, the concentration camp that Benigni describes in no way approximates the horror of the actual camps. But the film is not striving for straightforward realism. It is about the power of love, humor and imagination in the face of tragedy and death. There were many families that were deported in their entirety because one member refused to split up and instances of parent and child staying together in the same camp.

It is also true that some Italian deportees had the advantage of being in the camps a relatively short time. At death camps such as Auschwitz, this made little difference, with a mere 10 percent surviving. Others -- half-Jews, for example —were sent to camps such as Buchenwald and Ravensbruck where extermination was not the sole, unwavering aim. In these places, half of the inmates died. Although rare, there were instances, even at Auschwitz. in which inmates did manage to hide children and protect them from “selection” — although almost certainly not with  the comic grace of Roberto Benigni.

In my book Benevolence and Betrayal I chronicled the tale of a father and son who were deported together and managed to remain together throughout the final -months of the war at Buchenwald. In this case, the son already a teenager (and not  as in the film — a small boy) may have helped his father more than his father helped him, but the love and solidarity and even humor between the two of them was unquestionably a crucial ingredient to their mutual survival. Among the only words of German the father learned at the camp were “Father and son always together.” These words — which may have saved both their lives could stand as the epigram for “Life is Beautiful.”

Alexander Stile

Stile, a graduate of Yale University and the Columbia University School of Journalism, is a frequent contributor to the New Yorker, Newsweek, the New York Times Book Review and the Los Angeles Times. In addition, he is the author of Benevolence and Betrayal the story of five Italian Jewish families during fascism and subsequent Nazi anti-Semitism in Italy.
 

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Roberto Benigni’s LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL (La Vita E Bella) is a daring departure for one of the world’s most acclaimed comic filmmakers. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival, the Best Jewish Experience Award at this year’s Jerusalem International Film Festival and the Audience Award at both the Toronto International Film Festival, the Vancouver International Film Festival and the Montreal World Film Festival. In addition, LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL is the recipient of 8 David di Donatello Awards (the Italian Oscars) including Best Picture. Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Screenplay along with Vincenzo Cerami, the film is a Chaplinesque fable about the power of imagination set against the stark reality of World War II Europe. LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL (La Vita Bella) combines satire, physical comedy, social commentary and a touch of the surreal into a uniquely moving story of love.

At the center of the fable is Guido (Roberto Benigni) — an enchanting individual with childlike innocence and grand dreams of owning his own bookshop. It’s 1939 and he has come to the Tuscan town of Arezzo with his poet friend Ferruccio (Sergio Bustric). With unabashed humor and joy, the two seek fortune and romance, ignoring the growing anti-Semitism and Fascist government that surrounds them.

Guido falls in love with Dora, a beautiful young school teacher (Nicoletta Braschi, the Italian actress who has starred in most of Benigni’s films). Unfortunately, the woman he calls his “Princess” is already engaged. Worse, she is engaged to the local Fascist official with whom he has had a run-in. Guido, however, is not deterred and a fairy tale romance ensues.

Several years later — Guido and Dora are married and have a son, Giosue (Giorgio Cantarini), and Guido has finally opened the bookshop of his dreams. But now, the occasional bigotries Guido once ignored have become Racial Laws with which he must come to terms. Throughout it all, Guido determines to shield his son from the brutal reality governing their lives. This determination becomes a matter of life and death when Guido and his son are sent to a concentration came three months before the war’s end. Of her own accord, and out of her love for them, Dora deports herself on the same train.

Now, in this unimaginable world, Guido must use his bold imagination and every ounce of his indefatigable spirit to save those he loves.
 

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Best known for his bright physical comedy and inventive cinematic gags, comic filmmaker Roberto Benigni enters new territory with LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL (La Vita E Bella). The film takes Benigni to the rarely explored cross-roads where the happiness of comedy and romantic dreams meet the poignancy and pathos of heart-breaking reality.

At once magical and urgent, LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL (La Vita E Bella) is a bold fable about the power of laughter to move the human heart and the power of the imagination to bolster the human spirit.

The story takes place in 1939, a time when Italy has fallen under the grip of Fascism and anti-Semitism -- a time when some 8,000 Italian Jews of all ages and from all walks of life were removed from their long-lived homes and deported to concentration camps.

