Life is Beautiful

“Life Is Beautiful,” explores the power of laughter to lift the human spirit even in the face of extreme tragedy. Director, Roberto Benigni is able to do this buy taking a fairy tale approach that is both funny and moving but with an unusual shift in tone midway through the film. Benigni who plays Guido in the film using humor to deflect criticism and confuse his enemies and watching his adventures, we are reminded of Charlie Chaplin (Ebert, 1). Now lets take a deeper look in to Benigni’s fairy tale approach in “Life is Beautiful.”

Set in Italy in 1939, amid a climate of growing anti-Semitism and fascism in the town of Arezzo, a city south of Florence, Tuscany, in 1939 (M. Aste, 11). Guido is an enchanting Jewish waiter with a fantastic imagination. Guido instantly falls for Dora (Nicoletta Braschi), a beautiful schoolteacher from a prominent family who’s inconveniently engaged to a powerful fascist town clerk. Guido becomes undeclared rival with Dora’s fiancé. Also at the beginning of this film Guido makes friends with a German doctor (Horst Buchholz) who is a regular guest at the hotel and shares his love of riddles.

In this first half of the film, magic gives Guido a chance to win Dora’s. In town, Guido

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All of this early material, the first act of the film, is comedy- much of it silent comedy involving the fate of a much –traveled hat (Ebert, 1).

I think that the film actually softens the Holocaust slightly, to make the humor possible at all. Dora and Guido are happily married with a five-year-old son Giosue (Giorgio Cantrini). But “Life is Beautiful” is not about Nazis and Fascists, but about the human spirit. Guido makes a big show of being terrified that somehow they will miss the train and be left behind. He is a clown, and comedy is his weapon. Dora, not Jewish, would be spared by the Fascists, but insists on coming along to be with her husband and child.

Approximate Word count = 1527
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)

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