Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #468 in DVD
• Released on: 2001-01-22
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English, Italian
• Subtitled in: English, Swedish, Finnish, Danish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 122 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Italy's rubber-faced funnyman Roberto Benigni accomplishes the impossible in his World War II comedy Life Is Beautiful: he shapes a simultaneously hilarious and haunting comedy out of the tragedy of the Holocaust. An international sensation and the most successful foreign language film in US history, the picture also earned director-cowriter-star Benigni Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Actor. He plays the Jewish country boy Guido, a madcap romantic in Mussolini's Italy who wins the heart of his sweetheart (Benigni's real-life sweetie, Nicoletta Braschi) and raises a darling son (the adorable Giorgio Cantarini) in the shadow of fascism. When the Nazis ship the men off to a concentration camp in the waning days of the war, Guido is determined to shelter his son from the evils around them and convinces him they're in an elaborate contest to win (of all things) a tank. Guido tirelessly maintains the ruse with comic ingenuity, even as the horrors escalate and the camp's population continues to dwindle--all the more impetus to keep his son safe, secure and, most of all, hidden. Benigni walks a fine line mining comedy from tragedy and his efforts are pure fantasy--he accomplishes feats no man could realistically pull off--both of which have drawn fire from a few critics. Yet for all its wacky humour and inventive gags, Life Is Beautiful is a moving and poignant tale of one father's sacrifice to save not just his young son's life but his innocence in the face of one of the most evil acts ever perpetrated by the human race. --Sean Axmaker

Special Features
English
Region 2

Synopsis
Conjuring keys and hats out of thin air, Guido (Roberto Benigni), a clever Jewish-Italian waiter, successfully courts Dora (Nicoletta Braschi), a beautiful local woman, in Fascist pre-WWII Italy. His life, however, is turned upside down a few years later when he, Dora, and their young son, Giosue (Giorgio Cantarini), are sent to a Nazi concentration camp. Refusing to give up hope, Guido tries to protect his son's innocence by pretending that their imprisonment is just an elaborate game, with the grand prize being a tank.
For years the box-office champ in Italy and the country's most beloved slapstick comic, the Chaplinesque Benigni took a huge risk with LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL. Many people worried that the film would be as offensive as plopping a cartoon character in Auschwitz. (A similar work--THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED, a Jerry Lewis film about a comedian in a concentration camp--turned out to be a disaster two decades earlier.) Although LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL did provoke some controversy, many people found the film to be a poignant, tragicomic story that profoundly reaffirmed the humanity of concentration camp victims. The film became the highest grossing foreign language film in the U.S. and established Benigni as an international star.

Customer Reviews

A magical masterpiece
What a great shame that foreign films do not get the acclaim that they truly deserve. The problem with us Brits is that we are brainwashed into thinking that should a film not come out of Hollywood, then it surely can't be worth watching....can it? Roberto Benigni's masterpiece (which I truly believe in years to come will go down in film history as one of the all-time greats) is set in Italy against the back-drop of WWII, the Holocaust and a fathers determination to shield his naive and simplistic young son from the horrors of it all. The film is a roller coaster of emotions and in the space of 5 minutes it can make you laugh out loud, cry in despair and then cry for joy. Any film that can do that is a film worth watching. The dialogue is stunning as is the acting and forget the fact that it is in Italian with subtitles, it was the way the film was meant to be. If you love good films and belive in life outside the Hollywood glitz, go on....treat yourself to a true classic.

A masterpiece through and through. Charts new territory.
Magical.

I spent a long time trying to think of an adequate word to describe this film after I had watched it and that was the only one that came close to doing it justice. Put quite simply this film is a masterpiece. The menagerie of emotions it evokes is unlike anything I have ever witnessed. You'll laugh until tears stream down your cheeks, you will try your hardest to bite back tears and when the film is over you will sit in abject silence, merely thinking about what you have just witnessed. Whether you adore it or not it cannot be denied that Life Is Beautiful is a film you simply cannot forget as quickly as you turn it off.