Against this backdrop, Benigni unfolds the fairy-tale of Guido and Dora -- two exuberant, childlike lovers who pursue a wondrous romance full of comical mishaps and accidental encounters. Their sweet and funny love story forms the first half of LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL (La Vita E Bella). Then, the story takes an unexpected turn -- as it did for many Jews who had lived in the hopes that they would be safe in Mussolini’s Italy.

When Guido and the son he loves more than anything in the world are deported to a camp — and Dora follows them out of her own devotion -- Guido undertakes a seemingly impossible, almost mythical, task. He determines to protect his child’s heart from the horrors in front of them -- by masking his own fear and exhaustion and maintaining his humor, joy and imaginative playfulness under the most inhumane and unimaginable circumstances. No matter what happens, and at all costs, Guido wants his son Giosue to continue to believe that life can be beautiful.

LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL (La Vita E Bella) is a Miramax Films release of a Mario and Vittorio Cecchi Gori presentation of a Melampo Cinematografica production, directed by Roberto Benigni from a story and screenplay by Vincenzo Cerami and Benigni. The producers are Elder Fern and Gianluigi Braschi. The film stars Roberto Benigni, Nicoletta Braschi, Giorgio Cantarini, Giustino Durano, Sergio Bustric, Marisa Paredes, Horst Buchholz, Lydia Alfonsi and Guiliana Lojodice. Danilo Donati is the film’s art director and costume designer; Tonino Deili Coili is the cinematographer; and Nicola Piovani composed the music.

Like one of his cinematic forbearers, Charlie Chaplin. Roberto Benigni has always created characters who, though funny and accident prone. have a touch of the bittersweet to them and an underlying moral center. In this sense, the story of Guido is in the tradition of Benigni’s many popular comedies (“Johnny Srecchino,” “The Monster,” “The Little Devil”).

But the story of Guido’s magical love and subsequent descent into a nightmare — all the while trying to keep alive his innocent son’s dreams -- is different from anything that has come before. For Benigni, the inspiration for this unusual story was a mixture of personal memories, historical grief and his own irrepressible imagination.

The story takes place in Tuscany, where Benigni himself was born and raised, and takes place in a time -- although before Benigni’s birth -- that greatly affected his own family. Although not Jewish, Benigni’s father was imprisoned in a German labor camp during the war, changing his life forever.

Despite these personal links, Benigni never thought of writing and directing a movie about Fascist Italy until he tried to imagine the most extreme situation in which to place his comic alter-ego. He could think of no darker moment in our collective history than the Holocaust. He began working with co-writer Vincenzo Cerami on a series of sketches of his character caught in the unimaginable abyss of an extermination came. And then Benigni read something that struck his heart. It was a line attributed to the revolutionary Trotsky. At the time, Trotsky was trapped in bunker, waiting for Stalin’s hit-men to kill him -- a bleak moment it seemed. Yet, in that very moment of terror, Trotsky wrote that he still thought “life is beautiful.”

Thinking about this extraordinary sentiment in the race of death, Benigni decided to make a movie about the ability of love, joy and laughter to stay clandestinely alive under the most heinous conditions. At the same time, Benigni
had been exploring the history of Italy’s uprooting and deporting of thousands of Jews during Fascist times. Thus was born his tale of Guido’s unusual mission of love inside a concentration camp.

“I never asked myself if the idea for LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL (La Vita E Bella) was similar to or different from those tackled in my previous movies,” states Benigni. “I just felt extremely attracted to it, overwhelmed by it. I could even say that I didn’t seek out this idea; it sought me. I found that line about ‘life is beautiful’ haunting me one day and it has never left me since.”

At the outset, Benigni knew he was taking a tremendous risk, but he says that “love always brings courage” and he had already fallen in love with the idea of Guido’s quest to save his family. He hoped that the humor of the story’s early scenes of misadventure and romance would only make the poignancy of what happens to Guido and his loved ones more deeply felt.

Benigni continues: “I believe that laughter saves us, it forces us to consider the other side of things, the surreal and funny side. Being able to imagine prevents us from being reduced to ashes, from being crushed like twigs. It gives us the strength to survive the endless night.”

