italy

1. Ms. Jordan Parkhurst
Girton College
March 14th
New Commitments: Literature, Cinema & Culture in Italy 1960 – present
MPhil in Film and Screen Studies
Dr. Robert Gordon
Humanisation: Exposition as an Instrument of Respect in Benigni’s Life Is
Beautiful
Chicago Style
4453 words

2. 1
On the surface, it seems that Roberto Benigni’s 1997 film, Life Is Beautiful (Italian:
La vita è bella) is, and was upon its release, a well-liked film. Having done tremendously
well commercially, grossing a global $229,163,264, the film also picked up festival awards,
including the Grand Prix at Cannes, and three Academy Awards, including Best Foreign
Language Film and Best Actor for Roberto Benigni. However, reading further into the film’s
reception reveals this apparent unanimity conveyed through the film’s well-known accolades
to be misleading. Rather, the film is often considered by critics—particularly academic
ones—to be enormously disrespectful to victims and survivors of the Holocaust and is, by its
most feverish detractors, considered to be a form of Holocaust denial because of its relatively
mild representation of a concentration camp and its unconventional tone.1 Because of
Benigni’s bold, comedic approach in the film, the questions that dominate discussion
surrounding Life Is Beautiful are, “Can we make comedies about the Holocaust?” and “Is it
acceptable to stray from history?” Typically, in the views of those inclined to ask, the answer
to both questions is an ultimately immovable “no.”
Of the film’s two sections—the first telling a love story largely divorced from the
events of the Holocaust, though not the Fascist anti-Semitism the pre-empted it—these
negative critiques and analyses tend to focus on the events of the latter, which takes place in a
concentration camp where the protagonist, Roberto Benigni’s character, Guido, and his
family are sent. Writers are quick to condemn the lack of realism in this second act, which
they believe to be a significant moral failing on the part of Benigni and grounds for
condemnation of the film as a whole. Writes critic David Denby in his scathing second
review for The New Yorker, “Benigni wants the authority of the Holocaust without the
1 Hilene Flanzbaum, ““But Wasn’t it Terrific?”: A Defense of Liking Life is Beautiful.” The
Yale Journal of Criticism 14, no. 1 (2001), 273–86.

3. 2
actuality.”2 Despite varying opinions on the usefulness of cinematic historical accuracy from
Holocaust survivors themselves, such criticism of Benigni’s film is abundant and the primary
means by which Life Is Beautiful is denounced.
Indeed, whether the film accurately represents the events of the Holocaust is, after
years of venomous critical derision and subsequent academic restating, not truly a question
that needs further discussion. It can be argued that these kinds of questions are mistaken in
their assumptions about the film’s purpose and, in terms of deciding the artistic or moral
value of this film, useless; simply put, the Holocaust “cannot be represented in its horror and
all its essence for this essence precisely consists in making testimony impossible.”3 As
Sonderkommando member Zelman Lewental wrote in his long-hidden testimony, “Just as the
events that took place there cannot be imagined by any human being, so is it unimaginable
that anyone could exactly recount how our experiences took place…. the complete truth is far
more tragic…”4 In the case of this film, Benigni does not attempt to capture the Holocaust’s
“complete truth” and does not try make a historical document or an educational tool; he opts
instead for a representation of a subjective experience that lends itself more easily to
comprehension and identification than do the films that terrorise their audiences into having
appropriate respect.
Through Life is Beautiful’s unusual narrative structure and its emphasis on the
protagonists’ lives prior to their deportation, this film eliminates the othering that takes place
in most Holocaust-based films by establishing the characters’ identities and allowing
audience identification to take place before the characters become subjects of the Holocaust.
2 David Denby, “In the Eye of the Beholder: Another look at Roberto Benigni’s Holocaust
fantasy,” The New Yorker 75, no. 3 (March 15, 1999), 99.
3 Bülent Diken and Carsten Bagge Laustsen, “Life is Beautiful: the Ghost of Auschwitz,”
abstract in Sociology through the Projector (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), 124.
4 Quoted in Giorgio Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive,
translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen (New York: Zone Books, 1999), 12.

