Flawed but fascinating, Vincere (out on DVD) is based on the possibility that Mussolini had an unacknowledged wife and son from early in life—or at least a devoted but delusional jilted woman who bore him a son he never recognized. Regardless of where the truth falls, the film nails the side of Mussolini lost to later history. He began as a brash commandingly violent leftist in league with the avant-garde Futuristic art movement, breaking with Italy’s anti-war Socialist party over that country’s entry into World War I and lurching into founding the grandiose, revolutionary nationalist movement with a name he coined, Fascism.
Director Marco Bellocchio weaves period newsreels into the dramatic reenactments. The 1920s footage shows the shaven-headed freebooter as a man of dash and daring, a sinister rock star of is day; later newsreels remind us of the buffoonish self-caricature, the Nazi puppet, he became.
The Story of Ida Dalser, a woman scorned by a powerful man, is straight out of a 19th century Italian libretto, which excuses the film’s high-strung operatic tone. What can’t be overlooked is the jumbled progression of the story, which makes it needlessly hard to follow even if you know the general history. Elevating Vincere (the Mussolini exhortation to “Win!”) are the deeply felt performances by Giovanna Mezzogiorno as Id and Filippo Timi as the fire-eating swaggering dictator to be.
