In the camp, Guido constructs an elaborate fiction to comfort and protect his son. Dora, not Jewish, would be spared by the Fascists, but insists on coming along to be with her husband and child. He makes a big show of being terrified that somehow they will miss the train and be left behind. Guido and Joshua are loaded into a train, and Guido instinctively tries to turn it into a game to comfort his son. 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). Original’s non-subtitled German dialogue is preserved, as are several Italianisms.He arrives in town in a runaway car with failed brakes and is mistaken for a visiting dignitary. Mix by Michael Barry and Tom Fleischman is fine, generally avoiding audible shifts from Italo version’s production sound to the new dubbed tracks. Oddly, the one Yank character, originally played by Aaron Craig, is replaced here by Marc A. Chip Bolcik comes off best amongst dubbing thesps as Dora’s sleazy Fascist fiance, Rodolfo, while Horst Buchholz is the only original cast member doing duty here, as riddle-obsessed Dr. The casting of American-sounding James Falzone as young Joshua is a jarring flub, while other key players (such as Nicholas Kepros’ Uncle Leo and Patricia Mauceri’s school principal) have no discernible Italian accent. Though the love of Guido’s life has a fraction of his lines, Borrelli’s English is close to mush, as when she proclaims, “I wash jusht like patty in heesh hahnds.” Other key leads pose far greater problems, starting with Ilaria Borrelli voicing Nicoletta Braschi’s Dora. While Nichols may not be Benigni, his voice grows on the listener and manages a steady course through an immense stream of dialogue. Just as noticeable - and more unavoidable - is lack of sync between English dub and mouthed Italian, one of the more difficult Euro tongues to match closely to English speaking patterns.
Anyone who watched the Oscars knows what Benigni’s English sounds like, and if only because this is clearly not Benigni, actor Jonathan Nichols’ voice will at first be a letdown to pic’s hard-core fans. airwaves, is the first time we hear the voice of Benigni’s hero, Guido. Intro is now an English voiceover: “This is a simple story, but not an easy one to tell.” The most dramatic indicator that this dubbing is a victim of the subtitled version’s mega-success, as well as Benigni’s ubiquitous presence on U.S. Davis and directed by Rod Dean) marks the most significant effort to date.
While this is hardly the company’s first attempt to parlay one of its foreign-lingo hits into an ostensibly bigger marketplace - “Like Water for Chocolate” and “The Postman” being the major dubbed projects - new version of Benigni’s WWII-set comedy-drama (produced by John M.
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