Down by Law (1986)

Hypnotic black and white comedy drama directed by Jim Jarmusch. Three men – Jack, Zach and Bob – find themselves unjustly held in a New Orleans jail and make their escape. It’s not really about “what happens”. Indeed, the escape takes seconds and isn’t detailed at all. It’s about their characters and the way their personalities interact.

The three stars, Tom Waits, John Lurie and Roberto Benigni, are all highly watchable and charismatic. Waits, in particular, has a twitchy, edgy magnetism.

When the film takes an unexpectedly romantic turn, it becomes something that lifts your spirits as well as makes you laugh. Nicoletta Braschi has been Benigni’s real-world wife since 1991 (they also starred together in Life Is Beautiful) and the scenes with them together are a joy.

It’s shot beautifully, too. You can freeze the DVD at any point and it looks like a striking photograph.

One of my favourite films.

Life Is Beautiful (1997)

A masterpiece, pretty much. Guido (Roberto Benigni) uses his extraordinary imagination to protect his young son from the reality of living in a Nazi concentration camp by presenting the whole thing as an elaborate game in which he has to score 1,000 points to win. The film begins as a gentle romantic comedy (Benigni’s real-life wife Nicoletta Braschi plays Dora, the woman he woos and marries) that’s full of frothy slapstick, and ingenious connections between threads of the story enhanced by Guido’s quick thinking. The hilarious opening section means that the sudden switch to the deeply serious second half is all the more powerful. The astonishing performance by the couple’s young son Giosuè (Giorgio Cantarini) makes the sense of innocence under threat absolutely gut-wrenching. It’s a dazzling film about the power of love, hope and the human imagination.