Cinematically, “Vincere” is as lively and as enigmatic as the young Benito Mussolini on whom the film is based. Marco Bellocchio’s film engages and enchants on a level that matches the same mystification instilled on the characters.
You’d be mistaken for presuming “Vincere” is a standard biopic, least of all on Mussolini (Filippo Timi). Here we see him as a young, lively, handsome man with a powerful glower in his eyes. Ideas and images of his rise to power are constantly flowing through his head, and the performance embodies an actually terrifying portrayal of Il Duce different from any image we’ve seen of him before.
As interesting as a character study of Mussolini would be at this young age, his personality is ultimately standard, and the film is more concerned with his lover and alleged wife Ida Dalser (Giovanna Mezzogiorno). Dalser met Mussolini in Milan when he was a journalist advocating socialism. She sold all of her possessions to help fund his newspaper Il Popolo D’Italia, and she had a passionate love affair with him during which time he fathered a child.
The intrigue of the film is in her madness and her obsession over her love for the man. After Mussolini is wounded in World War I, Ida comes to his side only to learn that he’s married Rachele Guidi. He denies any connection he has towards her and has her kept under surveillance ever since she began parading around their son, Benito Albino Mussolini, as proof of his infidelity. She’s eventually placed in a mental institution as she continues to insist that Mussolini is her husband, and Benito Albino is removed to an orphanage.
The strength of the film is in discovering a new angle for the sane-person-goes-to-mental-institution-and-no-one-believes-me-because-they-all-think-I’m-insane story. Her marriage to Mussolini may well have been true, even though no record of it was ever found, and moreover, it was no fantasy that Mussolini made love to her and cared for her. But what made her insane was her attraction. The energy Mussolini had, not even the man, the ideas or the power, was what swept her off her feet. Continue reading “Vincere Review”