All I knew about the movie LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL is that is Italian and about a concentration camp. About an hour into the film as I enjoyed the wonderful comedy of Roberto Benigni, the central character of this film he wrote and directed, I wondered if I had wandered into the wrong theatre. But, eventually, the comic love story moves to a concentration camp and stays there.

The mastery of the film, then, is found in the delicate balance between laughter and tears. Roberto Benigni is funny. It's obvious that he has commedia dell'arte in his gene pool. Everything from his impish smile to his childlike gaze is loaded with humor and he doesn't need to don the motley for us to easily recognize that Benigni is a rogue.

In LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL he plays Guido, a country nobody who gets away with all manner of things that he shouldn't. Many of his antics aren't all that funny, it's just that HE is funny, and his physical schtick coupled with some well-timed sight gags attract more than a few belly laughs.

For the first half of the story we see Guido as a romantic underdog. He is a waiter in love with a woman called Dora and he uses all of his comic ability to win her. It's only midway through the movie that there is any mention of the fact that Guido is Jewish.

The film jumps ahead some five or six years as we meet Guido and Dora's adorable son. As we're introduced to the lad, we also meet the Holocaust. But not with the up close and in your face horror of "Shindler's List," instead we see the abomination through Guido's exhaustion. Guido keeps up his antic disposition, making the whole event into a game for his young son's birthday.

Perhaps the film is effective because we've seen enough cinematic representation of the concentration camps to understand the nightmare inherent in this film. I laughed and cried and questioned the appropriateness of Benigni's subject matter for this film. I felt a tad uncertain about the suitability of this marriage between comedy and great tragedy. But my final verdict is very positive. Instead of concentrating on the reality of human degradation, Benigni shows us that indeed life is beautiful when a person loves with all his might.