4. 3
In this way, Benigni honours the memories and legacies of those who were robbed of their
ordinary lives and dehumanised by the Holocaust, rather than merely using characters as a
means to demonstrate the horrors of the events, an objective made always impossible by the
Holocaust’s ultimate unrepresentability. In this essay, I will reference works by Theodor
Adorno, Giorgio Agamben, Hannah Arendt, and Holocaust survivor Imre Kertesz to first
discuss the critical wariness surrounding the film and then the ways in which the work’s first
half provides an unusual and powerful means for honouring those who were reduced to their
statuses as victims of the Holocaust.
Though Adorno’s (in)famous quote about poetry after Auschwitz hardly needs
restating, its presence is necessary in the discussion of this film’s reception, as Adorno’s
influential line of thinking and this instance of its manifestation is largely responsible for the
cloud of circumspection surrounding Benigni’s film. Further to his oft-repeated assertion,
Adorno writes in his essay, “Commitment,” “The aesthetic principle of stylization, and even
the solemn prayer of the chorus, make an unthinkable fate appear to have had some meaning;
it is transfigured, something of its horror is removed. This alone does an injustice to the
victims...”5 This stance, as we will see, is deeply embedded in the modern reception and
production of Holocaust-based art and privileges absolute realism in the representation of its
tragedies. However, this preference is based entirely upon what Adorno sees as the
trivialisation of the original events and the ultimate opportunity for denial by viewers—a
perspective which ignores the indemonstrable nature of Holocaust’s “complete truth” and
discredits entirely any aesthetic or narrative achievements by artistic works that may in fact
convey something about the nature of the Holocaust that facts cannot.
In her essay, “‘But Wasn’t it Terrific?’: A Defense of Liking Life is Beautiful,” Hilene
Flanzbaum writes of this dichotomous nature of Holocaust art criticism, emphasising the
5 Theodor Adorno, “Commitment,” New Left Review I, no. 87/88 (Fall 1974), 85.

5. 4
inflexible accurate/good, inaccurate/bad formula still at play in a woefully large amount of
criticism. She calls attention to the largely—and “hopelessly,” in her words—intellectualised
nature of this reductive tendency by discussing Holocaust survivors who, in opposition to
critical responses, express a general embrace of fictionalised accounts of the Holocaust,
rejecting the Adornian claims of trivialisation with powerful authority.6 Among those
survivor responses, she cites former president of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham
Foxman, who, having heard of Life Is Beautiful, reportedly said such a film “cannot be done,”
and, in fact, “is trivializing.”7 After seeing the film, however, Foxman called the work “so
poignant,” “so sensitive,” “so informed by creative genius,” and “an important contribution to
our understanding of the lessons of the Holocaust,” recognising the film’s valuable attributes
ignored by realism-based criticism.8, 9 In sharp contrast, the abovementioned New Yorker
critic, David Denby, complains, “Surely Benigni knows that any child entering Auschwitz
would be immediately put to death, and that at every camp people were beaten and
humiliated at random. He shows us nothing like that.”10 In this critique, Denby, in line with
Adorno’s thinking, denounces the elimination of some of the Holocaust’s real “horror” and
the resulting inauthenticity as an essential failing by Benigni. By expressing this
disappointment, Denby positions himself as the morally superior party as he complains that
more children should have died in the film’s concentration camp—which is often and
erroneously assumed to be Auschwitz—and more beatings taken place.
In a similar but less coarse review, prolific arts critic Terry Teachout writes, “It is no
exaggeration to say that nothing that happens in Life is Beautiful could possibly have
6 Flanzbaum, ““But Wasn’t it Terrific?”,” 273-275.
7 D. Kotzen, “A Clown in the Camps,” Jerusalem Report (October 26, 1998), 44.
8 Ibid., 44-45.
9 Flanzbaum, ““But Wasn’t it Terrific?”,” 273.
10 Denby, “In the Eye of the Beholder,” 99.

