Vincere

Marco Bellocchio's Dark View of Mussolini's Private Life
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...

Mussolini's method and madness explored in Vincere
You may not learn a lot of historical facts surrounding the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini's reign by watching director Marco Bellocchio's latest film, Vincere. But you will be highly entertained.

It's not that there isn't a lot of history packed into the film; it's just that because it was made for an Italian audience there isn't a lot of explanation or perspective given to the facts it presents. But so what? Ten minutes of watching Bellocchio's Mussolini work his way up the ranks of Italian politics will have you making a mental note to get a biography of the man from Amazon.com when you get home.

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An act of resistance
Through the struggle of this woman, Vincere is not only a critique of fascism and the dictatorship of Mussolini.. It is too a real hymn to cinema as a medium conveying meaning in an alienated world. In this point of view, it is by itself an act of resistance, in a world invaded by advertisements, and whose Imaginary is colonized by the society of the spectacle.

Bellocchio offers us an operatic tour de force. Performance by both actors is exceptionnal, but especially from Giovanna Mezzogiorno, amazingly inhabited in the role of her young career, on par with Falconetti in Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc. It is a performance and a movie that would indeniably have deserved more prizes, had Cannes 2009 jury been fair, or had Italy selected it as the Italian candidate for the 2010 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Movie, instead of a more commercial one.

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