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Life is Beautiful (1997, It.)
(aka La Vita è Bella)
In actor/director Roberto Benigni's tragi-comedy -
a Best Foreign Language Film winner:
- the second half of the film - about the ugly horrors
of a Nazi concentration camp, where clowning, child-like hotel
waiter Guido Orefice (Oscar-winning Roberto Benigni) and his young
son Giosue/aka Joshua (Giorgio Cantarini) were interred (and separated
from his wife/mother); the scene of Guido volunteering to translate
the German guard's rules of the camp - even though he didn't speak
any German - he was able to creatively orchestrate the fiction
of a life-saving, imaginative illusion with play-acting, to shield
his son from the horrors, by stating that the first prize in the
game they were playing was a brand-new armored tank: "The
game starts now. Whoever's here is here, whoever's not is not.
The first one to get a thousand points wins. The prize is a tank!
Lucky him! Every day we'll announce who's in the lead from that
loudspeaker. The one with the least points has to wear a sign saying
'jackass' right here on his back. We play the part of the real
mean guys who yell. Whoever's scared loses points. In three cases,
you'll lose all your points. One, if you start crying. Two, if
you want to see your mommy. Three, if you're hungry and you want
a snack. Forget about it!..."
- the grim scene when Guido's wife Dora (Nicoletta Braschi,
Benigni's real-life wife) learned from another Jewish camp member
that the old people and children were not to work because they were
to be executed: "They don't send old people and kids to work
because they kill them! One of these days they'll call them to take
a shower. 'Children, shower time!' The truth is, they make them shower
there - in the gas chamber"; shortly later, young Giosue ran
away when he was told it was shower time; he found his father, and
stubbornly insisted that he wasn't going to take a shower; Guido
told his boy to hide
- the scene of Guido's shocking death after he was caught
by a soldier during an escape attempt; he winked at his hidden son
(concealed in a sweatbox and watching through the door slit) - playfully
wanting him to know that things were still okay; he deliberately
and clownishly marched to his execution by machine-gun fire (offscreen)
- there was just a small report of machine-gun fire when he was sacrificially
killed
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Guido's Clowning For His Young Son in Concentration
Camp
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- the concluding segment, when the young boy thought
he had won the "game" as the camp was liberated by the
Americans riding in tanks (the boy cried out joyfully: "It's
true!"), and he was soon happily reunited with his freed mother
Dora
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The Boy's Sight of Liberating US Tank
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Reunited with Freed Mother Dora
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- the older Giosue recalled in voice-over: ("This
is my story. This is the sacrifice my father made. This was his
gift to me"); the boy was happy about winning: ("We won!...A
thousand points to laugh like crazy about! We came in first! We're
taking the tank home! We won!")
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Guido Volunteering to Translate - And Creating a Game
Out of the Experience
Dora Learning About the Gas Chamber for Old People and
Children
Giosue Refusing to Take a Shower
Guido's Death
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