Oscars: Worst Best Actor Winners, Roberto Benigni, “Life is Beautiful” (1998)

Life Is Beautiful is a period dramedy where a loving Italian- Jewish father named Guido Orefice, and his young son, become victims of the Holocaust.

My Oscar Book:

At the concentration camp they throw them in, dad uses a mixture of humor and imagination to make his son think that it’s all an elaborate game.

No wonder, Life Is Beautiful became one of the most divisive movies of the 1990s, whose success owes everything to the aggressive campaigning of Harvey Weinstein, honcho of Miramax at the time.

Some critics found its playful depiction of the Holocaust utterly abhorrent, while others thought that its celebration of childhood innocence and wonder was the movie’s very message.

Roberto Benigni (who directed, wrote, and starred in the film) made Oscar history with his extremely enthusiastic and emotional acceptance speeches for Best Foreign Film and Best Actor.

Benigni is sporadically funny and charming in the role, but that’s about it. It is noteworthy, that Benigni became the first male to win the Best Actor Oscar for a non-English picture, though others (such as the great Marcello Mastroianni) had been nominated.

Everybody else in the category that year offered a more complex and deserving performance. Benigni defeated the following performers:

Tom Hanks, as Captain John H. Miller, in Spielberg’s WWII drama Saving Private Ryan
Ian McKellen, as gay director James Whale, in the biopic Gods and Monsters
Nick Nolte, as alcoholic and abusive Wade Whitehouse, in Paul Schrader’s drama Affliction
Edward Norton, as neo-Nazi Derek Vinyard, in American History X