6. 5
occurred in real life, and that the film consists of one historical distortion after another.”11
This kind of morose criticism by these writers indicates not only a desire for more realism
but, simply put, more tragedy, rendering plainly visible the shadows of Adorno’s anxieties
about the dilution of the Holocaust’s “horror.” Their rejection of this film, as with rejection of
all Holocaust art that isn’t “authentic” enough, is “an intellectually hollow position, a tired
refrain that both obscures more specific and noteworthy details of a particular piece, and
places the critic in a straitjacket of good intentions.”12 By condemning any representation of
the Holocaust that “transfigures” the exact events, Adorno and those influenced by his
thinking effectually discount any nonfactual expression of grief or honour that may have the
potential for growth and understanding, including Life Is Beautiful.
Adorno additionally aids in the understanding of the film’s harsh reception through
his thoughts on the cinematic medium, specifically, as its indexical nature is so closely
related to the “real.” As summarised by film historian and theorist Miriam Hansen, Adorno
believes, “(film’s) iconicity is…a major source of the cinema’s ideological complicity,
because it allows the filmic image to function as an advertisement for the world ‘as is.’”13 As
such, Adorno believes heavily in its ability to “antagonistically” alter the behaviour and
beliefs of viewers because of its apparent realness—directly influencing and helping to
explain the modern idea that fictionalised Holocaust art is a likely pathway to denial. In his
1966 essay, “Transparencies on Film,” Adorno discusses the mimetic tendencies he believes
to be implicit in the relationship between mass media and society by noting with disdain
observable changes he attributes to cinema’s influences, including public displays of
affection by young couples, which he blames on “the films which peddle Parisian libertinage
11 Terry Teachout, Review of Life is Beautiful, Crisis 17, no. 1 (January 1999), 52.
12 Flanzbaum, ““But Wasn’t it Terrific?”,” 274.
13 Miriam Hansen, "Mass Culture as Hieroglyphic Writing: Adorno, Derrida, Kracauer," New
German Critique 56 (1992), 45.

7. 6
as folklore.”14 By this logic, beliefs and both inter- and intrapersonal behaviours are easily
influenced by filmic representation, implying that the stakes for more serious topics and their
public perceptions are far higher. Clearly, one of these precarious topics that Adorno has in
mind, based on his famed quote, is the Holocaust.
In the case of Life Is Beautiful, this fear of the reimagining of history is embraced by
critics and academics; writes scholar Grace Russo Bullaro in her essay, “Life is Beautiful and
the protection of innocence: Fable, fairy tale or just excuses,” “By essentially vitiating the
camp and its meaning, (Benigni) deceives the viewer as he has deceived the boy. As he
minimizes the horror for the boy, he minimizes it for us.”15 But these recurring kinds of
grievances beg the question: are there viewers whose historical perceptions might change as
a result of this film? To highlight the absurdity of this claim, Flanzbaum walks readers
through this precise situation:
A viewer sees Life is Beautiful, and remains unmoved by any of the psychological
pain he witnesses. Instead he focuses on some less-than-horrible moment, perhaps the
roundly decried depiction of the concentration camp. The viewer then thinks, ‘you
see, those concentration camps don’t look so bad. . . I thought that…conditions were
really horrible but I can see by this movie that I was wrong…. I guess they were just
making all that stuff up…’16
In short, at least partially because of Adorno’s cultural and academic influence and his
intersecting ideas regarding mass media and the Holocaust, there is today both an
overestimation of an individual film’s ability to influence historical knowledge and a morbid
14 Theodor Adorno, “Transparencies on Film,” New German Critique 24/25 (Autumn
1981/Winter 1982), 202.
15 Grace Russo Bullaro, “Life is Beautiful and the protection of innocence: Fable, fairy tale or
just excuses,” in Beyond Life is Beautiful: Comedy and Tragedy in the Cinema of Roberto
Benigni. (Leicester: Troubador Publishing, 2005), 244.
16 Flanzbaum, ““But Wasn’t it Terrific?”,” 282-283.

8. 7
consensus that the only valid Holocaust representation is that which thoroughly attempts to
demonstrate its indemonstrable atrocities. For these reasons, there was and still remains a
wariness surrounding Life Is Beautiful, as it simply does not adhere to the etiquette of
Holocaust art and is therefore, ironically because of its lack of overt violence, “barbaric.”
In an essay written by Enzo Traverso, an esteemed Italian historian, Traverso
criticises Benigni’s “displacement of the actual event in favour of a sanitised ‘Holocaust’ that
privilege(s) emotional stimulation over critical understanding.”17 And while Traverso clearly
views this artistic choice as an irresponsible one and intends for this assertion to be a
condemnation, I wish to argue that this unexpected focus on “emotional stimulation” is Life
Is Beautiful’s most noteworthy and respectful attribute—the creative decision that sets this
work apart. Literary theorist Geoffrey H. Hartman once wrote, “We have enough testimonies
and ‘relics’” of the Holocaust, declaring that more art needs to work as “active
remembrance,” which is precisely the function of Life Is Beautiful.18 By engaging with the
characters and their situations, audiences are more actively involved in remembering the
historical events and those who suffered because of them. This film achieves this through the
exposition of its characters as they live their normal lives—romancing, working, raising a
child—allowing for audience identification and emotional attachment that enables a deeper
investment after their deportation and, by extension, connects viewers to the actual victims of
the Holocaust and their experiences.
In most mainstream films about the Holocaust, including films like Schindler’s List
(S. Spielberg, 1993), Sophie’s Choice (A. Pakula, 1982), and The Pianist (R. Polanski, 2002)
to name a few, characters that are victims of the Holocaust are often relegated to be foils for
17 Enzo Traverso, “La vita è bella? Roberto Benigni e Auschwitz,” Passato e presente, XVII,
no. 48 (1999), 15.
18 Geoffrey H. Hartman, The Longest Shadow: In the Aftermath of the Holocaust
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 152.

