La Vita e Bella

La Vita e Bella

von: Annette Ballier

Table of content

Introduction 3

1. “La Vita e Bella”- basic information 3

1.1 The author, the film director and the main actor 4

1.1.1 His films till now 6
1.1.2 Staff of “La Vita e Bella” 7

2. The Plot 8

3. Language of film/ Camera movement 9

3.1 Shot 9
3.2 Focus/ Point of view 9
3.3 Lighting and montage 10
3.4 Picture- composition/ Effects 10

4. Interpretation 11

5. Reflection 12

6. Holocaust and its representation 13

7. Use in class 14

8. Literature 14

Introduction

“ For the last three months, I have had a recurring nightmare. Somehow, I am sitting in the audience at the Academy Awards ceremony. Two glamorous figures (…) stand at the podium. They are about to announce the award for “Best Foreign Language film”. The hall falls silent. ”And the winner is…” They pause; the suspense slowly builds. “Life is beautiful, Roberto Benigni, director”. The crowd goes wild. I wake up screaming….” (Stuart Liebmann)

1. La Vita e Bella …

Sometimes? Often? As long as you believe in it? In my opinion a very successful film, Roberto Benigni ventures something apparently impossible. He confronts one of the cruellest occurrences, the Holocaust, with the humour and the humanity and in the end love triumphs. The dumb shock and the speechless through defiance, he tries to get closer to the impossible and inexplicable on a humorous way. He shows the viewer an unusual possibility how he can come along with the reality and creates a pleading against the oblivion, a hymn for the humanity.

When I saw the movie “La Vita e Bella” for the first time, I was impressed of the emotional change which is included in the film. The pleasant and amusing humour of the main actor and his variety of imaginations develops a background of Jew- baiting and the fact of the sojourn in the concentration camp to a dramatically irony. This carefree “bella vita” is becoming a game of live and death through the fatal exterior conditions and lets the statement “La Vita e Bella” sound like a sarcastic phrase. Refer to the emotional conflict the viewer is getting in, the movie appeals in my opinio n very directly to humanity, charity and the joy of live. The movie encounters all live circumstances with optimism and shows the different perceptions, viewings and processors of “ live”. At the beginning it is still amusing due to the slapsticks and the running gags, which are designed to get in the second part of the movie sense and dramatically functions. I had to establish what emotional and moral effects this unknown combination of humour and fright they causes. Roberto Benigni as Guido Orefice is a sympathetic person with a lot of joy of life, who causes the audience to feel with him.

1.1 The author, the film director and the main actor

Roberto Benigni, who counts international to the most successful comedians, film directors and entertainers, creates with his movie “La Vita e Bella” an ambitious and moved production. He creates a fable about the power of love and also the possibility of having fun in a time of the most inhumanity.

Roberto Benigni was born 1952 in a toscanian village next to Arezzo. His family was poor. The most time he grew up with his mother and his three sisters because his father was through his job most time in absence. His career started 1970 in an alternative theatre, where he invented a grotesque figure, which he represente d in a one- man show, in Rom. In the year 1976 he was playing in a popular soap opera. A year later he got his first play in the movie “Berlinguer ti voglio bene” of the film director Guiseppe Bertolucci. It had been followed a few small movie parts in films of the popular film directors like Luigi Zampa, Constantin Costa- Gravas, Paolo Pietrangeli, Bernando Bertolucci und Marco Ferreri. He attacked comical and satirical the moral of the Roman- Catholic church in the public till the Vatican summoned him. In 1982 he was his own author and film director in “Tu mi turbi”, that was his first time. In this film Nicoletta Braschi acted with him, later she became his wife. The following direction he did together with Massimo Troisi, they both wrote also the scenario to “Lucky Boys”. The international break through was 1985 together with the author Jim Jarmusch. He played next to Tom Waits and John Lurie an Italian criminal in the comedy “Down By Law”. He also worked together with Jim Jarmusch by the short movies “Coffee and Cigarettes” and “Night on Earth”(1991).

He obtained again an international popularity as the main actor in the last movie ”Die Stimme des Mondes” of Frederico Fellini in 1989. 1993 he played a small role in “In weiter Ferne” of Wim Wenders. In the year 1991 he married his partner Nicoletta Braschi, who undertook the main roles in his movies “Johnny Zahnstocher”(1991) and “Das Monster”(1994). 1988 he already engaged the big US- actor Walther Matthau in the movie “Ein himmlischer Teufel” as author. In most of these film Nicoletta Braschi (his wife) was the female main actor. 1993 he played the illegitimate son of the Inspector Clouseau in Blake Edward’s film “Der Sohn des rosaroten Panther”.

The movie “La Vita e Bella” was shown with overpowered success in the Italian cinemas. It became nine decorations of the highest Italian distributions, which is called “David di Donatello”- a few are listed: for the best film, for the best management, for the best main actor and the best camera movement. In Cannes he obtained 1998 the Big Price of the Jury. He was reward for his film with three Oscars and obtained the “Jewish Experience Award” at the film- festival in Jerusalem, “which is like a Oscar”, he said. His next project was the French production of the movie “Asterix und Obelix gegen Cäsar”(1999).

1.1.1 His films till now

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