“I knew this film would bring up some very sensitive issues,” he admits. ‘When the idea first took hold of me, it was very much like an illumination, a revelation, and my very first reaction was to retreat. But then I realized the retreat was caused by fear, and in the end my feelings about the story won over the fear.

From the beginnings Benigni deliberately chose to keep the style of LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL (La Vita E Bella) in the vein of an imaginary tale or fable -- in his writing visual treatment and even the performances -- rather than a historical recreation of Fascist Italy.

“I did not want to meticulously reconstruct Italy of that time. This is not a historical document by any deans. Instead, it is more like a children’s story, with the camp being sort of a Platonic picture of Evil’s lair or the monster’s lair,” he explains. “Similarly, my character of Guido is an anti-Fascist not so much philosophically as physically. The way I carry myself, one understands I can’t be a Fascist because my eyebrows, my teeth, my belly are the very opposite. Guido represents complete freedom, generosity and childlike innocence.”

Although Benigni was clear from the start that he was forging a fable, he also wanted to absorb as deer an understanding as possible of the real experiences of those who lived, loved and suffered through those times. He consulted survivor groups, read many histories and listened to dozens of personal accounts. Throughout the entire process of making LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL (La Vita E Bella), he worked closely with Milan’s Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation, constantly taking commentary and advice from historians and first-hand survivors on the script and eventually on the production.

The more he read and heard the stories of Italian Jewish families, the more Benigni found himself stunned at how quickly their lives changed -- one day an integral part of their quiet little hill towns and the next ostracized and then deported. often to their deaths.

Benigni recreates this transformation with the swift change of pace between the first and second halves of LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL (La Vita E Bella). “I don’t think of the movie as being divided so much as the character’s lives are divided,” states Benigni. “The characters of Guido and Dora are exactly the same in both halves of the movie; it’s just that in the second half the’, find themselves in an extreme situation, which forces them to react accordingly.”

He adds: “With Guido, I wanted to create a character who was totally integrated into Italian society, who lives his life, does his job, isn’t the least interested in politics and then with one blow, his life is suddenly over. That’s just the way it really happened to many people. Guido’s family is one anyone can identify with -- happy, loving. And then, without having done anything wrong and without any reason, they are thrown into horror.”

To delve into the full extremes of that barbarism, Benigni also read and listened extensively to stories of the camps. “According to what I read, saw and felt in the victim’s accounts, I realized nothing in a film could even come close to the reality of what happened. You can’t show unimaginable horror -- you can only ever show less than what it was. So I didn’t want audiences to look for realism in my movie,” he says.

He continues: “But I was so struck by how unfathomable the horror was, that it seemed quite possible for a man like Guido to pretend the whole ordeal was only a game. This is something Primo Levi talks about in If This Is A Man. He describes the morning reveille at the camp when all the prisoners are naked and motionless and he looks around thinking: ‘what if all this were nothing but a joke? This cannot be true . .‘ This seemed a question all the survivors had in mind: how could this have been true?”

These questions confirmed Benigni’s idea that Guido might create a massive, intricate ruse to shield his beloved son. “Is there anything more beautiful, more moving than a love story with a child?” he asks. “The principle of saving children from trauma, of protecting their purity is one of oldest, greatest and deepest feelings possessed by man. For the Giosue character, I chose him to be at an age where he can understand everything yet still can believe that it’s only a game. Giosue probably knew exactly what was going on, the way children do, but he was willing to go along with the make-believe.”

After almost two years of pre-production, LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL (La Vita E Bella) was shot over twelve weeks in and around Arezzo, Italy and at the new Multimedia Center studios in Terni. Although Benigni wanted a magically surreal feel to the costumes and designs, he also wanted enough authenticity to keep a touch of heart-rending reality.

Benigni recruited multiple Academy Award-winning designer Danilo Donati to create the sets and costumes. Donati had the challenge of designing two visually disparate stories: the luminous, colorful, playful story of Guido and Dora’s Tuscan romance and their stark, terrifying and surreal journey to the camps. For the former, Donati engaged a workshop in Cinecitta to design lively costumes, frescoes, paintings and whimsical interior decorations to match the cypress-1ined lanes of Arrezzo.