9. 8
the protagonists or used as largely faceless objects of sympathy—sometimes coming to life
“only to embody anti-Semitic stereotypes (money-grubbing Jews, Jew-as-eternal-victim, the
association of Jewish women with dangerous sexuality…)”19 In the films in which these
characters are more substantial, they are often still diminished in their realness because of
their introduction and treatment as victims of the Holocaust, rather than as roundly developed
individuals. Perhaps one exception among the films I’ve listed is the acclaimed Polanski film,
The Pianist, based on the memoir by Polish composer, Władysław Szpilman.20 An intimate
portrait of Szpilman, as portrayed by Adrian Brody, the film gives viewers insight into the
emotional inner-workings of the protagonist as he survives in the Warsaw ruins. But we as
viewers still have no real grasp of who he is prior to his exile; aside from a few brief scenes
that introduce his musical ability and his family, there is no exposition or opportunity to
identify with the character before he is effectively removed from society and little possibility
of true identification as he struggles for survival. Another, more complex example of this
lack of opportunity for identification comes in the popular film, Sophie’s Choice, which takes
place after the events of the Holocaust. The titular character, as portrayed by Meryl Streep, is
the protagonist’s—“Stingo’s”—object of desire; Sophie and her story are filtered through the
lustful gaze of the protagonist, and, despite the complexities of her experiences—not being
Jewish herself, etc.—she is largely reduced to her tragic experiences. She is inseparable from
her time at Auschwitz, and because her exposition takes place post-Auschwitz—albeit
through mediated flashbacks—there is again no opportunity for a clear understanding of who
she was prior to her deportation and, therefore, little likelihood of identification.
19 Miriam Hansen, “Schindler’s List Is Not Shoah: The Second Commandment, Popular
Modernism, and Public Memory,” Critical Inquiry 22, no. 2 (Winter 1996), 300.
20 Władysław Szpilman, Śmierć Miasta: Pamiętniki Władysława Szpilmana 1939–1945,
edited by Jerzy Waldorff (Warsaw: Wiedza, 1946).

10. 9
Contrastingly, Benigni’s Life Is Beautiful builds its narrative around exposition,
indeed forgoing historical understanding to some extent in exchange for both the ability to
identify with the story’s characters and, by extension, for a more human story about the
Holocaust. With the entire first half of the film, Benigni develops the characters as
recognisable, universal, and lovable figures over a period of several years as they live and
work in a small town in Tuscany, providing a strong foundation for emotional investment and
nearly inevitable identification by viewers prior to the characters’ entrance to the
concentration camp. We are taken along as Benigni’s character, Guido, persistently but
charmingly tries to win over his future wife, Dora, played by Benigni’s wife, Nicoletta
Braschi, and we see their lives develop together as they run away together, get married, and
have a child, Giosuè. Suddenly, they are deported, and we as viewers are taken with them,
aligned with their journey.
In his essay, "Who Owns Auschwitz?” survivor and Nobel Prize-winning author Imre
Kertesz writes, “During the first 20 or 30 minutes, we feel as though we’ve been transferred
onto the set of some old-fashioned burlesque. Only later do we understand how organically
this apparently impossible introduction fits into the dramatic structure not only of the film,
but of life itself.”21 Indeed, this introduction does fit into life itself. Films about the Holocaust
typically do not introduce their characters as ordinary people, despite the obvious fact that
they did exist before the Holocaust began. Contrastingly, this film’s transition from blissful
but recognisable life to a concentration camp, though jarring, is truly “organic,” in the sense
that it did truly happen to millions of people. Writes Maurizio Viano is his essay, “Life is
Beautiful: Reception, Allegory, and Holocaust Laughter,” “In a sense, Life is Beautiful
successfully helps its viewers to imagine what many Italian Jews must have felt, the eruption
21 Imre Kertesz, “Who Owns Auschwitz?” translated by John Mackay, The Yale Journal of
Criticism 14, no. 1 (Spring 2001), 271.