Roberto Benigni slides into the role of Guido easily, a role that he puts his stamp on and makes unforgettable almost immediately. I will refrain from writing a synopsis as this is already provided although the story itself is fantastically written, dividing the film into two halves. One light and humorous the other dark and poignant yet still retaining a few laughs ('...because I just had to have a jam sandwich!').

The only recommendation I can make to those watching it for the first time is to forget about the dubbing. Watch it through in the original Italian with english subtitles and it makes for a much more enjoyable watch. The emotion given to Guido by Benigni is portrayed through his words as well as actions and the effect is all but lost in the dubbing.

I was surprised to hear from a friend recently that a lot of people considered this film controversial. Apparently it is insensitive to the topic and approaches it in a manner that lacks the proper respect. Never have I heard such contrived nonsense.

The film deals with its subject matter in an extremely unique way, choosing to consentrate on Guido's love for his son and the way in which it is this love that makes him persevere (see the scene in which he gets back from working in the camp and instantly changes his expression upon seeing his son) rather than merely opting for the usual shock values of the camps. If you want a film without anything uplifting, if you're looking for a doom and gloom picture about the visual images of life in the concentration camps them opt for Schindlers list. Life is Beautiful goes further than this. It shows the development of a man, a man whose life revolves around his interactions with other people, a man whose love for his son is so much that his resolve cannot be broken even by the harshest of treatment of conditions. But most of all Life is Beautiful is about emotions in their simplest forms. Whether its love, laughter, fear or sorrow, you will find and feel them all with this film. One thing I can guarantee you is this, by the end of the film you will certainly be debating its title.

"Like a fable, there is sorrow...and wonder, and happiness"
With this opening line, Roberto Benigni, Director, lead character, and writer (with Vincenzo Cerami) of this film, establishes its symbolic, rather than realistic, emphasis. Set in 1930s Italy, the film opens as a slapstick comedy, with the rubber-faced Benigni (who won the Academy Award as Best Actor for this role) playing Guido Orifice, a hyperactive clown, as he repeatedly surprises a beautiful young woman, acts as the clever hotel waiter, and attempts to exchange hats with men he meets.

Despite the frantic comedy, however, the fascist dictatorship and the growing anti-semitism loom constantly in the background, as Guido's uncle (Giustino Durano) is assaulted, his horse is painted green, and a local school principal talks about getting rid of defectives. After a lovely segue to represent the passage of six years or so, we again see Guido, now married to his beautiful Dora (Nicoletta Braschi), and meet Giosue Orifice, his son, winningly played by six-year-old Giorgio Cantorini. Totally committed to protecting his son from the horrors of anti-semitism, Giorgio turns everything into a joke.

When the family is eventually rounded up and shipped to a concentration camp, Guido turns the event into a "birthday surprise" for Giosue and tries to ensure his survival by pretending that all the events are part of a huge game, with the winner getting a full-sized tank. Disappearances from the camp are explained as people dropping out of the game.

In some ways, Guido's game-playing sets the reality of the concentration camps into sharp relief, intensifying the horror by showing the lengths to which a father will go to protect the innocence of his child. The viewer knows that the game is a pitiful, and ultimately hopeless, attempt to hold back the reality of the Final Solution but cannot help hoping that against all odds, somehow Guido and Giosue will win. The horrors of the Holocaust are obvious here, and the ironies of seeing both Guido and his captors all playing some sort of macabre "game" will not be lost on the viewer.

I thoroughly enjoyed Benigni's pratfalls, his touching attention to his family, the music (by Nicola Piovani, which also won an Academy Award), and the cleverness of the plot. But I also found that my realistic knowledge of the Holocaust was so overwhelming I could not "suspend [my] disbelief," and I was unable to appreciate the film as the wonder-filled "fable" Benigni intended. Mary Whipple