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Carried along by its superlative image-making, Vincere offers a new perspective on the life of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. It's a shrewd account of political and emotional oppression, says Mike McCahill.

Here’s a novel way of getting at a dictator: go through their nearest and dearest. Marco Bellocchio's forceful historical drama Vincere observes Benito Mussolini's rise to power through the eyes (and limbs) of the real-life figure Ida Dalser (Giovanna Mezzogiorno), a political groupie who became first the fascist leader’s stalker, later his mistress and, eventually, the most personal casualty of the Il Duce mindset.

First crossing paths in Trento in 1907, where Ida shelters Mussolini (Filippo Timi) from a police baton charge and ends up with blood on her hands, the pair are soon locked in a mutual embrace of sex and power. Emerging onto a balcony following his initial conquest of Ida, imagining screaming hordes below him, this Benito is nakedly egotistical, but there's equally a hint of destructive craziness in his lover's eyes: we can’t help but spot how Ida is attracted to this strutting martinet, and the disaster both she and her country are heading towards.

Everything about Vincere is declamatory, from the title ("WIN!") to the expressionistic lighting to the fractured editing that juxtaposes dramatised scenes with remarkable archive footage. Bellocchio insists upon a formal violence to match the violence of the times: he pulls no punches. The beautiful Mezzogiorno is here shot to look pale and tired, as though she hasn't slept for decades; nevertheless, her Ida becomes as heroic as she was tragic, a figure who - during one assassination attempt - came close to altering the course of history forever.

Bellocchio's imagemaking remains superlative. Dark, satanic mills belch toxic smoke into the sky during a duel; lying in military hospital, the wounded Benito projects himself into a silent film of the Passion. The stylistic boldness isn't so far removed from Paolo Sorrentino's recent Andreotti hypothesis Il Divo, though here - as befits a film about control - it's been applied with greater shrewdness: the newsreel grounds Vincere in some very harsh realities. Italian cinema may at last be ready to follow its German counterpart and face its troubled past head-on: either way, this is a gripping account of political and emotional oppression.

 

Mike McCahill on 26th July 2010
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