Vincere is not an easy movie to swallow. It’s a confusing, historical melodrama that forgoes historical fact for implied intimate details and complexities about Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and the secretive marriage he had with Ida Dalser, that spurned his first son of the same name, Benito. And while I was fully expecting a historical lesson about the notorious Italian dictator, better known as Il Duce, the film instead expects you to have a strong familiarity with the world events leading up to the perfect storm that catapulted Mussolini to power. Sacrificing historical information for raw emotion is a risky bet in historical pieces, but oddly it works for the operatic nightmare that is Vincere.
The film takes place in Italy right before the beginning of the first World War and opens with a young, stubborn and idealistic Mussolini, portrayed passionately by Filippo Timi, challenging a room of his peers to a wager. If God doesn’t strike him dead in five minutes, then there is no God. It’s a clever and dramatic way of illustrating some of the base ideals that would later ferment the philosophy behind fascism, without explicitly explaining the transformation. In the crowded room is the strong female presence of Ida Dasler, played with fervent determination by Giovanna Mezzogiorno, who stares ferociously into Benito’s eyes as he proudly proclaims victory in his claim. This is the beginning of a passionate affair that leads to Dasler, whom historically very little is known about her, becomes madly in love and devotes her life to her lover. The problem is that while her eyes are filled with passion, Mussolini’s are filled with ambition. While she passionately makes love to Il Ducce, he averts her gaze and stares intently towards his future ambitions.
Director Marco Bellocchio uses interstitial chapter marks to contrast the intense drama with newsreel footage from the time period, emphasizing the usual bravado one would come to expect from the fanfare of neo-fascist propaganda films. 
This is a necessary breath of fresh air from the often depressing struggle deposited on Dasler’s shoulders after the ambitious Mussolini refuses to acknowledge both his marriage to her and his illegitimate child. This is also the pivotal turning point in the film, where suddenly the narrative shifts to Ida instead of following the bizarre and fascinating tale that catapulted the dictator to power. The audience is only treated to some brief events in Mussolini’s younger years such as founding the Italian paper Il Popolo d’Italia and being part of the futurist art movement, before being plunged into the secret scandal of Dasler and her undying claims to be the first wife of Il Duce.
While the enthusiasm for the subject matter is fierce, using long close ups to evoke intense emotional performances from Mezzogiorno akin to Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc, the movie becomes a confusing maze of mirrors as Bellocchio starts bouncing back and forth through different time periods in Ida’s life without visibly having her age and uses Timi to play both Mussolini and his son of the name. It becomes a daunting task to keep track of whose who in this Italian labyrinth and what time period we are jumping in and out of. So instead of a coherent WWII biopic about the notorious dictator’s personal life, what you have starts to feel like a One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest romantic tragedy taking place in fascist Italy. There’s no denying some of the beautiful cinematic moments in the film, including one humorous section where the war injured Mussolini is strapped to a bed, forced to watch a film about Jesus Christ and face the dire irony of his situation. Still, moments like that are few and far between in what ultimately is a convoluted dramatization of what might have happened to someone we know little about.
7 out of 10
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