![]() In 1945, near the end of the war, the Jews in the town are rounded up by the Fascists and shipped by rail to a death camp. Guido and Dora are married and dote on their 5-year-old son Joshua ( Giorgio Cantarini). Mistaken for a school inspector, he invents a quick lecture on Italian racial superiority, demonstrating the excellence of his big ears and superb navel. Dora, a gentile, quickly comes to love him, and in one scene even conspires to meet him on the floor under a banquet table they kiss, and she whispers, "Take me away!" In the town, Guido survives by quick improvisation. Only well into the movie do we even learn the crucial information that Guido is Jewish. ![]() And by the fantastic manipulation of carefully planned coincidences, he makes it appear that he is fated to replace the dour Fascist in Dora's life.Īll of this early material, the first long act of the movie, is comedy-much of it silent comedy involving the fate of a much-traveled hat. He makes friends with the German doctor ( Horst Buchholz) who is a regular guest at the hotel and shares his love of riddles. He becomes the undeclared rival of her fiance, the Fascist town clerk. ![]() ![]() He falls in love instantly with the beautiful Dora ( Nicoletta Braschi, Benigni's real-life wife). He arrives in town in a runaway car with failed brakes and is mistaken for a visiting dignitary.
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