Vincere

Directed by Director's notes
  • Marco Bellocchio
Directed by
  • Marco Bellocchio
Year
  • 2009
Length
  • 128 min.
Year
  • 2009
Length
  • 128 min.
Cast
  • Filippo Timi
  • Michela Cescon
  • Giovanna Mezzogiorno
  • Fausto Russo Alesi
Synopsis

Benito Mussolini is editor-in-chief of the paper “Avanti!” when he meets Ida Dalser in Milan. Opposed to the monarchy and the Church, Mussolini is an ardent Socialist committed to stirring the crowds towards a future of social emancipation. Dalser had already seen him fleetingly in Trento where she remained struck by him.
Ida strongly believes in his ideas: Mussolini is her hero. For him, she sells everything she owns (her apartment, beauty salon, furniture, jewels) to finance “Il Popolo d’Italia”, a newspaper that will become the nucleus of the future Fascist Party.
When the First World War erupts, Benito Mussolini joins the Army and disappears from the woman’s life. When Ida finds him again, he lies in a hospital bed, tended to by Rachele whom he has just married in a civil ceremony. Furious, Ida lashes out at her rival vindicating her rights as Mussolini’s real wife and the mother of a son she has given him. She is led away by force.
Ida, a woman of explosive reactions, is unable to accept compromise. She is renounced, spied on, followed. But she won’t give up. She continues to protest, writing letters to everyone: the authorities, the newspapers, the Pope. She is eventually locked up in a mental hospital (her son is sent to an orphanage) and subjected to torture and physical constraint for more than eleven years. She will not see her son again. The same cancelled existence, the same desperate fate, awaits him as well.

Director's notes
  • In Mussolini's life, there is a secret scandal: a wife and a son – conceived, recognized, and then denied. This secret has a name: Ida Dalser. A woman who cries out her truth until the very end, despite the regime's plan to destroy every trace connecting her to the Duce. For the regime, Ida Dalser is a threat, a woman to be confined to a psychiatric hospital – far from her son, her family, and the people – where, however, unable to fade into the shadows and perhaps save herself, she continues to assert her role as the legitimate wife of the Duce and mother of his first male child, Benito Albino Mussolini. Their two existences were erased from the world and from memory. A dark chapter that official historiography does not recount.
Direction and subject
  • Marco Bellocchio
Screenplay
  • Marco Bellocchio
  • Daniela Ceselli
Produced by
  • Mario Gianani
A Co-Production
  • Rai Cinema
  • Offside
  • Celluloid Dreams
In collaboration with
  • Istituto Luce
Editing
  • Francesca Calvelli
Scenography
  • Marco Dentici
Director of photography
  • Daniele Ciprì
Costumes
  • Sergio Ballo
Music
  • Carlo Crivelli
Sound
  • Gaetano Carito
Casting
  • Stefani Ade Santis
Made with the contribution of
  • DIREZIONE GENERALE PER IL CINEMA MINISTERO PER I BENI E LE ATTIVITA' CULTURALI, EURIMAGES, PROVINCIA AUTONOMA DI TRENTO, TRENTINO S.p.a., FILM COMMISSION TORINO PIEMONTE
Distribution
  • 01 Distribution
International distributor
  • Celluloid Dreams
Director's notes
X

In Mussolini's life, there is a secret scandal: a wife and a son – conceived, recognized, and then denied. This secret has a name: Ida Dalser. A woman who cries out her truth until the very end, despite the regime's plan to destroy every trace connecting her to the Duce. For the regime, Ida Dalser is a threat, a woman to be confined to a psychiatric hospital – far from her son, her family, and the people – where, however, unable to fade into the shadows and perhaps save herself, she continues to assert her role as the legitimate wife of the Duce and mother of his first male child, Benito Albino Mussolini. Their two existences were erased from the world and from memory. A dark chapter that official historiography does not recount.