But for the camps, Donati immersed himself in research. As Benigni and Vincenzo Cerami did for the script, Donati consulted extensively with the Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation to ensure nothing was misrepresented. Survivors presented the filmmakers with “patches” of their own concentration camp uniforms for the recreation of costumes, which are identical in shape, composition and color to those really worn.

To create the camp itself, Donati studied archival photographs and documents -- he wanted his design to be movingly authentic and yet not quite real. The camp in the film is not meant to be any particular camp from history, but a general recreation of the bleak, strange. almost surreal nature of camp life. The buildings -- forged from brick rather than the wood used in most camps — were built on the remains of an abandoned factory near the Marmore Falls, in the Terni region. A massive operation. the re-creation took over 250 tons of plaster and 300 cubic meters of timber.

Also on the set was Marcello Pezzetti, a historian and expert on life in Auschwitz and Italy’s deportation of Jews. He helped maintain an accurate picture of camp life -- a reality that is belied by Guido’s fantastic ruse that all the prisoners are playing a fun game replete with prizes.

“Working with Roberto was a unique, unrepeatable experience” says Pezzetti. He was particularly impressed with Benigni’s attention to the tiniest details, noting “It is precisely because the film is a fable that Benigni wanted it also to be realistic.” Pezzetti mentions such accurate touches as the benches and clothes-stands shown outside the camp’s “showers” -- something the Nazis used to keep the prisoners from suspecting they were going to their deaths. The inclusion of these small items says Pezzetti, “tesify to the care, the respect with which Benigni made the film. This is the spirit in which he was working.”
 

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One of the world’s most acclaimed comic filmmakers and entertainers, Roberto Benigni has rendered his most ambitious and moving work to date with LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL (La Vita E Bella). a fable about the powers of love and imagination set against World War II Europe.

In the U.S., Benigni is best known for his many memorable comic performances in such films as Jim Jarmusch’s “Down By Law” and “Night On Earth,” as well as for the role of the infamous Inspector Clouseau’s son in Blake Edward’s “Son of the Pink Panther.” He has also recently appeared in Wim Wender’s “Far Away, So Close!”

But around the world, Benigni is also known as a filmmaker with his own unique style. Among the films he has written, directed and starred in are: “Johnny Stecchino,” the story of a mild-mannered bus driver who just happens to be the spitting image of one of Italy’s most wanted mobsters, which became the most successful film in the history of Italian cinema; the successful “The Little Devil,” in which he co-stars with Walter Matthau; and most recently “The Monster,” another blockbuster Italian comedy about an ordinary man mistaken for a serial killer.

Benigni began his career in Rome’s theatres and quickly become one of Italy’s leading comic talents. He attained great popularity as a television star and appeared in many acclaimed feature films, including “II Pap’occhio” and “11 Minestrone.” In 1983, he directed his first feature film, “Tu Mi Turbi” and went on to direct his next film, “Non Ci Resta Che Piangere” with co-star Massimo Troisi (“Il Postino”). In 1996, he made “TuttoBenigni,” a feature film of his live theatrical performances which established his comic sensibilities worldwide. His other film credits include Federico Fellini’s last film “La Voce Della Luna.”

Benigni continues to work on stage. He appeared as the reciting voice in a memorable performance of “Peter and the Wolf” conducted by Claudio Abado at the Ferrara Music Festival. He also recently toured Italy with his one-man comical show.

He will next appear in the long-awaited screen version of the popular European comic book “Asterix” with Gerard Depardieu.

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Popular Italian actress Nicoletta Braschi has appeared in all of Roberto Benigni’s comedies, but never has she taken on a role Like that of Dora, the beautiful young school teacher who finds herself swept off her feet by the enchanting Guido --and then makes her own incredible sacrifice of love.

Braschi previously co-starred with Benigni in his popular films “The Monster” and “Johnny Stecchino,” both box-office record-breakers in their native Italy, in Benigni’s “The Little Devil, “ with Walter Matthau, and in Benigni’s first feature “Tu Mi Turbi.” She also appeared with Benigni in Jim Jarmusch’s offbeat American comedy “Down By Law” and went on to star in Jarmusch’s “Mystery Train.”

