Life Is Beautiful [VHS]

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Product details

Actor: Claudio Alfonsi, Gil Baroni, Lidia Alfonsi, Massimo Bianchi, Sergio Bini Bustric
Primary Contributor: Nicoletta Braschi
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Original Language); German (Original Language); Italian (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC, Subtitled
Running Time: 116 minutes
Release Date: 2000-05-02
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Publisher: Miramax
Studio: Miramax

VHS Movie Reviews of Life Is Beautiful [VHS]

Movie Review: Best Movie Ever.
Summary: 5 Stars

Life Is Beautiful, La vita ? bella (1997), Directed by Roberto Benigni. Starring Roberto Benigni, Nicoletta Braschi, and Giorgio Cantarini.

This is the best movie ever made. It pulls on your heart more than any other movie because the characters and situations will make you smile and laugh from romance and comedy, frown in anger from fear, and then cry from a pride which will leave the viewer in a greater appreciation for life, and love, with special attention to the relationship between a loving father and his son and wife.

Movie Review: Masterpiece
Summary: 5 Stars

Everyone should see this film. The main characters are charming and the love between this family is epic. How can one make a funny, charming film about being in a Nazi concentration camp, impossible but true. I see it at least once a year.

Movie Review: Good quality DVD
Summary: 5 Stars

I absolutely love this movie, heartbreaking though it is...the quality was good, clear and came in a good condition with its case and all..happy with the purchase..valued addition to my vintage collection.

Movie Review: not for me
Summary: 3 Stars

I really found the over the top humor a little bizzare and somewhat inappropriate - but it's obviously a powerful moving story. It lost me as things started unravelling and it was like this man was still somewhat clueless. And the fact that he seemed clueless - made the humor to me seem bizzare. It would have been more believable had he really been 100% aware of what he was doing. But there were times in the movie that he wasn't really aware of what he was doing ...

Movie Review: Protection of Innocence Amid the Horror
Summary: 5 Stars

Life Is Beautiful is an extraordinarily significant work of art. Screenwriter/Director/Actor Roberto Benigni takes Tragicomedy to new heights, even as he pays tribute to the finest work of Charles Chaplin. Benigni plays Guido, an Italian Jew whose ethnicity is suddenly and shockingly targeted by the Nazis at a time when he is growing a young family- after having, literally, fallen upon the "Princesa," the woman of his dreams- as well as a fine bookstore.

A genuinely happy, warm and charming person, Guido, along with millions of other Jewish people, is now beset by woes of almost horrificaly unimaginable proportions as he and his little boy are taken away by the Nazis to a concentration camp. His intent, no matter what may follow and above all else except keeping his child physically alive in Auschwitz, a place and time where Jewish children were systematically gassed and killed, is to protect the innocence of his young son by pretending the whole horror is a game, the end of which, if he plays right, is to win a tank.

Guido's wife, who is not Jewish and not sent on the train, insists on accompanying the rest of her family, husband and son, to Auschwitz, much to the surprise of the Nazi soldier at the train station; her life is her loved ones, something he does not understand.

The strikingly beautiful cinematography- including exceptionally rich use of color, choice of camera shots and movement, set- and costume design-, editing, stirring musical score and fine surrealistic touch reminiscent of Fellini, make this film enjoyable and poetic in a visual sense, because there is rhyme and reason to each decision made by Benigni as screenwriter and director, as they blend with the dialogue, acting, story and theme to create a finely crafted, richly inspired, tragicomic masterpiece that brings forth tears of abject sadness amid the light of Guido's sense of play and fatherly protection- "You always did want to go on a trip," he softly tells his little boy as they are carted off in the death train amid the foreboding musical passage that accompanies this shot.

This seems bizarre but it is only the beginning of this man's overwhelming desire to shield his beloved child from the pain of the reality that confonts their family. In fact this preparation was actually, in a sense, begun before that, when Josue playfully hid from his mother in a little cabinet to avoid taking his bath, with his father in collusion with the game, something that winds up saving him from the fake "bath" at the camp.

The use of extreme close-ups is reserved by director-screenwriter Benigni for the most poignant point in the film, where a final wink from Guido to little Josue hiding in the cabinet places the seal on the reality of their game of survival and preservation of the child's innocence.

Survival in the physical sense and also in the emotional or psychological sense is Guido's role as father/protector of his child. Other high cinematic/editing feats include those such as the skillful, unobstrusive change of time from the courting of his wife stage to the realization of their family they created, five years later,in one single shot. This makes clear the family/child they created is a direct result of the love they have for each other. Cinematic poetry is unfortunately a rare phenomenon on the big screen, so this one is a true gem. It should be watched in the original Italian, because the true voices of the characters that people this film belong to them and should be heard by all.

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Summary of Life Is Beautiful [VHS]

An inspired motion picture masterpiece, LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL was nominated for 7 Academy Awards(R) -- winning 3 Oscars, including one for Best Actor Robert Benigni. In this extraordinary tale, Guido (Benigni) -- a charming but bumbling waiter who's gifted with a colorful imagination and an irresistible sense of humor -- has won the heart of the woman he loves and created a beautiful life for his young family. But then, that life is threatened by World War II ... and Guido must rely on those very same strengths to save his beloved wife and son from an unthinkable fate! Honored with an overwhelming level of critical acclaim, this truly exceptional, utterly unique achievement will lift your spirits and capture your heart!

Italy's rubber-faced funnyman Roberto Benigni accomplishes the impossible in his World War?II comedy Life Is Beautiful: he shapes a simultaneously hilarious and haunting comedy out of the tragedy of the Holocaust. An international sensation and the most successful foreign language film in U.S. history, the picture also earned director-cowriter-star Benigni Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Actor. He plays the Jewish country boy Guido, a madcap romantic in Mussolini's Italy who wins the heart of his sweetheart (Benigni's real-life sweetie, Nicoletta Braschi) and raises a darling son (the adorable Giorgio Cantarini) in the shadow of fascism. When the Nazis ship the men off to a concentration camp in the waning days of the war, Guido is determined to shelter his son from the evils around them and convinces him they're in an elaborate contest to win (of all things) a tank. Guido tirelessly maintains the ruse with comic ingenuity, even as the horrors escalate and the camp's population continues to dwindle--all the more impetus to keep his son safe, secure, and, most of all, hidden. Benigni walks a fine line mining comedy from tragedy and his efforts are pure fantasy--he accomplishes feats no man could realistically pull off--both of which have drawn fire from a few critics. Yet for all its wacky humor and inventive gags, Life Is Beautiful is a moving and poignant tale of one father's sacrifice to save not just his young son's life but his innocence in the face of one of the most evil acts ever perpetrated by the human race. --Sean Axmaker

Jewish Heritage Video

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