Nowadays we find ourselves using the words ‘fascist’ and ‘fascism’ more and more frequently, applying them to an increasing number of countries and political realities. A basic trawl through the internet tells us that many political groups in late-19th and early-20th-century Italy were known as fasci (or bunch/es). Of these, the most infamous and successful was the group founded by Benito Mussolini, Fasci di combattimento (combat groups), which quickly metastasised into the National Fascist Party that grabbed national power in 1922 with Mussolini as the Duce or undisputed Leader. For the next 21 years, Italy lived under this man’s reign of terror, paying a terrible price in terms of every societal marker, from political justice to educational and intellectual progress to general well-being. We know this horrible story ends when partisan groups catch Mussolini and his mistress trying to escape to Switzerland in 1945. The partisans execute them, after which their bodies are taken to Milan and hung upside down for people to throw stones at. Aside from the suffering they inflicted on fellow Italians and so many others during the brutal and unnecessary wars which ultimately destroyed Italy, Mussolini and his uniformed gangsters inspired several others across the world, including Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party and K.B. Hedgewar and his Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.
Mussolini: Son of the Century is an eight-part mini series on MUBI that traces this resistible man’s rise from a newspaper editor and minor demagogue to nakedly autocratic prime minister to be costumed dictator with Caesar-like delusions. The first episode begins with a voice speaking over archive footage of the period: “A time always comes when a lost populace turns to simple ideas. The cunning brutality of strongmen... It only takes the right words, simple, direct words, the right gaze, the right tone... You loved me madly. For twenty years you adored me and feared me, as a god, then you madly hated me, because you still loved me, you ridiculed me, you desecrated my corpse, scared of your mad love for me even after my death. Now, tell me, what was the point? Look around you. We are still here.”
To tell the story, the director, Joe Wright, and the writers, Stefano Bises, Antonio Scurati and Davide Serino, have chosen an epic structure, a mode where the narrative moves between the naturalistic and the operatic, held together by regular direct address to camera that breaks the ‘fourth wall’ in a brilliant deployment of Brecht’s ‘alienation’ technique, not to mention our own sutradhar traditions. In a bravura performance, Luca Marinelli plays Mussolini, staying on screen 90% of the time, transforming before our eyes from a troubled and insecure nobody to a murderously psychopathic despot. Usually, the role of sutradhar, the narrator who breaks the realist spell of the story, is performed by an actor who is at one side of the main action; here, the inspired move is to have Marinelli himself turning to the viewer from time to time and commenting on his own motives and actions. It’s something we have seen in other, much lighter, films and TV shows but here it is executed so superbly that the evil darkness of succeeding events develops layers within layers, adding to both our horror and understanding.
As the story unfolds, we become better and better acquainted with this pompous thug of a man from whom scruples slide away like water off a plastic sheet. We see not only how Mussolini’s own ruthless ambition powers his rise but also how, at critical junctures, the actions or the lack of action from others unexpectedly saves his bacon and puts him in a position to exploit the pusillanimity and compromised positions of rivals and associates. Even as he constantly beats the drums of glorious patriotic war and demands blood and sacrifice from his followers, we see, time and time again, the central pillar of cowardice, both physical and moral, around which the man’s persona is constructed.
Filmically, when telling a complex and often grim political story, there is the danger that the writers and the directors will slip into joining-the-dots mode in between spectacular set-pieces. Here, Wright and his crew mostly manage to avoid this pitfall. The story is to be found as much in the private interactions between Mussolini and his close advisers as in the grand events. There are the great scenes, of course, many of them extremely funny in their own dark way: the moment when the far more charismatic fascist leader, Gabriele D’Annunzio, and Mussolini, the second fiddle, sit at a dining table as the Italian navy shells the town they have captured — even as they argue, a shell-hit shakes the room and the grand chandelier comes crashing down on them; having dynamically taken a biplane (then still a newish mode of transport) to a political rendezvous, Mussolini and his pilot find the police chasing him on the ground below; the plane begins to run out of petrol and the demagogue’s terror is plain to see — the pilot needs to land but the brave leader doesn’t want to be arrested.
Stage by stage, we see how the fascist python swallows the weak democratic structures of post-First World War Italy. First the saber-rattling while sitting in Opposition; fascist gangs made up of violent and demented war veterans terrorising socialist meetings, murdering and maiming both political activists and ordinary people; the weak-kneed king refusing to allow the police and the army of the legally elected Prime Minister Luigi Facta to enforce martial law to arrest the rampaging Blackshirts; then Mussolini’s first foothold as prime minister of a coalition government; the systematic forcing through of anti-democratic election laws; the throttling of independent newspapers; socialist and liberal politicians jumping ship to the fascists in their greed for power; the protests by still honest Opposition politicians in Parliament demanding that the rigged elections be nullified, and, finally, the elimination, one by one, of all upstanding Opposition leaders through the most simple and brutal means, aided and abetted by a puppet police force. Watching this playbook being put into effect, we see so many parallels with current times it snatches the laughter right out of our mouths.
In an interview, Wright tells us that the asides to camera were all meant to be in English. However, during pre-production, Giorgia Meloni won the elections. Wright and his team immediately decided to change the monologues to Italian. With Italy once again sliding towards toxic, right-wing politics, they agreed that an Italian audience must understand every word of the series without ambiguity.
While the entire leading cast delivers great performances, the character that really stands out in the male cast is that of Cesare Rossi, Mussolini’s right-hand man. While Mussolini is a bull of medium-height, Francesco Russo’s superbly rendered Rossi is short, round, bald and the real Machiavellian brain in the duo. Part Iago, part malevolent Sancho Panza, Rossi is the loyal henchman who organises all the dirty work while always providing his boss with deniability. In one delicious scene, as the two men are arguing in Mussolini’s grand bedroom, they are ambushed by a strange, white creature. Both men start back: “What’s that?” “That’s a peacock, a white peacock!”
As Mussolini preens and peacocks in his ever-changing costumes, there is one thing he never forgets — as he keeps reminding us, his main instruments for keeping people under control are fear and hatred. Even as he fulminates against the temerity of the Opposition leader, Giacomo Matteotti, he points out to us that the man comes
from a wealthy background but has chosen to stand up for the poor whereas he, Mussolini, who comes from a much more humble background, actually detests the poor and hates the weak. In the penultimate episode, his wealthy mistress gifts the dictator a highly-idealised sculpted head in his likeness. Mussolini kicks his loyal lover and adviser out of his office. Grotesque narcissism superseding any ideology, he continues his dialogue with his own head. This, for one, could be the defining cinematic image of so many despots and wannabe dictators that Mussolini and Hitler have spawned in our time.
