Vincere

The life of Benito Mussolini receives one of its most probing, sophisticated treatments at the hands of Marco Bellocchio through his focus on the figure of Ida Dalser, Mussolini’s first wife, with whom he had a son. Giovanna Mezzogiorno stars as Dalser, who falls for Il Duce (Filippo Timi) back when he was an up-and-coming, idiosyncratic socialist rising through the political ranks after World War I. She sells her belongings to help bankroll his newspaper Il Popolo d’Italia, a vital organ in the development of the fascist movement, but Mussolini winds up leaving her and their son high and dry, precipitating a painful descent that coincides with his continued ascent. Bellocchio connects the fascist project with the propagandistic powers of cinema, using archival footage to both situate Dalser’s story and to illustrate the medium’s role in the manufacturing of consent during the fascists’ rise to power.