Italian screenwriter Vincenzo Cerami dies at 72

Vincenzo Cerami, an Italian writer who co-authored the screenplay of "Life Is Beautiful," Roberto Benigni's award-winning tragicomedy about a father's quest to save his son's life and innocence amid the horrors of a Nazi concentration camp, died July 17 in Rome. He was 72.

His death was widely reported by Italian media. The cause could not immediately be confirmed.

A protege of Pier Paolo Pasolini, the revered Italian writer and director, Cerami was a poet, novelist and playwright who wrote or co-wrote the screenplays of more than 40 films.

Cerami's greatest success in the United States was "Life Is Beautiful," which won the 1999 Academy Award for best foreign language film. Benigni won the Academy Award for best actor. He and Cerami were nominated for best original screenplay.

Of Cerami's numerous collaborations with Benigni, "Life Is Beautiful" was surely the most daring. In less than two hours, it presented tender romance, slapstick antics and the image, however brief, of a mountain of corpses -- victims of Nazi slaughter.

"In cinema, in art, people can't watch more than 10 minutes of evil because in the end it becomes horror," Cerami once said. "You have to seek the beauty and the horror."

Cerami was born in Rome on Nov. 2, 1940. When he was a boy, his schoolteachers included Pasolini, before Pasolini became renowned as an intellectual.

"I owe everything to Pasolini," Cerami said, according to the Italian news agency ANSA. "Without him I wouldn't have been able to look at the world with pity and severity combined."