Vincere

Bellocchio's latest is yet another look at a controversial Italian political figure, Benito Mussolini; however, it deals with a phase of his life which was kept 'in the shadows' for a great many years – the dictator's first marriage, which even yielded him a son! As was the case with GOOD MORNING, NIGHT (2003) – in which the film-maker had treated the abduction and execution of ex-Prime Minister Aldo Moro – the politician emerges not to be the central figure after all (remaining, similarly, little more than a cipher); here, in fact, the protagonist is Mussolini's secreted – or, more precisely, rejected – wife, who even winds up in a mental institution (a fate which also befalls their offspring, where both would die eventually)! The meticulous period reconstruction (and emphatic score) was to be expected, yet the human drama – and, by extension, the fine leading performances of Giovanna Mezzogiorno and Fabrizio Timi – is ultimately what renders the movie compelling; interestingly, while Mussolini as an older man is shown only via authentic newsreel footage, Timi plays both father and son as a young adult! Needless to say, the director distances himself from the Fascist fervor which had gripped his nation in those pivotal war years – choosing to depict Mussolini as godless (the film begins with him defying the Almighty to strike him down) and inhuman (both in the treatment of his first family and in his animalistic sexual prowess: the latter scenes, of which there a few, would otherwise have no discernible point) and even goes so far as to ridicule him by having son repeatedly caricature father's famously arrogant mannerisms while speechifying (with this in mind, the title – which translates to "Winning" – is clearly ironic, since what it presents is anything but the correct fighting spirit)!

Six years after his intimate reimagining of the Aldo Moro kidnapping that rocked Italy in the Seventies in 'Buongiorno, notte,' Bellocchio has made another haunting and even more sweeping and iconic historical film. 'Vincere' is about Benito Mussolini's secret first wife and son, who were hidden away and both died in insane asylums. 'Vincere' depicts a strange, distorted period in Italian history, and skillfully melds stock footage with recreations, black and white with color (rich in reds, alternating with ashen grays), public tumult with private torment. Visually lush and full of chiaroscuro, 'Vincere is also a showcase for the talents of Giovanna Mezzogiorno as Ida Dalzer, the woman who met Benito Mussolini when he was the editor of Avanti, an ardent Socialist with strong populist, anti-monarchical, anti-clerical views, who dramatically dares God, if He exists, to strike him down.

Opening sequences alternate between 1907 when Ida first meets Mussolini (Filippo Timi) in Trent, and 1914 in Milan. She is a respectable middle-class woman with a beauty salon. On the eve of WWI, he shifts from pacifist liberal to pro-war rightist. Deathly afraid of ending in mediocrity, he is ravenous for power. Ida intensely supports him whatever his direction, and sells all her possessions, including jewels, furniture, and her business, to support his newspaper. This leads to the founding of the paper "Il Popolo d'Italia," which becomes a fascist rallying-point. The film makes clear that she is madly in love but never mad. It also makes clear that though he declares his love of her and fathers a son named Benito, born just before he goes off to the front, whom he acknowledges, and they evidently marry, he keeps a certain distance.

In WWI Mussolini is wounded in the army and is pleased to be congratulated by the king. When Ida finds him he is being tended in hospital by a new lover, a woman named Rachele (Michela Cescon). This is the last time Ida sees him in person.

As Mussolini rises to power and becomes the dictator known as "Il Duce," linking himself with the ancient Roman emperors and dreaming of world domination, Ida is more and more kept away from him, and appears as a figure on the outskirts of power, at the center only of sporadic and operatic encounters during which she pleads for recognition and attention, only to be swept aside. She has a marriage certificate but it becomes lost. All her papers are taken. Mussolini remains with Rachele, is married to her, and fathers children by her. He conceals that he was married to Ida.

Ida, who calls herself Ida Mussolini and her son Benito or Benitino Albino Mussolini, is a woman obsessed, whom others urge to move on, but will not give up her pursuit of her idol and the man she believes to be the love of her life. For a while she is put under a kind of house arrest with her sister, then confined in one insane asylum and then another, while her son is taken away and sent to boarding school. She writes letters of protest to everyone, including the king and the pope; this of course only makes her seem crazy, but in a hearing it's evident that she is tragically obsessed, but lucid, and in fact she is never declared insane. A psychiatrist (Corrado Invernizzi) vows to help her, but she is taken elsewhere before he can do so.

The film is rife with operatic passages featuring bright lights, dark shadows, violent storms and heavy rainfall, and yet retains its own kind of lucidity; it's clear that the country and not Ida is mad, and Il Duce is the head madman. The most haunting scene shows an actual speech by Mussolini at the height of his power in which the gestures and facial contortions are not only ugly and strange but unmistakably those of a dangerous madman. Cut to the now grown son of Ida, doing an imitation of Mussolini's speechifying and himself appearing genuinely deranged. Records show both mother and son received treatments that were akin to torture, and Ida was incarcerated for eleven years. The son died at the age of 26; Ida Dalser died at 57, 30 years after she first met Mussolini Italy's eventual fascist dictator.

Since the film's protagonist is on the periphery, it makes sense that eventually we know Mussolini only through the newsreels she occasionally sees, which are brilliantly integrated into the film; it's hard to convey how striking and integral these images are. There are also haunting still portraits of Ida, showing her at progressive stages of suffering. The film's sense of pictorialism is augmented by a sense of the visual language of the period, heightened by a scene in which Mussolini is introduced to the Italian Futurists and their paintings, and excellent use is made of Futurist and Fascist graphic design and fonts. The sound track is powerful but muted.

