The Conformist,cinema paradise,life is beautiful,marriage italian style - Essay Example

In film, fantasy is very much difficult to define since fantasy is both broad enough to include any fictional films that may happen in real life and narrow enough to remove other works that may actually belong to the said genre (Walters 1). At any rate, fantasy is still any form of departure from an individual's reality or every day existence (Walters 1; Fowkes). Bulgarian philosopher, Tzvetan Todorov, says that fantasy films are simply any plot that goes from marvelous to uncanny to fantastic (Walters 9-11).

Marvelous refers to the self-containment of the story wherein the viewer would not be questioning the reality of the film. Uncanny would be the ability of the plot to be explained psychologically despite being unreal and fantastic refers to the ability of a character or a viewer to experience hesitation when faced with an impossible situation. This essay focuses on the comparison of Roberto Benigni's Life is Beautiful and Guiseppe Tornatore's Cinema Paradiso under the idea that both films can be considered as fantasy films.

In line with this, Todorov's marvelous-to-uncanny-to-fantastic definition would be considered as the backbone of the comparison. Marvelous Basically, when it comes to questioning the reality of the story, Benigni's Life is Beautiful is quite difficult to ask. . If one would think about it, how is it possible for anyone not to notice the stranger child on the table? Since these children are actually sons and daughters of important people in Germany, it would of course be obvious that they have dined together for more than one occasion.

This would mean that they were actually familiar with one another. However, Guido's son still passed as one of them. Apparently, the story-telling and the idea of the film seem to be flawless making the viewers not question the events in the film. Therefore, by Todorov's definition, Benigni's Life is Beautiful has passed the first stage of a fantasy film—it is marvelous. On the other hand, Tornatore's Cinema Paradiso, is also quite similar to Benigni's film. Basically, in Cinema Paradiso, events such as the scene where the movie-house burned down may have left one thinking a to how such small fire glare in the entire room.

Realistically, of course, movie films are known to catch fire very fast, making the scene of real-standards. However, going back to the scene, the only movie film in the room was the one playing. It caught fire probably due to the overheating of the equipment. But, how it spread out would be a matter of question seeing that it did not actually touch anything that may cause the flames to emblazon. But, unlike Benigni's story-telling, this scene in Torante's film could easily be looked over since it is hidden by facts, making this film also marvelous.

Comparing the two films under such definition, however, Torante's would be more marvelous compared to Benigni's. This is because, Torante's ability to tell the story is quite more convincing since the marvel of the audience would not be left hanging compared to Benigni's. In this sense, since Benigni's