Bengasi - Schicksal einer Stadt

The film was made in 1942 in Mussolini's Italy during World War II, ostensibly as a propaganda movie. It deals with the fall of Bengasi (Italian spelling of Benghazi) to the British, and the later recapture of the Libyan city by the Italians (and Germans). The film won the Mussolini Prize at the Venice International Exhibition of Cinematographic Arts of 1942. Good acting and very good musical score. What is surprising is the anti-war undercurrent of the film. Nazi censors would have never certified such a movie for German audiences. Maimed soldiers, dead children, broken homes -- the high human cost for waging war is not kept from the audience (even the British are portrayed as fairly ordinary people!). Amedeo Nazzari is probably the only actor one might recognize, since he went on to have a distinguished career after the war, although here he seems to play his part without much conviction. The rest of the cast does well, and the film portrays a side of the war that is seldom seen outside Europe. Not for everyone, but certainly worth having a look if you're interested in the events of that era, even though it is propaganda.

Rarely does a war film from the early 1940s manage to balance propagandistic intent with such a striking intimacy of human suffering as this film does. Shot at the height of Italy's involvement in the Second World War, the film emerges not simply as a nationalistic document, but as a surprisingly nuanced meditation on loss, complicity, courage, and the gendered experiences of war. The fact that the narrative hinges on the perspectives of four civilian women is not only remarkable for its time, but provides a counterpoint to the often hyper-masculinized iconography typical of Desert War films. Instead of tanks and troop movements dominating the frame, the camera here lingers on faces, on quiet gestures, and on fractured silences. This approach distances the film from contemporaries like Sahara (1943), where action sequences and heroism shape the core, and brings it closer in tone to the quieter desperation of The Way Ahead, though even that lacks the intense interiority seen here.

Visually, the film stands as a triumph of wartime cinematography. The work behind the camera demonstrates both ambition and restraint, with compositions that take full advantage of contrast and shadow, evoking not only the harshness of the desert environment but also the inner desolation of the characters. The recreated Benghazi set at Cinecittà is nothing short of astonishing-an immersive urban landscape teeming with extras, detail, and movement, but never so overwhelming as to detract from the smaller stories playing out within it. This level of reconstruction, particularly in a film so explicitly tied to a contemporaneous military campaign, conveys a seriousness of production that aligns it more with state-sponsored epics than with mere morale-boosters.

Sound design and scoring are equally effective. The musical cues are often understated, yet emotionally acute, avoiding the overbearing swell that marred many propagandistic scores of the time. The use of silence, too, is skillful-moments of hesitation, fear, or realization are frequently left unscored, giving the performers the space to deliver layered, deeply felt performances. One can sense the careful calibration between the director and the composer, working in tandem to avoid melodrama and instead embrace emotional realism.

The performances are, across the board, impressive. The casting of the four central women is pitch-perfect. Each embodies a distinct emotional register of wartime experience. In particular, the portrayal of a mother silently wrestling with the knowledge of her son's death while tending to her injured husband is harrowing-not for any overt display of grief, but for the sheer containment of it. Similarly, the young woman who discovers her fiancé may be a traitor navigates her disillusionment with a quiet intensity that lingers beyond her scenes. The prostitute's storyline is perhaps the most narratively conventional, yet the actress brings a grounded humanity to it, especially in her physical interactions with the hidden soldier, which oscillate between fear, resolve, and tenderness. The older mother figure, meanwhile, introduces a complex moral ambiguity to the film: her grief for her murdered husband at the hands of Allied troops (portrayed with a deliberate and unsettling coarseness) adds a rare inversion to the usual Axis-centric victimhood narratives. The decision to depict the Australians as near-fascistic in behavior, while likely driven by nationalistic aims, inadvertently exposes the universality of wartime brutality.

The male roles, particularly those of the officers, are treated with a more formal detachment. The English soldiers are almost caricatures of imperial decorum, with their exaggerated accents and refined demeanor, which might come across as satirical or simply implausible. This tonal inconsistency reveals some of the film's ideological scaffolding-there are moments where the propagandistic intent seeps through the narrative seams, particularly in the noble Italian officers contrasted with the crude behavior of their enemies. In the case of the rank-and-file soldiers, the depiction becomes even more openly derisive: they are shown in line with their long-standing reputation, already widespread at the time, as habitual drunkards. While clearly exaggerated for propagandistic effect, it would be disingenuous to dismiss the portrayal as pure invention-after all, even the British Prime Minister during the war was famously fond of alcohol. That reputation remains very much alive in the present day, to the extent that historiography has found itself unable to fully refute or even meaningfully revise it. It survives not as a footnote, but as a persistent cultural trope, too embedded to be dismantled. Such propagandistic exaggerations, though ideologically transparent, are not without their narrative consequences: they create a sharply polarized moral world that risks flattening nuance. And yet, even within those confines, the lead Italian male actor delivers a performance that transcends the didactic frame. His portrayal of a wounded captain-both physically and emotionally broken-is filled with dignity and internal complexity. His scenes are some of the few where the film allows itself to question its own certainties.

What sets this film apart from others of its genre and era is precisely its refusal to glorify war even as it seeks to affirm national virtue. Unlike Un Pilota Ritorna, which frames its protagonist's suffering within a redemptive nationalist arc, this film allows its characters to remain fractured. They do not emerge whole or ennobled. If anything, their dignity lies in their endurance, not in any triumph. This is especially true of the women, whose arcs are not resolved with clarity or closure, but left suspended in moral and emotional uncertainty.

In the end, this is a film that, for all its historical entanglements, offers a raw and often uncomfortable look at the human cost of war. It is not a story of grand victories or clear enemies. It is a chamber piece disguised as a war film, a meditation on silence, fear, and moral compromise, dressed in the uniform of a national epic. That it was made when the outcome of the war was still far from certain only adds to its haunting power. It remains one of the rare wartime productions whose vision is not obscured by its ideology, but instead, complicated and-at times-quietly subverted by it.

It is such a pity that a true pioneer of film such as Augusto Genina should be virtually forgotten today. He excelled in so many genres from the sophistication of 'Prix de beauté' to the neo-realism of 'Cielo sulla palude'.

Here he is in 'Italian fascist mode' but still brings his qualities to bear.

The occupation of Benghazi in the Desert War by the British is viewed from the point of view of individual suffering, mainly through the eyes of four women, each of whom is perfectly cast.

Mária Tasnádi as Carla fails to find the courage to tell her wounded husband that their young son is dead whilst the Giuliana of Vivi Gioi cannot come to terms with the knowledge that the man who has proposed to her might be a collaborator. Laura Redi is Maria, a prostitute who hides a soldier and Amelia Bissi is an elderly mother who miraculously finds her son but whose husband is murdered by a bunch of loutish Australians who behave, ironically, like Black or Brownshirts!

The English soldiery are treated pretty lightly in this and the officers portrayed as teddibly civilised. One is intrigued as to where the makers of this found the upper crust voices for 'dubbing' purposes!

Amadeo Nazzari brings his charisma to bear in a pretty thankless role but the acting honours go to Fosco Giachetti, certainly no stranger to Genina's propoganda fare, whose performance as the maimed Capitano Berti combines both strength and sensitivity.

Genina has the services of Aldo Tonti behind the camera and Antonio Veretti again contributes a splendid score. No expense has been spared on the hordes of extras and a reconstruction of Benghazi at Cinecitta studios.

This film is one of great humanity and shows not just the physical damage of war in terms of lost limbs and sightless eyes but the devastating psychological toll. The best war films are, by definition, anti-war and this piece, despite its ostensibly propogandist nature, is no exception.