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Is Life Beautiful? Can the Shoah Be Funny? Some Thoughts on Recent and Older Films
Sander Gilman toils with the confusing emotional relationship between horror and humor, investigating the links between the two in regard to the Holocaust. He sets up a distinction between the reality of the Holocaust, which demands seriousness, and the representation of the Holocaust, siting scholars such as Terrence Des Pres, who believes that humor can be used as a coping mechanism. Gilman looks at various films about the Holocaust and the works of various Jewish comedians in order to propagate that approaching the Holocaust by way of humor is rarely attempted, as laughter is not the socially constructed reaction. Films that have been successful in political mockery of World War II Fascism such as Charlie Chaplin’s, The Great Dictator, date back to pre-Holocaust production, before such use of comedy was deemed taboo or by a conspicuous Jewish director.
Gilman turns to Life as Beautiful a successful integration of comedy and the Holocaust because of its human not Jewish appeal and uses Jakob the Liar by Jurek Becker as a means of highlighting its success. Gilman suggests that the film is “quasi-autobiographical” as it implicates Benigni’s father’s experiences, an Italian non-Jewish soldier. Gilman speculates that the success of the integration is due to the film’s non-Jewish world that separates the Holocaust from the past and the future. Moreover, the laughter is encouraged because it confirms the success of Guido’s actions to save his son, the more we laugh the better job Guido is doing in protecting his son and if our expectations are fulfilled we feel good about laughing.
Despite several differences and parallels, Benigni’s film unlike Becker’s, was made in the 1990’s and by a self-conscious non-Jew. His emphasis on the human tragedy of the Holocaust regardless of religion is something Gilman believes makes his integration of humor and holocaust feasible.
tagged Comedy Film Holocaust Humor Life_is_Beautiful Religion Roberto_Benigni Shoah WWII by aaxelrod ...on 06-APR-06
In his interview with Carlo Celli, Marcello Pezetti, the director of the audio-visual department of the Contemporary Hebrew Documentation Center of Milan and a well-known historian specializing on Auschwitz, talks openly about his role as Benigni’s advisor for the controversial film, Life is Beautiful and his own thoughts on the film’s representation of the Holocaust.
Pezetti defends the film’s use of humor. He says that the characters in the film were based on Roman Jews, a sect of Italians that reacted to the Holocaust with humor and irony. Pezetti used this group in his own documentary on Italian survivors of Auschwitz, Memoria, and defends their right to be represented. Unlike the Askenazi Jews, Pezetti believes that the Roman Jews were full of life because they had little tragedy. Moreover, he speaks to Benigni’s character, in order it seems to deflect accusations of his insensitivity, expressing how impressed he was with his sense of humanity. It is Begnini’s genuine nature and his Italian pride that Pezetti again asserts when deflecting Celli’s question about whether the film was made for an American market.
Pezetti also comments on the film’s attempts to portray reality as he talks about his instructions in creating the film’s costumes. He claims that while Benigni wanted the wardrobe to be realistic he also wanted the spectators to be able to discern its inherent fictive nature. He consulted with a Holocaust survivor and renowned costume designer to create the costumes although in the end he claims that Benigni “was very careful to keep his own counsel and decide according to his own sensibility.” Pezetti further discusses Benigni’s literary influences, the Talmud, Yiddish literature, and the children’s book The Child of Buchenwald in order to give the film a sense of realism.
Pezetti addresses the themes of racism and fascism that Benigni touches upon in the film by praising Benigni’s careful use of humor, a feat he believes to be difficult. Moreover, he points out Benigni’s use of soundtrack to critique the fascist stronghold of the WWII period claiming that Benigni nationalism didn’t prevent his criticism.
In sum, Pezetti claims that what Benigni did was “to show that one could laugh in the Shoah but not about the Shoah.”
tagged Holocaust Humor Life_is_Beautiful Religion Roberto_Benigni by aaxelrod ...on 06-APR-06