11. 10
of absurdity and the transformation of one reality into its opposite. This is how Life is
Beautiful is faithful to reality—it dramatizes its deepest implications. It is faithful to reality in
spirit and not in letter.”22
Because of this unique format, there is little time or need for a demonstration of a
broad historical background, aside from the ominous and ever-increasing sense of anti-
Semitism. The film incorporates this growing tension quite smoothly through both dramatic
and comedic sequences, including a scene in which Guido nonsensically teaches children
about racial superiority and one where Giosuè asks about a store than has banned “Jews and
dogs” from entering. Although it is not the primary arc of this first act, there is a definite
sense of racial unease as the characters navigate what should be normal life. In terms of
subjective experience, this level of historical context is quite appropriate, as individuals
seldom know the scope of the events happening around them, and it would be a detriment to
the film’s intention to transform these individuals into “vehicles of history.”23
Indeed, Israeli writer Abraham B. Yehoshua believes the problem of identification is
the first obstacle of Holocaust art because of the “singular, horrifying characteristics of the
Holocaust” that make identification improbable.24 These “characteristics” problematize the
explicit realism craved by academic critics and demanded by the de facto etiquette in place
for these films, instead implying that, as Benigni does in this film, the preferential treatment
of individuals over explicit history is the primary means by which to make “good” Holocaust
art. By avoiding an overly didactic, educational, and even serious tone with the film, Benigni
does not distance the audience from the film’s events, as he easily could. Though, on the
22 Maurizio Viano, “Life is Beautiful: Reception, Allegory, and Holocaust Laughter,” Film
Quarterly 53, no.1 (Fall 1999), 31.
23 Gefen Bar-on, “Benigni’s Life-Affirming Lie: Life is Beautiful as an Aesthetic and Moral
Response to the Holocaust” in Beyond Life is Beautiful: Comedy and Tragedy in the Cinema
of Roberto Benigni, edited by Grace Russo Bullaro (Leicester: Troubador Publishing, 2005),
188.
24 Ibid., 182.

12. 11
surface, it would seem that a somewhat de-historicised telling of such a story would be less
effective in honouring the victims of the Holocaust, the elimination of this barrier in fact
allows for a deeper appreciation and understanding of the individual experiences than would
a factual film that distances its figures. In his seminal work, Remnants of Auschwitz: The
Witness and the Archive, Giorgio Agamben supports this concept, writing, “Future studies
may shed new light on particular aspects of the events that took place in the concentration
camps, but a general framework has already been established. The same cannot be said for
the ethical and political significance of the extermination, or even for a human understanding
of what happened there…”25 Benigni’s work, though not a study or even based in explicit
fact, works towards this goal of “a human understanding,” a surprisingly rare objective in
Holocaust art.
In addition to working against these artistic barriers of the potential generalisation of
characters or the employment of individuals to demonstrate history, Benigni also works
against historical precedents, as well, rejecting in his film the very real dehumanisation that
the Holocaust forced upon its victims. Hannah Arendt, one of history’s most influential
thinkers about the Holocaust, writes about the causes and methods of the Holocaust, most
famously while discussing the trial of Nazi officer Adolph Eichmann in her seminal novel,
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963). As an extension of this
idea, the “banality of evil,” she also speaks of the sheer senselessness and detachment
involved in the Holocaust, something that is too often reflected—albeit unintentionally—in
Holocaust art. In the interview, “‘What Remains? The Language Remains’: A Conversation
with Günter Gaus,” Arendt refers to these concepts and the resulting dehumanisation of the
victims of the Holocaust, saying, “This ought not to have happened. And I don't mean just the
25 Giorgio Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive, translated by
Daniel Heller-Roazen (New York: Zone Books, 1999), 11.

