Vincere

 

Director Marco Bellocchio

The director on the set with Giovanna Mezzogiorno

Ida Dalser

VINCERE                  A                                                                                                                 Italy  France  (128 mi)  2009  d: Marco Bellochio

If I die who will remember me?                                                                                                       —Ida Dalser

As ballsy a film as you’re going to see, at times showing the ferocity of spirit and matchless flamboyance of Orson Welles’ CITIZEN KANE (1941), or Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist (Il Conformista) (1970), with a magnificent opening 45 minutes that feels like an assault to the senses, using archival footage with the assuredness of a documentary director like Terrence Davies in his recent cinematic essay Of Time and the City (2008), coming on the heels of Paolo Sorrentino’s Il Divo (Il divo: La spettacolare vita di Giulio Andreotti) (2008), sharing the same stylistic bravado, where instantly we are propelled smack dab in the middle of a precipitous moment in history, as a young Benito Mussolini is a trade union activist theatrically attempting to persuade a group of socialists that God really doesn’t exist, a meeting that ends in sheer pandemonium.  Out of this darkness, mostly shot by Daniele Ciprí in the shadows of already darkened rooms, the film cuts to a few years later as the police are attacking Mussolini as a rabble rouser, where he is seen like a Keystone Cops episode running towards the camera through a cloud of smoke, followed shortly afterwards by the police.  Later national troops are on his trail firing shots, where he conveniently slips into a warehouse under the protection of an unidentified young mystery woman that we may have seen before in the opening scene, who also happens to do some modeling in Milan, but soon without a word she is in the arms of Mussolini, later in his bed making love, eventually following him everywhere, a loyal admirer who seems to complete a transformative image of himself from man to icon, providing sensuality and passion, two sides of the same coin, where she becomes the ultimate metaphor for Mussolini seducing an entire nation.  Moving back and forth in time with ease, with a screenplay by Bellocchio and Daniela Ceselli, we meet the principal players, Filippo Timo who is fiercely dynamic as the young Mussolini, and Giovanna Mezzogiorno, daughter of the late lamented 70’s arthouse screen idol Vittorio Mezzogiorno, who couldn’t be more breathtakingly elegant as the aristocratic hairdresser Ida Dalser.  This couple is marked by their sexual liberation, as Dalser in particular is used to showcasing her body as a model, while Mussolini is also known for flamboyant bodily gestures, with whirling eyes, chin thrust out, a protruding lower lip, with spread legs and hands on hips while puffing his chest out, where this physical dimension is able to attract people's attention and arouse the enthusiasm of the crowds, an integral part of his ascent to power.  Mussolini eventually tries to convince the socialists to get off their asses and actually stand for something instead of remaining neutral, but when he insists on advocating war, he is thrown out of the party for his destructive influence.  Time marches forward as scenes are accentuated by headlines boldly flashing across the screen, punctuated by Carlo Crivelli’s bombastic music, also accompanied by the pulsating energy of Phillip Glass, an emphatic, strikingly original use of music that drives home the exhilarating message of naked ambition and untapped raw power.  The film is notably listed at #2 in 2009 from Cahiers du Cinema: Top Ten Lists 1951-2009, while winning four awards at the 2009 Chicago Film Festival, Best Actor (Filippo Timi), Best Actress (Giovanna Mezzogiorno), Best Director (Marco Bellocchio), and Best Cinematography (Daniele Ciprì), Chicago International Film Festival Winners. 

