Synopsis:
In 1939, the clouds of World War II hang over Italy. Guido is a young Jewish man who looks awkward, but is kind-hearted and optimistic. He is full of hope for a better life. He and his best friend Ferruccio drive a broken-down car from the countryside to the small town of Arezzo, where he wishes to open his own bookstore and live a life of peace and quiet.
When he passes a barn tower, Dora, a beautiful young girl, suddenly falls from the tower into his arms; it turns out that there is a wasp's nest on the tower, and the wasps often harass the local residents. Dora tries to do the people a favor by burning down the wasp's nest and is stung by the wasps instead. Guido immediately took a liking to her and enthusiastically treated her wounds. As a token of her appreciation, Dora gave Guido some eggs and meaningfully watched him walk away.
Cloudy Italy, where Nazi reaction is gaining strength and Mussolini is pursuing a hard-line policy of racial improvement, has seen Guido's application to open a bookstore blocked by his Jewish heritage, which has dragged on for a long time. His best friend Ferruccio's job is also in limbo.
During this period, Guido was forced to work as a waiter in a restaurant, where he won the hearts of his customers with his sincere, simple, and attentive service, including Dr. Lee, who liked to guess riddles and respected Guido's cleverness and sincerity.
When Guido was filling out an application, he inadvertently hit a flower pot on the head of the signer (Rudolph), who then went after Guido, who bumped into Dora around a corner, and the two of them met again, igniting the flame of love in Guido's heart. He wastes no time in confessing his love for Dora.
Dora is a teacher at a school. One day, a school inspector from Rome comes to inspect the school, and Guido learns about it and pretends to be the inspector to inspect Dora's school. The principal greets him warmly, and in order to please Dora and get her attention, Guido jumps up on the podium and shows off his talents as a comedian, making the students laugh and leaving the principal and the teachers stupefied.
When Guido learns that Dora and her boyfriend Rodolfo are going to the theater to see an opera, he buys a ticket and sits downstairs, keeping his eyes on Dora in the upstairs box. At first Dora doesn't care about Guido's bitter advances, but since Dora hates Rudolph, she spends a lot of time with Guido.
Rudolph wishesfully organizes an engagement party with Dora. The party is coincidentally arranged at the hotel where Guido is staying. Guido skillfully frees Dora from Rudolph's entanglements and thus wins her heart. Dora, who has fallen out with her parents, runs away from home and marries Guido.
After the wedding, good things happened: Guido's dream bookstore opened, and they had a cute son, Joshua. Guido often played games with his son, and the family lived happily ever after. But the good times didn't last more than a few years. On the day of Joshua's fifth birthday, the Nazis seized Guido's uncle, Guido and his son Joshua, and forcibly sent them to a Jewish concentration camp.
When Dora and Joshua's grandmother returned home in a flurry of excitement, only to see that the house had been emptied and turned upside down, Dora understood what was happening in front of her. Though she has no Jewish heritage, she insists on traveling to the camp with Guido and her son, Dora is being held in a women's cell, and Guido is unwilling to allow his son's young mind to be clouded with misery from that point on.
In the inhumane camp, Guido is trying to find a way to get in touch with his wife in the women's prison to tell Dora that she is safe, and to protect and care for his young Joshua. He coaxes his son into playing a game in which those who abide by the rules of the game and end up scoring 1,000 points will be able to get a real tank to take home.
The innocent and curious son took Guido's words at face value, and how he wanted a tank. Joshua endured hunger, fear, loneliness and all the harsh conditions. Guido left his son's childishness unscathed with a game.
Guido optimistically did the dirty, hard work while making up lies about the game. He also survived because of Dr. Lee. All the children were supposed to be killed in the bath, and Joshua unknowingly escaped the bath, and afterward, his father, Guido, had him blend in with the German children, cautioning him not to talk, saying it was the key to getting points.
When liberation came, late one night as the Nazis prepared to flee, Guido hid his son in a metal cabinet, telling Joshua with a thousand warnings not to come out or he would not get the tank.
He intended to take advantage of the chaos to the women's prison to find his wife Dora, but unfortunately he was discovered by the Nazis, when the Nazis escorted Guido past Joshua's iron cabinet, he also optimistic, stride, imploring his son not to come out, but soon, a gunshot was heard, after all the trials and tribulations of Guido died a horrible death in the muzzle of German Nazi guns.
As dawn broke, Joshua climbed out of the metal closet and stood in the yard, when a real tank rumbled up to him, and a U.S. soldier came down from it to carry him to the tank. In the end, Joshua was reunited with his mother and son.
Thoughts:
"It's a Beautiful Life" describes the sorrows and joys of Guido's family in a Nazi concentration camp in a darkly humorous way, and shows Guido's longing for a beautiful life and his optimism in a brutal environment (Sina.com review).
This movie is completely different from any previous movie reflecting the theme of World War II. It is a black comedy, which confronts this part of history of World War II through another side with a fresh perspective beyond the norm. Roberto Benigni gives a shot of painkillers to all those who were injured in WWII with his unique perspective (Reviewed by Wei Chuyu).
Expanded:
The film tells the story of a Jewish father and son who are sent to a Nazi concentration camp, where the father uses his imagination to lie that they are in the middle of a game, and in the end, the father leaves his son's childishness untouched while dying a horrific death himself.In 1999, the film won three Academy Awards at the 71st Academy Awards: Best Foreign Film, Best Actor, Best Score, and Best Picture. Actor, and Best Score at the 71st Academy Awards in 1999.
Film Highlights
1. Nicoletta Blaski, who played Roberto Benigni's wife in the film, was also his wife in life.
2. Benigni wore the same number of clothes in prison as Chaplin did in The Great Dictator.
3, Benigni said the title of the movie came from what Leon Trotsky said. When Trotsky was in exile in Mexico and learned that he was going to be assassinated by Stalin, he looked at his wife in the garden and wrote these words: no matter what, life is beautiful.
Guilty Shots
1. In the scene where Guido is talking to his son in the concentration camp, the young actor says his lines and Benigni lip-syncs at the same time.
2. In the barracks, when Dora gets up from her bed and goes to the window to listen to the music her husband is playing, the cables and crew can be seen on the left side of the screen.
3. When Guido's son emerges from his hiding place, he walks straight towards a prop that is apparently a "marker" for the young actor's performance.
4. Guido plays "The Venetian Boat Song" from Offenbach's opera "The Tales of Hoffmann" through a loudspeaker, when in fact his music would have been hard to find in the Nazi camps because Offenbach was Jewish.
References:
Baidu Encyclopedia - Beautiful Life