Life is more beautiful for those who read

LAUDED Italian writer Vincenzo Cerami gives a compelling reason for reading to children - he reckons it makes them better people.

LAUDED Italian writer Vincenzo Cerami gives a compelling reason for reading to children - he reckons it makes them better people.

"The fundamental difference between adults is those who read and those who don't," the prolific poet, author and screenwriter said yesterday.

"Those who read are better people. They are able to travel with their imagination, so they can look at things from different perspectives and don't take things at face value. They are more mature and tolerant and therefore more realistic about the complexity of life. More than with cinema and theatre, books not only generate emotion but make people think."

Cerami, 69, is in Melbourne for the city's writers festival. He began writing poetry at 11, becoming one of Italy's most prolific and celebrated writers across the genres of literature, film, poetry and musical lyrics.

His cinematic hits include six collaborations with Tuscan comedian, actor and director Roberto Benigni.

Their Oscar-winning film, Life is Beautiful (La Vita e' Bella), did the unthinkable: a comedic take on the horrors of the Holocaust.

Cerami created the character of a doting and irrepressibly irreverent Jewish-Italian father who shields his small son from the cruel realities of life in a concentration camp.

The screenwriter's subtlety, combined with Benigni's slapstick humour, render a thought-provoking film that celebrates the power of love and the strength of the human spirit.

The gaiety of the first half of the film gradually fades into a darker comedy, with Benigni's antics masking the menace of the Holocaust.

Cerami said the film would not have reached its massive audience had it shown too much undiluted evil. "In cinema, in art, people can't watch more than 10 minutes of evil because in the end it becomes horror," he said.

"You have to seek the beauty and the horror."

Benigni's father, then a newlywed farmer, was sent to a Nazi labour camp during World War II. When he returned home, he recounted humorous anecdotes to his family each night.

"I said to Roberto, 'Strange - gaiety in a concentration camp?"' Cerami said yesterday.

"But his father told his tales with a smile, because he couldn't bear the misery and the nightmares and the memories."

Cerami's advice to budding writers is simple.

"If you read well, you can write better."

Cerami will read from the Book of Ecclesiastes, a book of the Hebrew Bible, at the Melbourne Writers Festival on Saturday, and will discuss how to "write about the unmentionable", and how good people turn evil, in sessions on Sunday.