Roberto Benigni likes to get emotional at awards ceremonies.

As a good comedian, he uses his feelings for daring stunts, for example when he walked over the back of a chair in Los Angeles in 1999 to receive the Oscar for the Holocaust tragic comedy "Life is beautiful".

At the Venice Film Festival, the 68-year-old actor has now received the Golden Lion for his life's work - and in exuberant emotion, he immediately tested the flight skills of the new trophy animal by throwing it into the air in front of the camera.

Maria Wiesner

Editor in the Society department at FAZ.NET.

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One day after the gala evening in his honor, Benigni went to a “masterclass” in front of young filmmakers to chat about his career and to share with the future directors the lessons that he had learned in over 50 years on stage and in front of and behind cameras learned. Since Benigni is not only a role model for the Italians in the hall, the obvious first question is aimed at his own role models. “Chaplin,” he says promptly. “He made up all the important gestures and scenarios in comedy. Watching him is like reading Don Quixote, it's poetic and you have to laugh, both at the same time. ”He saw him for the first time at the age of 14 in the cinema of a mountain village in the Apennines:“ We had no money, so we got a tear on the ticket cheated by. They showed 'gold rush'. After the movie I was mute;as the ancient Greeks describe it when you have seen something sacred. These films never let you go, they stay with you for a lifetime. "

"Fellini was the greatest director of the 20th century"

What he didn't keep for life was advice from his mother: “She always said that learning was the most important thing in life. That's not true. Having a passion for something is the most important thing. ”His own passion for the cinema immediately carried him away that afternoon in the half-empty cinema (the festival relies on distance). Accompanied by gestures, he jumps from the comedian role models to the directors he himself adored: “Fellini was a natural wonder, the greatest director of the 20th century.” About Bertolucci: “He practically adopted me when I came to Rome in the early seventies . ”About Jim Jarmusch:“ He had the punk energy with which The Clash also cut the guitar on stage. ”And he throws quotes from Dante, Orson Welles anecdotes and haikus around. In any case, the moderator hardly has a say.

The previous evening, festival director Alberto Barbera had described the interests of the guest of honor as “eclectic”: “Few artists have his ability to combine explosive comic timing with satire and, on top of that, to have an admirable talent as an actor.” The festival emphasized that Benigni had himself In the past few years she has increasingly dealt with the Italian language and the work of Dante Alighieri. And in the “Masterclass” it doesn't take long before Benigni applies his observation of language to his self-image as an actor: “In Italian, one doesn't talk about 'playing' as in English, German or French. In Italian it's called work, which I think is more apt because it's a damn serious job to make people laugh. "

On the other hand, he does not want to give an answer to the mundane. What does Roberto Benigni do on a typical day? The question arouses little enthusiasm: “Oh, nobody cares.” He prefers to rave about literature: “When I have time, I read Dante. Because once you've read Dante, it's hard to pick anything else up, with the possible exception of Shakespeare. Neither Kubrick nor Spielberg could muster the imagination with which Dante adorns his picture of the inferno for any location in their films. ”Let's see how many of the young filmmakers will try to do just that in the next few years.