The moment Anna Magnani makes her entrance in this film, it is raised many levels in both interest and quality. It is actually a rather silly entertainment, the plot is next to ridiculous, made more so by the phoney musical professor, who is exorbitantly in love with Anna Magnani and constantly keeps making a fool of himself, while she only despises and insults him. It's a comedy indeed, but there is an interesting philosophical twist to the tale. It starts with the count sitting at a gaming table playing off all his money, whereupon he goes aside to the bar, where a professor, who has studied him, seeks him out and proposes to him an experiment, offering him a fortune of money if he will be his guinea pig for the experiment. The count accepts, the agreement is that they will meet again in a month, a lot of things happen during this month, he and a vagabond end up together with two sisters running a farm, one of them being Anna Magnani, the other Maria Mercader, but he keeps the appointment, and there is an interesting conclusion. Anna Magnani crowns the film, Maria Mercader seconds her, while the two singing men just make entertaining fools of themselves for the enjoyment of a cinema public in Italy of 1943 in the middle of the war, that badly needed laughable stuff like this to stay alive.
Review of La vita è bella
La vita è bella
(1943)
Anna Magnani fooling around with two fools, a vagabond and a potential suicide
16 September 2021