The film in fact is most satisfying visually, and despite Giovanna Mezzogiorno's dedication to her performance as the independent yet long-suffering woman, there is a lack of three-dimensionality in the characterizations: the figures are monumental but not quite human. The focus becomes a bit distant even on Ida as her torments increase, and there is nothing about the private life of Il Duce. Finally there is not the intimacy Bellocchio achieved in 'Good Morning, Night,' except in the first intimate scenes between the young (still hairy) Benito and Ida. Nonetheless, the effect of the whole film is both sick-making and scary.

Though Bellocchio's style here is operatic, it's a swift-moving, elegant, contemporary kind of opera, and it works.

An IFC film, 'Vincere' was nominated for the Golden Palm at Cannes and was also shown at Telluride, and Toronto. I saw it at a preview screening of the New York Film Festival.

Marco Bellocchio directed and wrote (with Daniela Ceselli) this very dark version of the private life of Benito Mussolini, a portion of his life that centered on his mistress and the mother of his son, one Ida Dalser. Though the film never really reveals whether Ida Dasler and Mussolini were married (Mussolini already had a wife and child when he me the devastatingly beautiful and erotic Ida) but that simply doesn't seem to matter while watching this artistic triumph of a film. What the director does manage to portray is the life and times of Italy before, during, and after WW I, a time during which Mussolini began his influence as a socialist and ultimately founded Italian Fascism, becoming the Fascist dictator of Italy. The many permutations of the concepts of monarchism and socialism and eventually Fascism are delineated by the film, if at times as shadowy in their explanation as is the director's love of dark in lighting the screen during almost all of the action. Bellocchio uses black and white film clips throughout his film giving it a somewhat documentary flair, but the performances by the actors make this film very much a visceral drama and not a dry rehash of history.

Filippo Timi gives a gripping performance as both Mussolini the ardent and handsome lover and politician whose life is always controlled by the term 'Vincere' ('Win'). Aptly, when the bulky monster Mussolini rises out of the socialism into fascism and the war the part of Mussolini is 'played' by the film clips of the real person. But as the film draws toward the end of his life, Timi once again enters the film in the role of his son Benito Albino Mussolini, a lad stricken with insanity and confined to a sanitarium. As Mussolini's mistress (aka 'wife' by her accounts) Ida Dalser, Giovanna Mezzogiorno offers one of the strongest cinematic portrayals of an important woman of history. She is simply riveting - erotic when the romance begins, faithful even when she discovers Mussolini has a wife, and uncontrollably fierce as she is confined by the government (with Mussolini's approval) to an insane asylum. This is one of those performances that will live in memory long after this film is seen and hopefully will garner awards when the Oscar season comes round.

In all this is a beautifully wrought, intelligent, beautifully acted, occasionally confusing melodrama that sheds light on the man Mussolini, his rise to power, and the women who came under his influence. Recommended.

Grady Harp

In the past sixty,plus years since Italian dictator,Benito Mussolini was deposed from power,he has only been painted as the brutal,power mad despot,generally depicted in films. What is little known is that he originally started out in the Italian Socialist Party,who was duped to join the Fascist movement,after World War 1. What is also less known was he was married to another woman (Ida Dalser). 'Vincere' (basically Italian for victory,or 'Win' as the film's title translates to in the English subtitled edition,here)is the sad tale of Dalser,when she fell head over heels for the young Benito Mussolini,when he was a young,head strong man in love with Marxist theory (he is shown early on dismissing the existence of God to an outraged crowd). As the years move on,the young Benito marries Ida,has one son with her,becomes seduced by the warped ideas of nationalism,which bloomed into all out Fascism. From here on, the focus is on Ida,who starts to see her Benito less & less,until she pretty much is rendered invisible to Benito (their marriage is regarded non existent,much to the chagrin of Ida),until Ida is eventually kept imprisoned in a mental hospital for life. Marco Bellochio ('Henry IV',the remake of 'Devil In The Flesh')writes & directs this chilling portrayal of a woman driven mad by circumstances beyond her control. Giovanna Messogiorno plays Ida Dalser,with passion & panache. Felppo Timi wears two hats as the young Benito Mussolini (early on,replaced by vintage black & white film clips of the actual Benito Mussolini in later years),as well as Benito Albino,his son with Ida,as a young man (who would eventually end up in the same sad ending as his mother). The rest of the cast is rounded out with the likes of Corrado Invernizzi,Fausto Russo Alesi,and others. the film also acts as a back drop for Italian social history,from 1907,until 1945,with some nice use of visual metaphors (religious images are abundant,here,as the Catholic church was an ardent supporter of the Fascist movement in the early 20th century). Another nice notch for Bellochio. Spoken in Italian with English subtitles. Not rated by the MPAA,this film contains strong language,full frontal nudity (both female & male),some strong sexual content,and disturbing images not for young eyes

If the film-writer wanted to emphasize WHY the young Mussolini hated the church, he did a great job. The church's role in backing the power-mad dictator is demonstrated again and again. The movie shows his wife as clear-minded, yet her actions even after the priest has cautioned her on how to 'act' and appear to submit, indicate a crazed woman who can't believe that her actions are hopeless in the light of the corrupt country that Italy has become. there are many parallels to the United States here, as our country becomes increasingly an oligarchy, ruled by corporations with few in Congress not bought by their bribes.

Makes you wonder if speaking out does any good in such a hypocritical, ignorant time in which the T-Partiers, not realizing they embody the rants of Mussolini, speak to the low-esteem, the animalistic urges of the masses. This was a fantastic movie and I was amazed that there were so few in the audience, though not amazed that it appeared at our art movie houses here in Boston (the West Newton's adjunct, the Arlington's Capitol).