Seemingly inseparable, as the two are in nearly every scene together, demonstrating a preoccupation with sex, power, and madness, the now pregnant Dalser is so taken by him that she sells her business, a beauty parlor, as well as her clothes, her jewelry, and all of her personal belongings in order to finance Mussolini’s transition from the editor of the socialist newspaper Avanti to the founder of his own paper, Il Popolo d’Italia, a platform for his message of fascism.  They marry and have a child, though onscreen Mussolini goes from standing naked on a hotel balcony envisioning a huge crowd in the empty square below to becoming the full-fledged leader of the country in just a few shots.  As Italy marches off to war in WWI, one of the more inspired scenes is the image of a hospital ward of wounded soldiers where newsreel coverage of the war is shown on the walls, with Mussolini seen lying in his hospital bed as Giulio Antamoro’s passion play film about Jesus, CHRISTUS (1916), is projected onto a sheet above the patients, clearly identifying himself as a deity figure, a wonderful blend of cinema and reality thrust together in the same shot.  When word of a wounded Mussolini is announced (from a training accident), Dalser visits him in the hospital as he is being nursed back to health by another woman who has just become his wife, Rachele Guidi (Michela Cescon), the daughter of his father’s mistress, a plain and ordinary woman who would bear him four more children.  Dalser lashes out at her rival, demanding her rights as Mussolini’s true wife and the mother of his first-born son, only to be led away by force.  This is the last time Dalser would ever see the man again, as by now he has denounced their marriage and denied her son is his.  Without warning, the darkness of the opening scenes gives way to the light of day, as the fascists of Mussolini soon gain control of the Italian government, where Timo the actor is never seen again in the role, replaced by the real Il Duce as depicted in Luce newsreel footage (Istituto Luce) giving fevered speeches that send euphoric crowds into a nationalistic frenzy.  One of the more vivid newsreel scenes is the operatic use of the music from Puccini’s Tosca, the ultimate betrayal opera, which underscores Mussolini forging an unholy alliance with the Pope by offering him his own Vatican City, using the church to legitimize his power, where this tenuous romantic liaison and its offspring became not just a secret embarrassment, but a political liability that needs to be extinguished.  Ironic that Mussolini the atheist would subsequently renew his vows with his new wife through the church, a sign that he’s all but abandoned his original principles.  What stands out is the tendency of fascist systems to suppress histories, both personal and national, while exploiting popular media to blind people of the truth, using cinema as the strongest propaganda weapon of the state.  Until this film, most were likely not even aware of Ida Dalser, who was airbrushed out of history by the fascist dictator once he rose to power, erasing any “official” record of Ida Dalser and her son, but in 2005 Italian journalist Marco Zeni uncovered archival documents providing evidence of their marriage and the existence of his first-born son (Movie Review: Vincere), resulting in two books and a TV documentary, having profound relevance as efforts by the Italian right to rehabilitate Mussolini as a good family man who was occasionally misguided but essentially harmless led to the post-fascist National Alliance and The People of Freedom government of Silvio Berlusconi, including the ascension of neo-fascist parliamentarian Alessandra Mussolini, Il Duce’s granddaughter, where even today Italy has still not closed the fascist-era chapter of history.  

The entire tone of the film shifts away from a Mussolini onscreen to an unseen Mussolini whose disturbing impact couldn’t be more pronounced due to his heavy-handed abandonment of Dalser and her son despite her claims she is his legitimate wife.  Due to the political baggage this could potentially bring, their very existence needs to be suppressed, so she is sent to a tucked away rural estate of her brother for her son’s protection, as the family is under the watchful eyes of military surveillance, eventually kidnapping the ten-year old son, who she never sees again, while Dalser is sent to a mental institution, Venice’s San Clemente psychiatric hospital, where nuns are her jailers as she repeats her claims to deaf ears.  Unfortunately, this storyline, although true, bears a similarity to the histrionics of Clint Eastwood’s recent Angelina Jolie vehicle in CHANGELING (2008), where both women resolutely repeat their claims with such certainty that the state’s only alternative is to discount the information as the rantings of a mad woman.  While Mussolini himself was engaged in an unstoppable rise to power, Dalser was living through a long and just as unstoppable descent into hell, where she and her son were both made to rot in their solitudes, falling into oblivion, creating some of the more intimate and dark aspects of the human soul, accentuating the pain of Dalser’s tragic fate, which stands in stark contrast to Mussolini’s pathological indifference, hiding a perverse side of Mussolini’s character.  Here the film lingers and slows somewhat captivated by her pathos, matching that of the helplessness of the nation, yet there continues to be highly expressive scenes, even as Dalser attempts to escape, crawling over the iron bars which go all the way up to the ceiling so there is no escape.  There is a scene of her trapped in the darkness, stuck halfway up the iron bars, as a heavy snow falls outside, throwing letters through the bars that will never be delivered, an image that sticks in our minds where she is hopelessly forgotten.  When they show Charlie Chaplin’s THE KID (1921) at the mental asylum, Dalser is beside herself with grief watching them snatch the Little Tramp’s kid away, but overwhelmed with joy when they are reunited.  What’s not clear, at least in the movie, is whether she hallucinates the marriage shown onscreen or whether it actually happened, as no marriage certificate was ever found, but it would have been destroyed by fascist agents.  Trapped and tortured, it’s clear the message inferred is that Dalser is completely sane while Mussolini’s insanity may well have done irreparable harm leading Italy into two lost world wars.  But this film never projects that far, as the fascists control the police, who eventually keep both Dalser and her son Benito Albino (also played as an adult by Filippo Timo) in separate mental institutions where both eventually die under confinement.  Mussolini’s regime, as part of the fascist playbook, often used psychiatric institutions to incarcerate and silence its opponents, where his historical significance in Italy is enormous, as the country to this day is still coming to grips with its profound impact, especially considering the similarities between Mussolini and the flamboyant performing style of Berlusconi today, but the personal tragedy of a nation’s leader in denial over his own offspring, imprisoning them instead, perfectly expressed by the developing insanity of his own son mimicking his father’s mannerisms as he delivers his speeches, to the delight of the other patients, becomes a highly theatrical Shakespearean tragedy of epic proportions.