13. 12
number of victims. I mean the method, the fabrication of corpses and so on—I don't need to
go into that. This should not have happened.”26
This phrase, “the fabrication of corpses,”—one that Giorgio Agamben also uses—is
so deeply representative of the Holocaust’s dehumanising nature and works as a key point in
the discussion of modern Holocaust representation. This phrase implies that people did not
die but rather that corpses were produced, that death was “debased into a matter of serial
production.”27, 28 The abovementioned films largely fail to deviate from this tradition of
anonymity, giving each victim, to borrow language from Laura Mulvey, a sense of
“flatness… the quality of a cut-out or icon rather than verisimilitude to the screen,” adhering
this tradition of “fabrication,” rather than full-fledged death and loss.29 Life Is Beautiful does
the opposite, working to ensure the humanity and emotional accessibility of the characters
through the film’s extensive exposition and, partially through the abstention of showing overt
violence, to reject their potential anonymity.
Inspired by the story of Italian survivor Rubino Romeo Salmonì, who wrote the
memoir, In the End, I Beat Hitler, Benigni tries to capture the spirit of and honour the man
who writes, “At Auschwitz I was no longer Ruby Romeo Salmonì but ... the Jew A15810 to
be eliminated...” but later champions his victory over Hitler in the form of his happiness,
writing, “I’m still here, hale and hearty. I came out of Auschwitz alive, I have a wonderful
family, I celebrated my golden wedding anniversary, I have 12 splendid grandchildren – I
26 Hannah Arendt, ““What Remains? The Language Remains”: A Conversation with Günter
Gaus,” in Essays in Understanding: 1930-1954: Formation, Exile, and Totalitarianism,
edited by Jerome Kohn, (New York City: Schocken Books, 1994), 14.
27 Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive, 71-72.
28 Diken and Laustsen, “Life is Beautiful: the ghost of Auschwitz,” 120.
29 Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” in Film Theory and Criticism:
Introductory Readings, edited by Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (New York: Oxford
University Publishing, 1999), 838.

14. 13
think I can say I ruined Hitler’s plan for me.”30,31 Though Benigni’s Guido does not survive
as Salmonì did, his tenacity and deep desire to bring joy to his family in this same way, helps
him retain his individuality and thereby defeat Hitler, as well. Guido’s death is not a mere
fabrication of a corpse, but a painful and poignant loss to both his family in the film and to
the audience.
In a press kit for the film, Roberto Benigni explains, “according to what I read, saw
and felt in the victims’ accounts, I realized that nothing in a film could even come close to the
reality of what happened. You can’t show unimaginable horror—you can only ever show less
than what it was. So I did not want audiences to look for realism in my movie.”32
Nonetheless, this is exactly what happened. At one point in David Denby’s review, he asks,
“What good did love do anyone at Auschwitz?” demonstrating fully his depth of
misunderstanding.33 To this review, a woman named Kristine Keese replied, “I find Denby’s
second review of the movie…inappropriate, because of its insistence that there is one correct
view of those past events…. It is not one single historical event but millions of personal
events…. The Holocaust happened in every way imaginable. Benigni’s film told a truth,” she
writes, adding, “‘What good did love do anyone at Auschwitz?’ Denby asks. I too am a child
survivor who was saved by her mother’s love and cleverness.”34 This response, in addition to
being a powerful argument for variation in the realm of Holocaust art, defines perfectly what
Life Is Beautiful represents. The statement, “It is not one single historical events but millions
of personal events” demonstrates exactly the nature of the honour that Benigni tries to convey
30 Editorial Staff, “Addio a Rubino Romeo Salmonì. Ispirò La Vita è Bella a Benigni,” Vanity
Fair Italia, 2011.
31 Stephen M. Silverman, “Rubino Romeo Salmoni, Real Life Inspiration for Life Is
Beautiful, Dies,” People, July 12, 2011.
32 Viano, “Life is Beautiful: Reception, Allegory, and Holocaust Laughter,” 30.
33 Denby, “In the Eye of the Beholder,” 99.
34 Kristine Keese, “The Mail: Art and the Holocaust,” The New Yorker 75, no. 5 (March 29,
1999), 10.

15. 14
with his film. By emphasising the individuality of the characters in his film, he venerates the
humanity of each person affected by the Holocaust. Writes Imre Kertesz, “Authenticity lies,
admittedly, in details, but not necessarily in material details.”35 Though perhaps Benigni’s
film does not mirror physically the Holocaust, it represents its events in an oft-ignored but
essential way: through the stories of regular people.
35 Kertesz, “Who Owns Auschwitz?” 271.

