Directed by Marco Bellocchio

Veteran Bellocchio, who with his debut Fists in the Pocket was hailed as an innovative new voice in Italian cinema in 1966, still pulls off some of that abrasive effect in this fairly recently unearthed story of the woman, Ida Dalser, who claimed to be Mussolini's wife and the mother of his son. Use of newsreel images of Il Duce's ascent and the subsequent disasters of the Italian people and a grandly operatic style give a sharp edge to what sadly slows down into a too-long-drawn-out account of Ida's rejection and decline that lacks sufficient narrative drive.

Ida (Giovanna Mezzogiorno) first comes across the young Mussolini (Filipo Timi), then a socialist, as he's running from the police after a demonstration, when he seizes her in a passionate embrace to escape notice. Later she sees him in a typical histrionic performance as he addresses a meeting, calling on god to prove his existence by striking him down. God unfortunately declines. An intense whirlwind romance overwhelms her, and soon she bears his child. But whereas she is desperately in love with him, putting all the money from her fashion business into a newspaper for him which becomes the voice of fascism, he is clearly possessed only with himself. Patriotism and his overwhelming ego convert him fairly quickly from socialism to fascism, but it's clear that Ida has no interest in his political stance, only infatuation in his personality. They marry, but unfortunately for her this extreme self-centredness that she finds so attractive leads him to renounce her and deny the existence of their son to avoid scandal when it come to light that he has another wife. Here the film stumbles rather and leaves several questions unanswered. Repudiated and denied, Ida is pronounced mad and locked up in an asylum, her son in an orphanage.

Meanwhile Mussolini moves on to fuck the besotted nation as completely as he fucked the woman, and thereafter he appears no more in the film other than in actual newsreel sequences, the private swallowed up by the public. Although this is well and dramatically done, it is also where the film somewhat loses its way. Separated from the tumultuous developments in Italy, Ida's constant attempts to contact the powers that be and persuade anyone to listen to her case have little feel of time passing, and exquisitely filmed and framed as many scenes are, they become monotonous. Timi reappears playing Il Duce's son of student age, a trick that doesn't quite work.

Many fine, almost breathtaking scenes, in particular a wartime church where a religious film is projected onto the ceiling for the wounded lying below, a dynamic scene in a cinema where fighting onscreen is soon followed and visually confused with fighting in the auditorium, and Ida's climb up a high fence in the snow to throw her sad letters over into the real world, make the film a pleasure to watch. But monstrous though he is, Mussolini remains nothing but an intriguing, self-contained cipher, and while Ida is really always the central figure of the film, this is a major flaw.

Seen at Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle, 21 May 2010