Her other feature film credits include Giuseppe Betrolucci’s “Segreti Segreti” and “La Domenica Specialmente”; Marco Ferreri’s “Come Buoni I Bianchi”; Marco Tullia Giordana’s ‘Pasolini: Un Delitto Italiano” and Paolo Virzi’s “Ovosodo.”
 

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Cinematographer Tonino Delli Coili’s career spans six decades of European cinema. Before joining Roberto Benigni to work on LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL (La Vita E Bella), his collaborations with Italian directors have included Fellini, Pasolini, Wermuiler and Sergio Leone.

Delli Colli made his debut in 1949 and has shot more than 30 feature films. In 1961, he shot Paolo Pasolini’s vivid first film, “Accatone” and went on to photograph Pasolini’s subsequent masterwork ‘The Gospel According to St. Matthew” as well “The Decameron,” “The Canterbury Tales” and “Salo, Or The 120 Days of Sodom.” He joined with Sergio Leone to shoot the classic Westerns “The Good. The Bad and The Ugly” and “Once Upon a Time in the West” and served as cinematographer on his American gangster epic. “Once Upon a Time in America.” He also collaborated with Lina Wertmuiler on her harrowing World War II story, “Seven Beauties.”

Deili Colli began a relationship with Federico Fellini on his 1986 feature “Ginger and Fred” and went on to shoot “Intervista” and “La Voce Della Luna,” also starring as himself in the former. His other credits include Roman Polanski’s “Death and The Maiden” and Jean-Jacques Annaud’s ‘The Name of the Rose.”

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Born and raised in Bologna, Italy; producer Elda Fern’s career began in the early 1980’s with her work on the Italian documentary “Forza Italia.” Inspired by the power of the medium, she took her love of the craft and went on to produce “Copkiller” with Harvey Keitel, “The Bachelor” with Miranda Richardson and “Conversations With Dubcek” with Umberto Eco for television.

LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL is not Fern’s first collaboration with Roberto Benigni and Nicoletta Braschi. Previously she has produced “Ii Mostro” with Roberto Benigni and “Sostine Perenia” with Marcelllo Mastroianni and Nicoletta Braschi.

Currently, Elda is producing the screen adaptation of “The Lover”, based on the novel by Abraham Yehoshua.

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Gianluigi Braschi was born and raised in the small town of Cesena, in Northern Italy near Bologna.

His career in film began at Melampo Cinematografica as a production secretary on Roberto Benigni’s “Johnny Stecchino.” However, this was just the beginning of an exciting and successful future in film. Braschi went on to collaborate in the production of “Ii Mostro” and produce “LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL.”
 

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A man of many talents, Piovani is known for his work as a pianist. composer, song-writer and orchestra director. The Rome native is a recipient of two David di Donatello awards; his first in 1986 for his work on Federico Fellini’s “Ginger and Fred” and in 1994 for Mario Monicelli’s “Dear Diary.”
 

Piovani’s other film credits include: Fellini’s “The Voice of the Moon,” Alberto Sordi’s “Let’s Hope It’s a Female” and Mario Monicelli’s, “The Marqui of the Grass Hopper.” In addition, Piovani has composed for
television as in the successful “Amico Mio” in Italy.

Composing for film and television are just some of the ways Piovani expresses his love of music, he also is very active in the Italian theater. Working with the likes of Carlo Cecchi, Luca De Filippo and Maurizio Scaparro. Although Piovani’s talent has enabled him to share the power of music through film, television and theater; it is his passion that has merited two lifetime achievement awards in his native Italy.
 
 

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Academy Award winning costume and production designer Danilo Donati’s career spans over 25 years, 25 films, three Oscar nominations and two Academy Awards for Federico Fellini’s “Romeo and Juliet” and “Casanova.” In 1967 he was nominated for an Oscar for best Costume Design for both “La Mandragola” and “Ii Vangelo Secondo Matteo” respectively and in 1968 for “The Taming of the Shrew.”

Donati’s credits include Fellini’s “Intervista,” “Roma,” and Pasolini’s masterpiece “Salo, or The 120 Days of Sodom.” In addition, Donati has worked on an array of  American films including “Flash Gordon.” and “Red Sonja.”  In television, Donati worked on the 1996 American mini-series “Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo.”
 

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