Send in the clown

Italian comedian, actor and director Roberto Benigni was in Malta this week, during which time he received an honoris causa in recognition of his 'indefatigable vibrancy and enduring versatility as film director and actor that has won him broad and deserved international acclaim'. However, as always, he indulged in his trademark antics and clowning.

In the tradition of the great clowns and jesters who existed way back in the ancient Chinese dynasties, in the empires of Egypt, Greece and Rome and even in the days of the Incas, Roberto Benigni first hit the news by shocking the public.

It was on RAI2's Onda Libera, hosted by the popular musician Renzo Arbore, that he interpreted his L'Inno del corpo sciolto (anthem of the melting body), a satirical monologue dedicated to defecation. Soon after, Enrico Berlinguer, the then respected national leader of the Communist party, of which Benigni was a fully paid up member, was unexpectedly dangled like a marionette at a public political demonstration after being surprised in an embrace by the comedian. Benigni was also censored for calling Pope John Paul II, Wojtylaccio, meaning a bad Wojtyla, during an important television show.

In October 2005, he performed an impromptu striptease on Italy's news programme, removing his shirt and draping it over the newscaster's shoulders. Prior to this incident Benigni had already hijacked the programme's opening credits by jumping behind the newscaster and shouting in apparent glee "Berlusconi has resigned!". The day before, in Rome, he led a crowd of thousands in protest at the government's decision to cut the arts funding budget by 35 per cent.

Throughout this permeating series of irreverent and iconoclastic behaviour, there is something that is very reminiscent of his compatriot, that other clowning jester, the Nobel prize winner Dario Fò. After all, they are birds of the same feather!

Benigni's Tuesday's fuori programma performance at the Jesuits' Church in Valletta, during the conferment ceremony of the Doctorate of Literature (honoris causa), was transformed into improvised theatre featuring pure commedia dell'arte techniques, better known as lazzi. As was the unexpected involvement of Malta's highest ranking citizens, President Eddie Fenech Adami and Archbishop Paul Cremona, who found themselves drawn like pawns into the comedian's comical impromptu sketch, targeting among others, his pet hate of old, the newly elected Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi.

As is the clown's wont, the hilarity reached its acme, when in front of the ceremoniously clad, rector and chancellor, Benigni unfolded more of his lazzi, drawing loud guffaws from the academical crowd present, the majority of whom were clearly amazed at the clown's desecration, albeit in jest, of a sacred ritual whose tradition spans five centuries.

On Wednesday, for the Dante's do at the Assembly Hall, at Tal-Qroqq, Prof. Bob Hollander, and the until then unobtrusive Carmelo, the cameraman, stood in for some of the blanks which invariably need to be addressed in any commedia dell'arte scenario. All along one is amazed at the incredible energy unleashed throughout; it resonates in the voice, it dictates the ever shifting movement of the actor, and it formulates the backcloth aura on which rests the artist's charisma.

And once you chance to look, you end up well and truly hooked; for these clowning jesters have the ability to mesmerise their audiences until the latter could literally eat out of their hands.

A popular and bankable film personality in Italy where he rarely works without involving his beautiful wife Nicoletta Braschi, until his Oscar-winning La Vita è Bella (Life is Beautiful) came along, Benigni was quite unknown internationally. His American films, namely, Down by Law, Night on Earth, The Son of the Pink Panther, and Coffee and Cigarettes were not hot box-office stuff.

His Italianate phase is characterised by his long-lasting collaboration with scriptwriter Vincenzo Cerami, whose series of successful films include Il Piccolo Diavolo with Walter Matthau, Johnny Stecchino and Il Mostro.

Of course Benigni became internationally known with La Vita è Bella. The film earned seven Academy Award nominations in 1989. It won best foreign language film, best musical score (Nicola Piovani) and best actor for Benigni. Again the film received a certain amount of criticism aimed at Benigni's "laughing at everything" syndrome, which this time round, affected the dreaded holocaust.

If Benigni minded such criticism, he certainly refrained from showing it when, giddy with delight, he marched over the seats of the famed auditorium to receive his award. Sadly Benigni was not able to repeat his Vita success with either Asterix and Obelix vs Caesar, his latest release La Tigre e la Neve and Pinocchio, which was coldly received by the critics who gave it the ultimate zero per cent rating on the influential Rotten Tomatoes site.

Of course this will not deter Benigni from doing what he does best, that is emulating the jesters of yore in scourging authority and upholding the dignity of the downtrodden. For like all the great comedians before him, Benigni does much more than make us laugh. He hints at the hope of achieving the impossible.

When faced with starvation, these evergreen jesters find food, even if it's a dirty shoe, and like Chaplin, they turn it into a banquet. In the face of humiliation they find dignity (which is what the Vita Academy Award is really all about). When faced with tyranny they find poetic justice.

Benigni's type of virtuosity, witnessed from close range during his Malta sojourn, gives him the flexibility to defy the laws of logic, hardship and gravity. That is why these wonderful clowns, Benigni-like, manage to get up from falls that the rest of us would find fatal.