Roberto Benigni can make a joke feel like an act of care. We believe in his tenderness, but his directing can work too hard to reassure us about things that ought to hurt.
Fi1m perspective
In Life Is Beautiful (1997), Guido's pursuit of Dora gives Roberto Benigni's silliness a practical purpose: he wants her to love him. His inventiveness tells us how this man thinks, while Nicoletta Braschi's calm gives his energy something to work against. We believe in the affection. This is where we find Benigni most persuasive, with a particular person to reach and a reason for every comic effort.
His broad gestures and exaggerated expressions are matched by a fondness for naive characters who challenge authority through wordplay. He made his directing debut with Tu mi turbi (1983), writing and starring as well, before the Italian successes of Johnny Stecchino (1991) and The Monster (1994). Alongside that work, Jim Jarmusch's Down by Law (1986) gave his energetic comedy a place in an ensemble. With Life Is Beautiful, his combination of comedy and tragic fable reached a wider international audience.
Directing himself as Guido, Benigni also wrote the screenplay with Vincenzo Cerami. The courtship establishes the resourcefulness on which the father will depend when trying to protect his son from the Holocaust. We were moved by his effort to turn danger into a game, because the strain of keeping a child calm remains visible beneath the jokes. Benigni makes that effort feel desperate without losing the recognisable parental impulse to amuse.
The weakness is that Benigni wants to spare the audience too much distress as well. Guido's cleverness becomes so central that the cruelty around him matters chiefly as something he must outwit. Our attention is directed towards whether his invention will work, when the danger deserves more weight of its own. Even in the romance, the film's fondness for Guido can leave Dora with too little to do beyond appreciating him.
He continued directing and performing in Pinocchio (2002) and The Tiger and the Snow (2005). We remain interested in that mixture of the physical comedian and the teller of fables, though Life Is Beautiful makes us wary of the consolation he offers. Braschi's contribution is a useful reminder of how much his comedy gains from having another performer temper its pace. For another way into his work, try Down by Law, with someone else responsible for the film around him.
Biography
Roberto Benigni is an Italian actor, comedian, screenwriter and film director. He was born on 27 October 1952 in Manciano La Misericordia, a frazione of Castiglion Fiorentino in the province of Arezzo, Tuscany.
Benigni gained international recognition for writing, directing and starring in the 1997 film Life Is Beautiful, in which he played Guido Orefice. The film won the Academy Award for Best Actor and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. He has also directed and starred in films including Johnny Stecchino (1991) and Pinocchio (2002).
He has been married to actress Nicoletta Braschi since 1991; she has appeared in several of his films, including Life Is Beautiful.
