ROME -- It was 4 a.m. when the news hit the Casa del Popolo, a social center in Vergaio, Roberto Benigni's hometown in Tuscany. As a giant screen, set up for the evening, showed the Italian filmmaker joyously bounding up onto the backs of seats at the Academy Awards ceremony, thousands of local supporters outside the Casa del Popolo jumped up and down and screamed "Ha vinto!" ("He won!").

By winning three Oscars for "Life Is Beautiful," his comedy set during the Holocaust, Italy's most popular comic became the country's most important movie figure overnight. For Italian cinema, which has been in a slump for many years, Benigni's recognition by Hollywood was a badly needed shot in the arm.A few other Italian films, like "Cinema Paradiso" and "Mediterraneo," have won the award for best foreign film. "Life Is Beautiful," however, was not just a critical success but a commercial one: the biggest in the United States of any Italian film yet.

Perhaps most important, Benigni, 46, is the first non-English speaker to win the best-actor award, competing against some of Hollywood's best-known stars. Only a few Italian actresses have won similar honors: Anna Magnani won a best-actress award for "The Rose Tattoo," a 1955 U.S. film.

Sophia Loren also won an Oscar for best actress, for the Italian film "Two Women" in 1961. On Sunday, when Loren presented Benigni his Oscar for best foreign film, she shouted, "Roberto!" when she opened the envelope.

In Italy, it was almost as if Italy had won a World Cup soccer match or a war. Benigni's Oscars led all the news programs, with such descriptions as "historical event" and a "triumph for Italy."

Italian film critics mostly saw it as a long-needed jolt for other.

"Most Italian films are like Albanian films: their appeal stops at the border," Tullio Kezich, a film critic for the daily Corriere della Sera, said. "You can make money producing silly slapstick comedies, but if you want to make something more serious and lasting, then the example of Benigni is extremely important."

Some Italian directors expressed gratitude to Benigni, saying his success could help revive the Italian film world. "After eight to 10 years of crisis, in which there was widespread disaffection toward our cinema, which was sincerely mediocre," said Gillo Pontecorvo, the director of "The Battle of Algiers" in 1966, "this overwhelming success is a positive sign that comes at a time where we see fragile signs of renewal."

In Los Angeles Benigni savored his triumph. His film, nominated in seven categories, also won an Oscar for best original dramatic score, composed by Nicola Piovani.

"I want to thank my parents in Vergaio, who gave me the greatest gift: poverty," Benigni said in his acceptance speech.

The director's father, Luigi Benigni, 80, actually helped inspire the film. After Italy changed sides in 1943, Luigi Benigni, a poor Tuscan farm worker, ended up in a German labor camp where he almost starved to death. In the film, Benigni's character invents an elaborate game inside a German concentration camp to shield his son from its horrors and to keep him alive.

Benigni said it was his father's experience -- and the sometimes comic way he described it to his children -- that helped the director shape his characters and plot.

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Roberto Benigni grew up in Vergaio in postwar poverty, a class clown and child prodigy. His parents and his three older doting sisters encouraged his artistic bent, and after moving to Rome in 1972, he quickly made a name for himself in avant-garde theater.

Movies like "Johnny Stecchino" and "Il Mostro," slapstick farces centering on his hapless comic persona, made him Italy's biggest star and top moneymaker. But until "Life Is Beautiful," Benigni was not widely known in the USA.

In 1993, he starred in "Son of the Pink Panther," which did poorly.

Now the Italian media are proudly showing how Benigni is being lionized by Hollywood stars. Playwright Dario Fo, who won the 1997 Nobel Prize in Literature, said he was proud of Benigni's victory. "The fact that he won an Oscar because he is considered the best actor in the world is exalting," Fo said.

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