16. 15
Bibliography
Adorno, Theodor. “Commitment.” Translated by Francis McDonagh. New Left Review I, no. 87-88
(Fall 1974): 75-98.
Adorno, Theodor. “Transparencies on Film.” Translated by Thomas Y. Levin. New German Critique
24/25 (Autumn 1981/Winter 1982): 199-205. doi:10.2307/488050.
Agamben, Giorgio. Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive. Translated by Daniel
Heller-Roazen. New York: Zone Books, 1999.
Arendt, Hannah. ““What Remains? The Language Remains”: A Conversation with Günter Gaus.”
Essay. In Essays in Understanding: 1930-1954: Formation, Exile, and Totalitarianism,
edited by Jerome Kohn, 1-23. New York City: Schocken Books, 1994.
Bar-on, Gefen. “Benigni’s Life-Affirming Lie: Life is Beautiful as an Aesthetic and Moral Response
to the Holocaust.” Essay. In Beyond Life is Beautiful: Comedy and Tragedy in the Cinema of
Roberto Benigni, edited by Grace Russo Bullaro, 179–200. Leicester: Troubador Publishing,
2005.
Bullaro. Grace Russo. “Life is Beautiful and the protection of innocence: Fable, fairy tale or just
excuses.” Essay. In Beyond Life is Beautiful: Comedy and Tragedy in the Cinema of Roberto
Benigni, 225–247. Leicester: Troubador Publishing, 2005.
Denby, David. “In the Eye of the Beholder: Another look at Roberto Benigni’s Holocaust
fantasy.” The New Yorker 75, no. 3 (March 15, 1999): 96-99.
Diken, Bülent, and Carsten Bagge Laustsen. “Life is Beautiful: the Ghost of Auschwitz.” Essay.
In Sociology through the Projector, 110–25. London and New York: Routledge, 2007.
Editorial Staff. “Addio a Rubino Romeo Salmonì. Ispirò La Vita è Bella a Benigni.” Vanity Fair
Italia, 2011.
Flanzbaum, Hilene. ““But Wasn’t it Terrific?”: A Defense of Liking Life is Beautiful.” The Yale
Journal of Criticism 14, no. 1 (2001): 273–86. doi:10.1353/yale.2001.0006.
Hansen, Miriam. “Mass Culture as Hieroglyphic Writing: Adorno, Derrida, Kracauer.” New German
Critique 56 (Spring/Summer 1992): 43-73. doi:10.2307/488328.
Hansen, Miriam. “Schindler’s List Is Not Shoah: The Second Commandment, Popular Modernism,
and Public Memory.” Critical Inquiry 22, no. 2 (Winter 1996): 292-312.
Hartman, Geoffrey H. The Longest Shadow: In the Aftermath of the Holocaust. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1996.
Keese, Kristine. “The Mail: Art and the Holocaust.” The New Yorker 75, no. 5 (March 29, 1999): 10.
Kertesz, Imre. “Who Owns Auschwitz?” Translated by John Mackay. The Yale Journal of Criticism
14, no. 1 (Spring 20001): 267–72. doi:10.1353/yale.2001.0010.

17. 16
Kotzen, D. “A Clown in the Camps,” Jerusalem Report, October 26, 1998, 40-45.
Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Essay. In Film Theory and Criticism:
Introductory Readings, edited by Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen, 833-844. New York:
Oxford University Publishing, 1999.
Silverman, Stephen M. “Rubino Romeo Salmoni, Real Life Inspiration for Life Is Beautiful,
Dies.” People, July 12, 2011.
Szpilman, Władysław. Śmierć Miasta: Pamiętniki Władysława Szpilmana 1939–1945, edited by
Jerzy Waldorff. Warsaw: Wiedza, 1946.
Teachout, Terry. Review of Life is Beautiful, Crisis 17, no. 1 (January 1999).
Traverso, Enzo. “La vita è bella? Roberto Benigni e Auschwitz.” Passato e presente, XVII, no. 48
(1999).
Viano, Maurizio. “Life is Beautiful: Reception, Allegory, and Holocaust Laughter.” Film Quarterly
53, no. 1 (Fall 1999): 26-34.

