Last night was the first of our Film Club nights; Paolo Gas hosted the evening providing a light snack and home made popcorn at half time. It was a great evening shared with both locals and expats.
We started the evening with a light snack enabling everyone to catch up as some of us only get together on evenings such as this. The ambiance was set in the small room just off the main bar, the lights were dimmed and the film commenced.
We watched La Vita e Bella in Italian (the night doubles up as an Italian lesson too) with English subtitles which I found helpful but a little intrusive. I was too busy reading the subtitles that I missed some of the spoken word. But as it was our first night I suppose that was to be expected.
I am not going to go into the plot of the film, just incase we decide to watch it again and I wouldn’t want to ruin it for anyone else. The Film was paused half way through for a comfort break and Paolo had made popcorn, it was delicious and I am sure that I had more than my fair share. And we won’t mention the short interlude whilst we worked out how to use the remote control and then we weren’t even sure what we had done to commence the movie, but commence we did.
Life Is Beautiful (Italian: La vita è bella) is a 1997 Italian comedy-drama film directed by and starring Roberto Benigni. Benigni plays Guido Orefice, a Jewish Italian book shop owner, who must employ his fertile imagination to shield his son from the horrors of internment in a Nazi concentration camp. Part of the film came from Benigni’s own family history; before Roberto’s birth, his father had survived three years of internment at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The film was a critical and financial success, winning Benigni the Academy Award for Best Actor at the 71st Academy Awards as well as the Academy Award for Best Original Dramatic Score and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
La Vita e Bella was a great choice of movie it had a little of everything humor, laughter, love and war with a happy ending. The famous Italian actor Roberto Benigni made me think of the silent movies, his overly animated actions and his variety of expressions transporting you to another era. With part of the film actually enacting parts of Benigni’s families history
The film was a critical and financial success, winning Benigni the Academy Award for Best Actor at the 71st Academy Awards as well as the Academy Award for Best Original Dramatic Score and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
It was a really great way to spend a cold February evening and watching the film in a mixed group added to the charm. I understood some of the spoken words although the dialect was fast but I am sure that in time, watching the movies in this way will only enhance the speed of learning Italian.
We are going to meet up again next Thursday at Paolo Gas the film will be Cinema Paridiso, anyone interested in coming or wanting more information please drop me an email: carol.condurrouk@gmail.com
Article by Sensone