Life is Beautiful
Life is Beautiful follows a Jewish Italian book shop owner, who must use a perfect mixture of will, humor and imagination to shield his son from the horrors of internment in a Nazi concentration camp.
12 August 1940, Bari, Puglia, Italy
19 April 1960, Cesena, Emilia-Romagna, Italy
3 August 1935, Basiliano, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Italy
30 November 1951, Modica, Ragusa, Italy
3 April 1946, Madrid, Madrid, Spain
8 May 1955, Pistoia, Tuscany, Italy
15 June 1955, Florence, Tuscany, Italy
4 December 1933, Berlin, Germany
26 July 1944, Cesena, Emilia-Romagna, Italy
1973
August 20, 2009
The film's title, which very well could have been a straightforward declaration prior to the war, becomes a source of twisted irony once we witness Guido pull down the grate outside his humble bookshop and the words JEWISH STORE are seen sprayed across th
February 14, 2001
Its sentiment is inescapable, but genuine poignancy and pathos are also present, and an overarching sincerity is visible too.
January 01, 2000
You'll laugh! You'll cry! You'll smile through the evils of genocide!
March 11, 2008
With Life Is Beautiful, the final frontier of schmaltz has been reached.
March 08, 2013
Roberto Benigni's finest hour arrived in 1997 when the triple-threat writer/director/actor delved deep into Charlie Chaplin territory - see "The Great Dictator" (1940).
April 12, 2002
Yes, there are heaps of charm and poignancy in this trifle, but it's a trifle nonetheless -- light-and-bright, for sure, but also slight-and-trite.
January 01, 2000
In the real death camps there would be no role for Guido. But Life Is Beautiful is not about Nazis and Fascists, but about the human spirit.
December 25, 2010
Wrenching Holocaust fable with bittersweet humor.
March 22, 2006
Benigni does with the Nazi setting what Chaplin didn't dare in The Great Dictator--he lets the liberating nonsense triumph.
January 01, 2000
dares to laugh in the face of the unthinkable. And because Benigni can be heart-rending without a trace of the maudlin, it works.
January 26, 2007
Sentimental and contrived, Benigni's well-intentioned Holocaust dramedy may only work as a children's fable. Inexplicably, it won a prize at the 1998 Cannes Festival.
January 01, 2000
Art-house sentimentalists will likely go for Beautiful in a big way, but even those who aggressively resist manipulation can find a lot to admire.
