Now he is their national hero. The Italian media speak of him as a genius, and mention him in the same breath as his idol, Charlie Chaplin. Even the Pope, for whom Benigni personally screened the film, has it on his top five. The success of Life is Beautiful, particularly in Jerusalem and Rome, marks an important moment in the history of the Holocaust. Thirty years ago any movie about Hitler's concentration camps would have risked being a sacrilege to Jews while no one else would have paid to see it.
People go to movies to be entertained and to forget the real world.
Although escapism can take many forms, it is the sine qua non of popular success in movie-making. Beautiful-Charlie Chaplin goes to Auschwitz. Benigni's film breaks a half-century taboo and takes audiences from the reality of death camps to bittersweet escapism. The fact that most Jews can laugh as well as cry and do not experience this movie as a sacrilege, and that Pope John Paul II apparently finds it an affirmation of his personal faith, is something of a cinematic milestone. Benigni borrows from Chaplin, but also from the Marx Brothers, and from a tradition of clowns that extends back to the Commedia del Arte.