La Vita e Bella (Life is Beautiful)
dir. Roberto Benigni 1998

(review © Jon Horne 1999)
For half an hour a charming but forgettable Ealing comedy transported to late-1930s Italy in a village full of gorgeous summer colours, with director Benigni in the clown's role and Nicoletta Braschi pulling dopily-surprised faces like the heroine of a Disney cartoon. The Broadway audience did their usual act, yok-yokking at slapstick gags that they would sneer at if the film didn't have subtitles, and I thought about going home and playing with the cats.

You HAVE to sit through this, no matter how tempted you are to leave.

The scene shifts to 1945; Benigni and Braschi have ridden off into the sunset and produced a young son. German soldiers are occupying the village, and Benigni's character is a Jew. The train leaves for Auschwitz and the film becomes what "Schindler's List" would have been if it had starred Norman Wisdom. As sentimental as "The Kid" but as moving a story as anything that can be imagined. The unfunny jokes continue as before, but now they break your heart. If you can sit through it without a box of tissues then I don't want to ever meet you. See this film.

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