Irrepressible Benigni injects comedy in degree conferment ceremony

Oscar-winning actor, director and screenwriter Roberto Benigni this afternoon injected comedy at a ceremony where he was conferred with the honorary degree of Doctor of Literature by the University of Malta.

Benigni's typically tight hugs were not missed at the ceremony at the Jesuits' Church in Valletta. At one time he said he was a refugee from the Italian elections and knelt before the President, pleading for help!

He expressed his amazement at being awarded the degree exclaiming in Maltese Il-lallu, il-lallu! At the beginning of his speech he said, in Maltese, that his heart was beating so much, he needed a doctor.

He then went on, however, to give a passionate speech about Dante.

Benigni was honoured with the doctorate honoris causa, sponsored by the Dean of the Faculty of Arts, on whose initiative he was brought to Malta, in recognition not only of his distinctive exploration of the emotional range possible in cinema, but also for his significant contribution to Dante scholarship, to the study of literature and to the humanities in general.

The Benigni style was very much in evidence a few hours earlier at a press conference where Benigni had journalists in fits of laughter. Notebooks and pens were put aside to watch the spectacle as the irrepressible actor never directly answered questions, veering off on a humorous, but intelligent tangents that would almost invariably ended with a question on what the question was.

Referring to the journalists by name, Benigni took the mickey out of everything. He babbled on, ten to the dozen (throwing in the odd Maltese word and even village name), claiming to have lost his train of thought – but never the attention of his audience.

The few instances in which he appeared serious inevitably turned into a joke, although there was a deep meaning hidden in everything he said.

The press conference was dominated by the eternity of Dante and his Divina Commedia, with interventions by the eminent international Dante scholar Robert Hollander. His passion was expressed in the fact that he wanted to “jump on” Dante and “make love” to the book.

Benigni spoke about the possibility – or impossibility – of making a comedy out of it, with himself in the role of Dante.

“I am the same age as Dante was in his last years of life. It could be entitled: The Last Days of Dante,” he said, taking the credit for a “personal and original” idea that had just been proposed by Prof. Hollander.

Benigni is best known outside Italy for his 1997 tragicomedy Life is Beautiful, which was nominated for seven Academy Awards and for which he won the Best Actor award.

Asked where Dante would have placed him – in heaven, purgatory, or hell – he joked that he had never been asked such a question and could not answer, but would have expected to be asked where he would have put Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. “Hopefully, in the girone furthest away from me,” he yelled – in hell, but at a great distance.

Benigni said it would be extraordinary to shoot a film in Malta. Acting out the Divina Commedia with the late Massimo Troisi, with whom he had starred in Non ci resta che piangere (1985), would have been a “spectacle par excellence”, he said, adding that he really missed the actor, who had probably spent a couple of years in purgatory due to his love of women, and breaking into a recitation of a canto as it would have sounded had the two been performing it.

Benigni has embarked on a quest to bring Dante to people, but he insisted his was by no means a “mission” to “culturise” the man in the street and that he was simply doing what he loved. “What I transmit is not dantismo, but the desire to read something lovely,” he said.

Picture: Benigni hugs President Eddie Fenech Adami.