Vincent (2009)

Directed by: Marco Bellocchio | 128 minutes | drama, biography, history | Actors: Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Filippo Timi, Corrado Invernizzi, Fausto Russo Alesi, Michela Cescon, Pier Giorgio Bellocchio, Paolo Pierobon, Bruno Cariello, Francesca Picozza, Simona Nobili, Giovanna Mori, Silvia Ferretti, Corinne Castelli, Diana, Fabrizia Bettini Dell’Erba, Benito Mussolini, Matteo Mussoni, Elena Prestic

From time to time a movie appears in which everything is just right. Great beautiful images, an idiosyncratic direction that does not always make it easy for the viewer, top level acting by all the actors involved, and last but not least a good story. For good stories, Italy can draw on a long history of fascinating and controversial events.

‘Vincere’ is about one of the most controversial episodes that Italy has known. Long-time director Marco Bellocchio has made a film with ‘Vincere’ that does not directly comment on the Italian fascism of Il Duce Mussolini, but focuses on the tragic relationship between the young Benito and his mistress Ida Dalser. Ida would continue to be married to, and have a child from, the man who would later become the “great leader” of Italy until her death. In the first part of Bellocchio’s masterpiece, the director uses a changing visual language: slowly drawn out free scenes without musical accompaniment are followed by fragmentary scenes of demonstrating crowds over which Mussolini’s rhetorical monologues sound almost ghostly. These subdued and then baroque images are in turn interrupted by original black-and-white images of a raging industrial Italy (read factories, factory pipes and a lot of smoke) with a number of intertitles that pop across the image as if we were looking at a combination of Fritz Langs ‘Metropolis’ and an old-fashioned newsreel are watching, enhanced by bombastic opera. It is clear that we are witnessing a drama in the making, but presented with a playfulness with which Bellocchio transcends the actual enumeration of events in the love affair between Benito and Ida. Where Ida is completely blind to her Benito, he is completely in tune with the biggest political upheavals of his time.

Filippo Timi plays Mussolini almost like a silent film actor. While making love, he practically doesn’t make contact with Ida, but silently raises his gaze. With theatrical eyes turning away, he seems to prefer to link his sexual pleasure to a vision of a higher and greatest future that he sees for himself and for which the time seems to be right. Time is represented here with equally theatrical symbolism by passing mist or clouds of smoke. For example, there is a scene in which Mussolini and Ida are about to walk out of a building, but then they see in the doorway that the street is shrouded in a thick fog. Mussolini slows down out of uncertainty. What will the future bring? With Ida by his side, he finally dares to step into the mist with determination. It is the independent woman Ida Dalser (played incomparably here by Giovanna Mezzogiorno) who, by selling her beauty salon Mussolini, provides the necessary financial support for his own newspaper Il Popolo d’Italia, but in doing so is throwing away her own future. A later scene is mirrored on this. The impact of grenades shrouds a passage in thick clouds of dust. Frightened passers-by run startled in all directions. Finally, Ida also emerges from the enormous clouds of dust, undaunted behind her pram and still with a determined step, but without her beloved Mussolini. When Mussolini returns injured from World War I, he chooses to deny his relationship (or unproven marriage) to Ida for political reasons. Benito marries another woman and disappears from her life and with it from the movie. Ida, her son and the viewer only see Benito again as Il Duce in the newsreel, an official portrait on the wall or an enormously sculpted head in the boarding school where son Benito junior is tucked away.

Bellocchio slightly adjusts the direction and editing in the second part of the film and gives Giovanna Mezzogiorno every opportunity to display her talent and make us feel the pain of Ida’s tragic fate. Ida does not want to accept Mussolini’s indifference and tries to draw attention to her situation through all kinds of possible authorities, such as the Pope and the King. This annoys the people who try to protect Il Duce’s immaculate image and eventually get rid of her in an institution. Separated from her son and denied a future, Ida perseveres to the bitter end. And precisely this obsessive “stubbornness” of Ida to keep seeking confrontation creates a field of tension in which our sympathy for Ida is tested. Mezzogiorno manages to portray this complicated character with breathtaking intensity and contributes in no small way to the success of this film. ‘Vincere’ is such a film that reminds us that cinema can be an unforgettable experience and thus also shows that Italian cinema is still able to deliver a masterpiece from time to time.