The grimmest of national tragedies inevitably triggers a backwash of sick jokes, the vileness of which increases in proportion to the seriousness of the incident. In the early years of World War II, Charlie Chaplin and Ernst Lubitsch didn't make grim dramas as a clarion call to the world about the Nazis. To Be or Not to Be , knowing full well the power of ridicule and the appeal of humane wit. The Day the Clown Cried . Life Is Beautiful opens in 1939 with Benigni as Guido, a slightly less manic version of the motor-mouthed wildmen he played in Johnny Stecchino and Night on Earth .
Several years pass.
But fascist rule can no longer be ignored. Dora returns home one afternoon to find her husband and son are being shipped to a concentration camp. She begs to be placed on the train with her family, and is obliged. He convinces the boy that the camp and its horrors are part of an elaborate game, the object of which is to accumulate enough points to win a tank. As the Nazis step up the rate of extermination, Guido struggles to keep his son in the game.