VINCERE - DVD review

"Vincere" (2009, "Win," in Italian) tells the story of Benito Mussolini and his first wife, Ida Dalser, and the son he acknowledged only briefly.

Mussolini, of course, was the Prime Minister of Italy who created a police state and aligned his country with Germany during WWII. Eventually he was executed and hung on display in Milan, but for a quarter of a century he was a force to be reckoned with and the face of Fascism in Italy. For him, the Fascist state came ahead of everything else, including family. Il Duce, as he began calling himself, rose to power and found that in order to avoid condemnation by the Vatican he had to get his messy personal life in order. And it was messy. In 1914 he became involved with Ida Dalser and allegedly married her, though no documents exist to support the claim that he did so. A year later--about the time that Ida was presenting him with his son--he was already involved with another lover, a waitress named Rachele Guidi. And in December 1915 he married Rachele and shunned Ida and the baby she bore him. That's where the messy part comes in. Since he never divorced Ida, he was, if indeed married, a bigamist. That's something even a charismatic and fiery leader couldn't overcome, given the hold that the Roman Catholic Church also had on the Italian people. So the solution was simple: he denied that he was ever married and persecuted the woman he once loved, in effect removing her and her son from society.

That's the story, but you'll have to know quite a bit in order to make heads or tails out of "Vincere," which presumes the audience knows a lot of 20th-century Italian history. The film is in Italian with English subtitles, and so maybe Italians do have all of this straight in their heads. But I'm guessing many Americans won't, and so the quick cuts that cover decades and move back and forth in time with little explanation--only visceral images--may prove daunting. That wasn't the case with "Downfall" (2004), the German film that told the story of Adolph Hitler and Eva Braun. You got a fuller sense of the political and military events with Oliver Hirschbiegel's film than you do here, and partly that's because of the focus that director Marco Bellocchio chose (Ida, not Mussolini) and partly because the style that he opted for actually works against the narrative. It's based on quick cuts and strange juxtapositions, and expressionistic, sometimes jarring segues--the most memorable of which is a darkened love scene in which the drawn outlines of military black shirts march in goose-step across the lovers in the frame.

Some of the segues and images are more successful than others, because not all make perfect sense in terms of the symbolic or associative content. Factory smokestacks rise in the background of one such scene, but suggesting what? And a shouting match erupts in the movie theater over Fascism in a seemingly serious and key scene. But then Bellocchio has playing on the theater screen immediately after that a Keystone Cops-style silent-film fight, which seems much more comedic. So is he making fun of the Fascist argument? Italian politics? Tonal weirdness like this happens more than a few times, and sometimes there are iconic red herrings. As Ida sits in a theater she notices men wearing gas masks, again in a largely realistic scene. So you expect there to be some sort of disturbance, right? Nope. Just another quick cut to another scene, making it a surreal inclusion. Some viewers will be charmed by things like that, while others will find them annoying distractions. Same with the long lovemaking scenes that are almost in complete darkness, with a woman's squeals and moans the only thing going on an otherwise all-but-black screen.

But give Bellocchio credit for mounting a production that lavishly recreates Italy between 1914 and WWII, for seamlessly integrating newsreel footage, and for daring to tell the story with a poetic style and visual flair. It's not always successful, as I said, but shot after shot draws attention to the aesthetic decisions that Bellocchio made. And one of the things that thematically and visually ties the film's herky-jerky historical movements and sometimes confusing imagery is the frequent use of film and movie-house footage.

So far I've not said much about the actors or the plot, and frankly that's because Bellocchio's style really does call attention to itself. But it's worth noting that while we do see the bald, portly, screaming Il Duce later in the film that newsreels have always shown, at least two-thirds of the film is spent showing the slender, mustachioed young socialist who had the charisma, the drive, and the audacity to take an idea and turn it into Italian Fascism and a government virtually run by him for decades. Because we see Mussolini through the eyes of Ida, he seems especially dashing and heroic. That is, until he denies Ida. That's the fulcrum that turns this rise-and-fall tale of an idealistic lover into a sad study in futility. I won't go into detail, but let's just say that Mussolini made it awfully hard for Ida and young Benito. And through it all, we watch Giovanna Mezzogiorno, who plays Ida, with the same admiration as when we watch someone like Susan Sarandon completely own a role and convey every nuance of character in a single phrase or gesture. Her performance, frankly, is enough to make those stylistic acrobatics (when they splat, rather than soar) easier to take. Filippo Timi isn't bad as Il Duce and Fabrizio Costella as young Benito, but this is Mezzogiorno's film, and she lets you know it every time she's on camera. That, along with some exciting cinematography, makes "Vincere" worth watching.

Video:
There's more grain to be seen in the dark scenes, but for the most part "Vincere" has only a pleasing level of film grain, with an earth-toned palette and spot color used to good effect. The film is presented in 1.85:1 aspect ratio, "enhanced" for 16x9 televisions.

Audio:
The audio is a Dolby Digital 5.1 in Italian, with subtitles in English, English SDH, and Spanish. English is the default subtitle that pops up with no pre-selection.

Extras:
The only special feature is the trailer.

Bottom Line:
"Vincere" is an art-house version of a historical drama that takes plenty of risks--some of which are more successful than others. But you can't say enough about Giovanna Mezzogiorno's performance.