Note

While there is no greater martyred woman in the history of cinema than Joan of Arc in Dreyer’s THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC (1929), with this film paralleling her imprisonment and endless sufferings, yet also lost in the forgotten annals of history was an unsuccessful assassination attempt on the life of Mussolini in 1926 when an Irish women named Violet Gibson fired a pistol from point-blank range from within a crowd in Rome but only grazed his nose (Violet Gibson - The Irish woman who shot Benito Mussolini).  Based on her background, the daughter of Lord Ashbourne, the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and Britain’s favorable alliance with Italy at the time (“Churchill Always Admired and Offered Peace to Mussolini”), she was subsequently locked inside a British mental hospital for the rest of her life.         

Marco Bellocchio's Closet Picks - The Criterion Collection YouTube (2:57) 

Dormant Beauty (Bella addormentata)

DORMANT BEAUTY (Bella addormentata)         C              

Italy  France  (115 mi)  2012  ‘Scope  d:  Marco Bellochio

A grim, depressingly downbeat, and emotionally unsatisfying effort from Bellocchio, who was so distraught that the film didn’t win any awards at the 2012 Venice Film Festival that he announced he would never bring another film to Venice, while Jury member and fellow Italian director Matteo Garrone vowed never to serve on a jury again for an Italian film festival.  This is nothing new, as in 2010 under Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s government, his Italian culture minister Sandro Bondi threatened to take over the festival because the judges (led by Quentin Tarantino) awarded no prizes to Italian films, claiming since the festival is financed by the state he should be able to hand-pick the jury, a move that was quickly rejected by the festival.  Ousted by the Berlusconi government in 2002, Alberto Barbera was reinstated as the Festival Director in 2012, where after all the headlines in the national press focusing on Italian films, it must have come as a big surprise to Italian filmmakers who felt they had stacked the deck in favor of their films.  It’s extremely disingenuous, however, to inflict nationalistic sentiments at an international film festival, where only 9 French films, by the way, have been awarded the Palme D’Or at the Cannes Festival since 1939, only once in the last 25 years, so that’s actually what makes it such an attractive and world prestigious event.  While Bellocchio has been nominated for the Venice Golden Lion three times to go along with six Palme D’Or nominations at Cannes, he’s been shut out from taking the top prize, though he was awarded a lifetime achievement award at Venice in 2011.  No Italian film has won the Golden Lion at Venice since 1988, which may not say a lot about Italian films, but it speaks volumes for the credibility of the festival itself.  Why prestigious Italian artists are intent on undermining Venice and turning it into a provincial festival makes no sense, so Bellocchio and Garrone, both well known and respected international directors, only look foolish, where they’re apparently buying into the outdated Berlusconi propaganda.  For what it’s worth, only one Italian film has been nominated as one of the five finalists in the Academy Award Best Foreign Film category since Roberto Benigni’s LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL in 1998, so Italian films have not exactly taken the world by storm in the past decade or so as they did in the 50’s and 60’s.   

Bellocchio’s last film VINCERE (2009), however, was one of his best, a gorgeously powerful historical drama documenting the rise and fall of Benito Mussolini as seen through the eyes of the mother of his firstborn son, born out of wedlock, so when Mussolini rose to power, both were secretly whisked away and sent to live in asylums throughout Mussolini’s regime, eventually dying in confinement.  The film certainly casts a shadow on the moral depravity of Italian leadership through World War II, where the parallel to Berlusconi’s own extensive record of moral hypocrisy and criminal conduct does not go unnoticed.  DORMANT BEAUTY attempts to examine another moral issue making headlines in the Italian press, namely what to do with coma patients that show no sign of brain activity, where the argument is whether they are actually dead, kept breathing by life support, or in a state of sleep where they might one day miraculously recover.  Much like the 2001 Terri Schiavo case in the United States, right-to-life religious groups, led by the Catholic Church, believed she was still alive, while her own husband wished to remove the life support system after 8-years in a coma but was prevented by government involvement, prolonging the case until exhausting all judicial avenues four years later.  Italy had a similar public debate over the Eluana Englaro case in 2009, where after 17-years in a coma from a car accident the father chose to remove his daughter from life support, but the Berlusconi government and the Catholic Church aligned themselves to prevent him from doing it, initiating legal challenges and going public on all the Berlusconi-owned Italian newspapers and extensive TV channels, including three national and several private stations, including RAI, which is one of the producers of the film, in an attempt to convince the public this is paramount to murder.  The effect was so extensive that the Friuli Venezia Giulia Film Commission in the Northeast province where this film was shot actually dissolved its own organization hoping to block financing for the film, but they are also listed as one of the production companies. 

