Classic Italian director shows Mussolini’s romantic side

When compiling a list of the greatest Italian directors ever to grace the silver screen, names such as Antonioni, Bertolucci, Leone, Fellini, and Argento are sure to make an appearance. But while these auteurs have produced some of the most watched and studied films in cinema history, another name on the aforementioned list is relatively unknown on this side of the Atlantic: Marco Bellocchio.

Over the past 45 years, Bellocchio has provided audiences around the world with distinct views and probing explorations of Italian society. Now, he has turned his camera toward arguably the most famous Italian of the last century, Benito Mussolini, with his new film “Vincere,” which is now in theaters.

“Truth and actual events are my starting point,” Bellocchio said of the origins of the film in an interview conducted in October during the New York Film Festival, where “Vincere” received high praise from both critics and audiences after having won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

“I started from a private story: the passion of Ida Dalser for a young political activist by the name of Mussolini,” Bellocchio said.

Though the infamous Fascist figure reigns over the entire film, the actual protagonist is Dalser, a woman who falls in love with a young Mussolini before being left in tears as his power grows. The movie progresses from dark to darker by the minute, as it traces her subsequent passionate insanity, but remains grounded by an absolutely riveting performance from Giovanna Mezzogiorno, who conveys more of Ida’s soul in her eyes than most actresses do with their entire performance.

“When we were preparing for the film,” Bellocchio said of Mezzogiorno’s performance, “you understand whether or not an actor gets the character. And she did.”

When directing historical fiction, drawing the line between historical accuracy and artistic liberty is one of the most important roles of the director. Though Bellocchio and his team did in-depth research, the director wasn’t afraid to deviate from the actual events. “Each scene does stem from something that actually happened in history but was then was re-elaborated by myself,” he said.
The style Bellocchio chose for the film, full of deep contrast and sparse lighting, helps convey his approach to Fascist Italy. “I followed a style that kept the characters very close to the historical period,” he said.

Another pitfall of many historical docudramas is forced social commentary. Many writers and directors love concocting connections between historical sins and the state of affairs in the world today, often focusing more on the politics than the characters of the story. Bellocchio avoids such an approach at all costs. Though he’s been an active denouncer of Italian Fascism for his entire life—a fact that has seeped through in his films on multiple occasions—Bellocchio insists that this was not on his agenda with “Vincere.”

“I mainly followed their story, and politics and the political issues came by themselves. There was no specific message that I wanted to give against Fascism,” he said.

Even so, audiences around the world have drawn comparisons between the Italy depicted in the film and present-day Italy under the controversial prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. “The relations with today’s history of Italy—that is, comparing Mussolini with Berlusconi—is totally casual,” Bellocchio said. “It’s not something that I wanted to promote or preset. So it’s the viewers themselves that have to decide how to perceive the film emotionally and rationally.”