Conspiração ao Poder

Interesting film, made for tv in Europe originally. The DVD version is significantly longer than the video version. Many scenes are extended as well as new scenes. Nice historical soap opera with much tragedy. Hopkins as usual is great as is Sarandon and Hoskins. The dubbing is kinda obvious, but so what, it works.

Most people remember Benito Mussolini simply as Hitler's ally in WWII. "Mussolini and I" shows his family life during his years as Italy's leader. Starring Bob Hoskins as the Fascist himself, Susan Sarandon plays his daughter Edda, who married Count Galeazzo Ciano (Anthony Hopkins). Among other things, the movie shows not only how the relationships among these people were always shaky, but also that Mussolini and Hitler didn't totally trust each other.

Towards the war's end, Il Duce had Count Ciano executed, and shortly thereafter, Il Duce himself was of course arrested and executed. Edda escaped to Switzerland and survived the war. It's too bad that Mussolini was already dead when they hung him on the meat hook.

Very well done.

I've watched 30 minutes of this movie skipping the interminable opening credits and stopped the whole thing. My goodness! Was Hitler one of the descendant of an English Lord?Was he a student at Oxford? Does the director of this flop has ever watched the many newsreels showing the Fuhrer speaking and shouting?

From this on it was obvious that the whole production would be a masterpiece of historical errors or flaws.

There is today a tendency in the world's movie industry to treat history as a secondary subject where you can do whatever you want as long as you make money and where accuracy to historical facts and characters is considered as something unimportant.

Americans were at one time the masters of such behavior especially if the historical facts did not concern their own country, now the disease has spread all over the world but perhaps in Germany which up to now has had the courage to produce movies showing without indulgence the horrors which took place on its soil between 1930 and 1945.

That we Europeans be not able to consider with honesty our faults, our mistakes or worse, is a very dangerous symptom of ethical failure on our part.

I saw this on a commercial TV movie channel, in two parts. The intervening adverts, seemingly endless, inevitably chopped up the film so much that it spoiled the experience for me.

With an incredible cast - Bob Hoskins surprisingly effective as the surly Mussolini, Anthony Hopkins as Count Galeazzo Cianno and Susan Sarandon as Cianno's wife and daughter of Mussolini, this should have been an incredible epic that everybody would now have seen.

I'm no expert on Italian history and this history lesson was interesting but not compelling enough, for me - not for 4 hours, at least. The 4:3 screen ratio cried out for huge TV widescreen and it remained a rather dingy looking TV movie from start to end. There were some good set pieces, particularly toward the end but I have an overwhelming recollection of long discussions in state rooms.

It may be worthwhile buying the DVD to eliminate the pesky ad breaks and to re-watch, as there is so much going on and one is slightly overawed by the great cast that it would benefit from a repeat. If one had the extra incentive of wanting to know more about the subject, then that is more of a reason but for most and bearing in mind the current price, I wouldn't say that it is worth it. Though, if you have the requisite TV package and it comes on again, then, yes, go for it.

The script for this TV soap opera is so bad that even A. Hopkins at some point had to play like an undergrad drama-student so as to bring some life in his script-dead character. I do not know whether this was the purpose of the director, but Hopkins' Ciano reeked nothing but vanity, fear and lack of self-esteem. The real Ciano possibly was all that but then, why make a movie about him? Mussolini was a bit more convincing, and his long way down was as if closer to the truth. Edda Mussolini was plain ridiculous (not because of Sarandon, but because of the impotent script), while she had to be the central character of this alleged familial drama. Watch it only if you enjoy Venezuelan soap opera.