Without offering any backstory, which in this case necessitates confusion or is playing strictly to an Italian audience, the film, co-written by the director, unfortunately assumes familiarity with the case, where after a decade of court decisions strictly prohibiting any action, in 2009 Eluana’s father is finally given the legal right to remove life support.  However, the nuns caring for Eluana since 1994 are seen on television making a public appeal to continue taking care of her, believing she is still alive despite her father’s contention that she was already dead, forcing the father to move her to a private nursing facility, which is where the film begins.  Despite the court decision, a right-wing crusade led by Berlusconi and the Vatican, along with a well-financed media campaign, promote the idea that Eluana’s father is murdering his daughter, the view of the Church, further inflamed by Berlusconi’s pronouncement that Eluana is not only alive but capable of bearing a child.  While public opinion suggests more than 80% of Italians support the father’s right, a defiantly outraged minority lead organized demonstrations and candlelight vigils in Eluana’s behalf while the government hastily draws legislation that would impose religious standards over the rights of individuals.  Bellocchio interweaves several different melodramatic stories, including a conscience-stricken politician, Toni Servillo as Uliano Beffardi, a first term senator elected from Berlusconi’s party, who already faced this dilemma with his own wife, and while he’s adamantly against the proposed legislation, he’s advised by his party to abstain or disappear, but his bigger fear is losing his religious-minded daughter in the process, Alba Rohrwacher as Maria, who joins the angry public demonstrations, meeting someone she likes on the opposite side of the police barricades, Roberto (Michele Riondini), constantly seen attempting to appease the disturbing actions of his violently angry, mentally ill brother.  The budding romance between the two quickly gets lost in the constantly shifting dynamic.  

In a similar side story that confusingly resembles that of Eluana, where many in the audience may not realize the distinction, Isabelle Huppert, known only as the Divine Mother (as she is called by her son), embodies the position of the church with her own coma-stricken daughter.  A famous actress who abruptly quit her career to assume full-time care of her daughter, alienating her husband and son in the process, she devotes her life to religious devotion, complete with an army of nurses and nuns who look after her in a palatial estate, she gathers her family together to celebrate her daughter’s birthday, where it’s impossible not to hear the constant sound of the life support apparatus doing the breathing for her.  Despite the constant drone, emotions fly fast and furious, especially the near hysterical rants from her spoiled and overly pampered son who seems to be having an absent mother crisis, while the regal countenance of Huppert displays an aristocratic control over her suppressed emotions through a kind of self-imposed noble rigidity, literally imposing her will over every aspect of her daughter’s immaculate care, though she can be heard muttering to herself the lines of Lady Macbeth, unable to get the stain or smell of blood off her hands.   And in yet another storyline, a young doctor (the director’s son, Pier Giorgio Bellocchio) gets sucked into the desperate acts of a suicidal drug addict (Maya Sansa) whose beauty betrays her noxious intentions.  While the rest of the hospital staff callously take bets on the hour of Eluana’s eventual death, he keeps a watchful vigil over his new patient’s hospital bed, inexplicably drawn to her fierce desire to end her life, telling her, “You’re free to kill yourself, and I’m free to try to stop you.”  Straining for dramatic cohesiveness and never developing any sense of emotional impact, the mood remains overly detached and downright gloomy throughout, though one has to chuckle at a somewhat surreal scene that comes out of nowhere, taking place in an ancient candle-lit bath house where Roman senators nakedly congregate before important votes, their heads seen floating on the surface of the water with their eyes glued to the television.  Roberto Herlitzka plays a medication dispensing psychiatrist prescribing uppers or downers to depressed politicians.  Bellocchio, however, fails to establish any connecting interest between the underdeveloped characters and storylines, especially with the director’s insistence to continually interrupt the proceedings with the disturbing actions of mentally unstable characters, where the suggestion of romantic possibilities, for instance, feels contrived and downright ludicrous, losing focus and interest in a convoluted structure that feels increasingly disconnected.  While the experience is frustratingly disappointing, what the film does have going for it (besides Huppert) is a superb soundtrack by Carlo Crivelli in an ultra dramatic, percussive-laden adaptation of Brian Eno and David Bowie David Bowie Abdulmajid (Ryko version) - YouTube  (3:30).