18. 17
Works Consulted
Ben-Ghiat, Ruth. “The Secret Histories of Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful.” The Yale Journal of
Criticism 14, no. 1 (2001): 253–66. doi:10.1353/yale.2001.0002.
Berenson, Frances. “Hegel on Others and the Self.” Philosophy 57, no. 219 (January 1982): 77–90.
doi:10.1017/s0031819100069540.
Ezrahi, Sidra DeKoven. “After Such Knowledge, What Laughter?” The Yale Journal of Criticism 14,
no. 1 (2001): 287–313. doi:10.1353/yale.2001.0005.
Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An archaeology of the human sciences. London and New
York: Routledge Classics, 2002.
Golan, Yvonne Kozlovsky. “Cinematic Love and the Shoah: Abnormal Love During Abnormal
Times.” Post Script - Essays in Film and the Humanities 31, no. 1 (Fall 2011): 40–56.
Gold, Trudy, Rudy Kennedy, Trude Levi, and Frank Reiss. “The Survivors’ Right to Reply.” Essay.
In Holocaust and the Moving Image: Representations in Film and Television Since 1933,
edited by Toby Haggith and Joanna Newman, 243–54. London and New York: Wallflower
Press, 2005.
Gordon, Robert S.C. “Real tanks and toy tanks: playing games with history in Roberto Benigni’s La
vita è bella/Life is Beautiful.” Studies in European Cinema 2, no. 1 (2005): 31–44.
doi:10.1386/seci.2.1.31/1.
Haggith, Toby, and Joanna Newman. Holocaust and the Moving Image: Representations in Film and
Television Since 1933, 1-15. London and New York: Wallflower Press, 2005.
Hall, Stuart. “The Spectacle of the ‘Other’.” Essay. In Representation: Cultural Representations and
Signifying Practices, 223–90. Milton Keynes: The Open University, 1997.
Haskins, Casey. “Art, Morality, and the Holocaust: The Aesthetic Riddle of Benigni’s Life Is
Beautiful. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 59, no. 4 (Fall 2001): 373-384.
doi:10.1111/0021-8529.00039.
Hirsch, Marianne. “The Generation of Postmemory.” Poetics Today 29, no. 1 (March 2008): 103–28.
doi:10.1215/03335372-2007-019.
Hoberman, J. “Nazi Business.” The Village Voice, October 27, 1998.
Huyssen, Andreas. “Of Mice and Mimesis: Reading Spiegelman with Adorno.” New German
Critique 81 (Autumn 2000): 65–82.
Kimmel, Daniel M. ““Life Is Beautiful” a moving film .” Telegram & Gazette, February 17, 1999.
Landy, Marcia. The Historical Film: History and Memory in Media, 1-24. London: The Athlone
Press, 2001.

19. 18
Leonardo, Laura. “La torta eiope e il cavallo ebreo: Metaphor, mythopoeia, and symbolisms in Life
is Beautiful.” Essay. In Beyond Life is Beautiful: Comedy and Tragedy in the Cinema of
Roberto Benigni, edited by Grace Russo Bullaro, 201-24. Leicester: Troubador Publishing,
2005.
Lichtner, Giacomo. “For the Few, Not the Many: Delusion and Denial in Italian Holocaust Films.”
Essay. In Holocaust and the Moving Image: Representations in Film and Television Since
1933, edited by Toby Haggith and Joanna Newman, 236-42. London and New York:
Wallflower Press, 2005.
Marcus, Millicent. Italian Film in the Shadow of Auschwitz. Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
2007.
Maron, Jeremy. “Theatrical Games and the Gift of a Fable: Performance vs. Reality in Roberto
Benigni’s Life Is Beautiful.” Essay. In Stages of Reality: Theatricality in Cinema, edited by
André Loiselle and Jeremy Maron, 160–82. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012.
Matthews, Kate. “Serious Laughter: critics of Life is Beautiful and the question of
comedy.” Australian Screen Education (Autumn 2003): 105-10.
Perra, Emiliano. Conflicts of Memory: The Reception of Holocaust Films and TV Programmes in
Italy, 1945 to the Present, edited by Pierpaolo Antonello and Robert Gordon. Vol. 8. Italian
Modernities. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2010.
Rosenstone, Robert A. Visions of the Past: The Challenge of Film to Our Idea of History, 1-19.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995.
Shershow, Scott Cutler. Laughing Matters: The Paradox of Comedy. Amherst: University of
Massachusetts Press, 1987.
Žižek, Slavoj. “Camp Comedy.” Sight & Sound 10, no. 4 (April 2000): 26-29.
Žižek, Slavoj. “Forward by Slavoj Žižek.” Essay. In Sociology through the Projector, viii-xi. London
and New York: Routledge, 2007.