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| La Vita è Bella / Life is Beautiful |
Today, The Grandma wants to talk about Mauthausen, one of the first massive concentration camp complexes in Nazi Germany, and the last to be liberated by a squad of US Army Soldiers of the 41st Reconnaissance Squadron of the US 11th Armoured Division, 3rd US Army on a day like today in 1945.
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was a genocide during World War II in which Nazi Germany, aided by local collaborators, systematically murdered some six million European Jews, around two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe, between 1941 and 1945.
Jews were targeted for extermination as part of a larger event during the Holocaust era, in which Germany and its collaborators persecuted and murdered other groups, including Slavs (chiefly ethnic Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, and Soviet citizens), the Roma, the incurably sick, political and religious dissenters such as communists and Jehovah's Witnesses, and gay men.
Taking into account all the victims of Nazi persecution, the death toll rises to 17 million.
More information: BBC
Nowadays, we can see astonished how the right-wing is rising unstoppably in Europe and economic, social and moral crisis seem to help in this increasing. We must learn from our recent past to not do the same mistakes.
The Grandma and her friends are in Tuscany and they want to talk, in a special day like today, about Roberto Benigni, the great Tuscan artist well-known by his role in the film La vita è bella, a film that talks about fascism and WWII in Italy.
Roberto Remigio Benigni, born 27 October 1952, is a Tuscan actor, comedian, screenwriter and director. He co-wrote, directed and acted in the 1997 film Life is Beautiful, which won him the Academy Award for Best Actor at the 71st Oscars Ceremony.
He also portrayed Inspector Clouseau's son in Son of the Pink Panther (1993) and has collaborated with filmmaker Jim Jarmusch in three of his films: Down by Law (1986), Night on Earth (1991) and Coffee and Cigarettes (2003).
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| Guido Orefice (Roberto Benigni) in La Vita è Bella |
Benigni was born in Manciano La Misericordia, Castiglion Fiorentino, a small, walled city in eastern Tuscany, in the province of Arezzo, between the cities of Arezzo and Cortona. The son of Isolina Papini, a fabric maker, and Luigi Benigni, a bricklayer, carpenter, and farmer.
His first experiences as a theatre actor took place in 1971, in Prato. During that autumn he moved to Rome where he took part in some experimental theatre shows, some of which he also directed. In 1975, Benigni had his first theatrical success with Cioni Mario di Gaspare fu Giulia, written by Giuseppe Bertolucci.
Benigni became famous in Italy in the 1970s for a television series called Onda Libera, on RAI2, produced by Renzo Arbore, in which he interpreted the satirical piece The L'inno del corpo sciolto, a scatological song about the joys of defecation. A great scandal for the time, the series was suspended due to censorship. His first film was 1977's Berlinguer, Ti voglio bene, also by Bertolucci.
More information: Life is Beautiful
His popularity increased with L'altra domenica (1976-1979), another TV show of Arbore's in which Benigni portrayed a lazy film critic who never watches the films he's asked to review.
In 1980 he met Cesenate actress Nicoletta Braschi, who was to become his wife and who has starred in most of the films he has directed.
In June 1983 he appeared during a public political demonstration by the Italian Communist Party, with which he was a sympathiser, and on this occasion he lifted and cradled the party's national leader Enrico Berlinguer. It was an unprecedented act, given that until that moment Italian politicians were proverbially serious and formal.
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| Guido Orefice (Roberto Benigni) in La Vita è Bella |
Benigni's first film as director was Tu mi turbi in 1983.
In 1984, he played in Non ci resta che piangere with comic actor Massimo Troisi. Beginning in 1986, Benigni starred in three films by American director Jim Jarmusch.
In 1993, he starred in Son of the Pink Panther, directed by veteran Blake Edwards. Benigni played Peter Sellers' Inspector Clouseau's illegitimate son who is assigned to save the Princess of Lugash.
Benigni is perhaps best known outside Italy for his 1997 tragicomedy La vita è bella, filmed in Arezzo, also written by Cerami. The film is about an Italian Jewish man who tries to protect his son's innocence during his internment at a Nazi concentration camp, by telling him that the Holocaust is an elaborate game and he must adhere very carefully to the rules to win.
More information: The Guardian
Benigni's father had spent three years in a concentration camp in Bergen-Belsen, and La vita è bella is based in part on his father's experiences. Benigni was also inspired by the story of Holocaust survivor Rubino Romeo Salmonì.
More favourable critics praised Benigni's artistic daring and skill to create a sensitive comedy involving the tragedy, a challenge that Charlie Chaplin confessed he would not have done with The Great Dictator had he been aware of the horrors of the Holocaust.
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| 'Forbidden access to Jews and dogs' |
In 1998, the film was nominated for seven Academy Awards.
At the 1999 ceremony, the film was awarded the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, which Benigni accepted as the film's director, Best Original Dramatic Score, and Benigni received the award for Best Actor, the first for a male performer in a non-English-speaking role, and only the third overall acting Oscar for non-English-speaking roles.
Famously, giddy with delight after Life Is Beautiful was announced as the Best Foreign Language Film, Benigni climbed over and then stood on the backs of the seats in front of him and applauded the audience before proceeding to the stage.
After winning his Best Actor Oscar later in the evening, he said in his acceptance speech, This is a terrible mistake because I used up all my English! To close his speech, Benigni quoted the closing lines of Dante's Divine Comedy, referencing the love that moves the sun and all the stars.
More information: Oscars
Benigni is an improvisatory poet. Poesia estemporanea is a form of art popularly followed and practiced in Tuscany, appreciated for his explanation and recitations of Dante's Divina Commedia from memory.
During 2006 and 2007, Benigni had a lot of success touring Italy with his 90-minute one man show TuttoDante. Combining current events and memories of his past narrated with an ironic tone, Benigni then begins a journey of poetry and passion through the world of the Divina Commedia.
Roberto Benigni is also a singer-songwriter. Among his recorded performances are versions of Paolo Conte's songs.
More information: The New York Times
In Italy, the country where fascism was born,
we have a particular relation with the Holocaust,
but as a turning point in history it belongs to everybody in the world.
It is a part of humanity.
Roberto Benigni
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