Starring Benigni, Nicoletta Braschi and Giorgio Cantarini
"I wanted to make a beautiful movie"
By Erika Milvy
"Life Is Beautiful" director Roberto Benigni talks about the Holocaust, Charlie Chaplin and how he was haunted by the idea of a happy man in a Nazi concentration camp
"Life Is Beautiful" has been the subject of great controversy, both in Italy (where it swept that country's equivalent of the Oscars) and at the film festivals where it has played. Miramax, which is releasing the film in the United States, has attempted a preemptive strike by including, in the press material, a brief essay by Andrew Stille, author of "Benevolence and Betrayal," the story of five Italian Jewish families under Fascism. Without alluding to the controversy, Stille mounts a defense. "Obviously," he writes, "the concentration camp that Benigni describes in no way approximates the horror of the actual camps. But the film is not striving for straightforward realism." That's too easy: Benigni isn't even trying for straightforward realism. And any treatment of the camps that attempts to dodge the singular and irreducible fact of them hasn't reckoned with its subject. The enormity and inexplicability of what happened there cannot even be acknowledged within a winsome comic fable. Stille's conclusion, that "it is about the power of love, humor and imagination in the face of tragedy and death," suggests the grotesque folly of this film -- the attempt to give a heartwarming, life-affirming cast to an event that exists outside of human meaning.
Why did you want to make a comedy about the Holocaust?
It's not a comedy about the Holocaust, because that's impossible. As Kandinsky the painter said, "I leave this town if I hear a joke about the Holocaust." And I agree with him. The second part of the movie in the concentration camp is a real tragedy.
Were you worried that "Life Is Beautiful" would offend some people?
I was worried about Jewish survivors. My problem was that they might feel hurt. There is a sort of artistic sensor: A comedian can usually do what he wants, but not this. I sent my script to the Jewish community in Milan because they wanted to stop me. But they were very nice with me. Two survivors cried watching the movie. They said the story was not possible... but I am not a documentarian, so I invent.
How did you begin writing the story?
This idea came really to me as a melody. Imagine a musician working and suddently [Benigni begins to hum] dadadadada. Because ideas are music. All the arts are the same, movies or literature or architecture. It's the same feeling. So I tried to improvise with the other screenwriter, a monologue about a father and a little son in a concentration camp, [with the father] telling the son that it's a wonderful place. He wanted most to protect him, and I immediately felt something beautiful.
What are you most proud of in "Life Is Beautiful"?
As a comedian, [the Holocaust] is an extreme situation. I felt this idea in my head so strongly that I really jeopardized everything, because I was flabbergasted with this idea. It was a beautiful, beautiful story. And I also love the love story with my wife [actress Nicoletta Braschi, to whom Benigni has been married 18 years], that my character is always thinking of making love with his wife. This I like very much.
Did you ever consider being anything other than an actor?
Being a clown is the only thing I know. When I was a little guy I stayed with a circus for a few months as a magician's assistant. It was very nice but I had burns all over my body because the magician made so many mistakes, and my mother said, "Enough, stop." [Then] my mother wanted me to be a priest, and she put me in a school in Florence but there was a flood and my school was ruined. My mother said "Water and fire, stop."
How do you feel about the sudden attention in America?
