Life Is Beautiful (DVD, 1999, Collector's Edition)

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, Giosué (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.

Life is Beautiful is one of my favorite movie titles. The setting takes place during World War II and the Nazi halocaust. Even though the plot of this story takes place during one of the darkest times in the world's history, this movie tells a tale about a father's love for his family. The main character's name is Guido, the father of a five year old boy. He convinces his son that the concentration camp is a game that they are playing to win a real army tank which is the boy's favorite toy. Even among the death and horror that was present in the concentration camps, Guido was able to preserve his son's innocence and also keep him alive by hiding him in the barracks of the camp. This heart warming foreign film is a must see movie!

I never watch a dubbed version of a movie when the original version is available with English subtitles. You miss out on a great deal of the flavour and affect and in this respect you lose a lot in the translation with a dubbed approach. This movie is called "La Vita e bella/Life is beautiful" in the combined Italian/English version and that is how I recommend you purchase it.

This is a movie with a lot of potential to teach. It teaches the value of honesty as a way of life in that this can be fully retained when a man is simply acting in a humorous spirit to make life seem more bearable and to spare children an ugly reality that surrounds them. Yet there is a spirit that continues in Benigni's character as a man who'd like to stay sane honestly enough that he will conjure up a version of events to keep his audience with him and in good humour. Such characters are always trying for as much real honesty as the situation will allow however they have learned a defensive coping mechanism to telling it like it is. And in this respect perhaps his son at the end has a better view of the world than is justified however fact is that he is being lied to by a man who thinks he is being a better father this way. Its a great story that touches on the travesty and the tragedy of the holocaust, as Italian jews were not spared this fate although many were harbored by good Italians who could not go along with Hitler's madness in this respect.

Many movie fans shy away from foreign films because they have subtitles, or their over all composition is in a very different, and sometimes confussing style. This, however is one that you should not miss. It is funny, horrifying, touching, and suspenceful. It is about an Italian Jew who is taken to a concentration camp with his young son in WWII. To keep his son alive, he tells his son that it is all a game -- a silence game, or hide and seek, or a see-how-long-you-can-go-withou​t-eating game. Driven by the desire to win the game, his son becomes quite good at remaining invisible to the Germans. The most remarkable trait this film possesses is that it is funny in parts, without compromising the seriousness and utter horror in other parts. In fact, I think the humor makes the horror that much worse.

With a Chapeline-like, slapstick loook on life during WWII era Italy, Begnini gives light to the incrdible hope and love in each of us. This movie is beautiful in its composition, comedy, tragedy and love.

You will enjoy this movie throughout and be as hopeful and optomistic as Guido (Begnini) and never lose that hope or love for the characters. Even in the most impossible and miserable of times, Guido makes us laugh, gives us hope and inspires us to find light even in the darkest of tunnels. There is darkness in this movie, but the light of the human spirit guides us through it safely.