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I’ve watched a few films that have brought tears to my eyes, including My Neighbour Totoro and ET – The Extra-Terrestrial. Life Is Beautiful reduced me to buckets of tears, and may be the most naturally emotional roller-coaster ride of feelings on screen.

Guido Orefice (played by the director, Roberto Benigni) is a happy go lucky and very clumsy waiter in Italy on the brink of WW2, dreaming of getting his own bookshop, but blocked by be autocratic red tape and for being Jewish. He manages to accidentally drop a plant pot and eggs on the man responsible for this, and later finds out that the man competes for the affections of the love of his own life, a girl who he also has a habit of banging into accidentally.

From the lightweight, almost slapstick comedy of the opening half of the film, we see little of the Fascists and Nazis, but that will change. Guido educates children in the nonsense of Aryan beliefs in racial superiority and later, after his Uncle’s horse is painted in anti-Jewish colours by local Nazis, he rides the horse through an engagement party and takes his girlfriend away under the noses of his detractors.

Four years pass, and the war is now in swing, and the couple now have a precocious son, who is fascinated by a toy tank Guido has given him. Guido frequently promises him a real tank.

The tone of life should change when the Father and son are sent to a concentration camp, especially when the non-Jewish wife gets herself sent along too, from a desire for non-separation, even though the genders are segregated on arrival at the camp.

Guido manages to convince his son that the camp might seem harsh but that it is all a silly game with points for effective hide & seek, When a Nazi camp commander asks

For a translator to explain the camp rules, Guido uses the opportunity to explain them loudly as hopscotch and other pastimes, with a promise of a tank for the winner.

Guido manages to hide his son away for their entire internment and gets messages and music out for his wife, to keep her spirits up.

As the war seems close to its end, and the Nazis are fleeing the camp, the danger is not yet over.  Many of the Jews are killed in a desperate attempt to cover up the atrocities committed, and Guido is taken away to be executed over his stealth attempts to unite with his wife. He makes final clowning gestures before being shot, and the boy is able to survive for he liberation, getting a ride on an American tank which delights him and his Mother as the story closes.

A wonderful story of an unbreakable human spirit, and the passion of love under adversity, and horror. The three dimensional characterization says more than many other film studies of the Holocaust.  The humour is never misplaced or distasteful, and I’d defy any but the hardest hearted not to feel pangs of sorrow and joy in equal measure on watching this movie.

Arthur Chappell.