Vincere

Vincere (in English, ‘To Win’) is a film that is based on the life of the first wife of Benito Mussolini. It stars Giovanna Mezzogiorno as Ida Dalser and Filippo Timi as Benito Mussolini. It was filmed under the direction of Marco Bellocchio, who also wrote the screenplay with Daniela Ceselli, and it was released 22 May 2009 in Italy. It was the only Italian film in competition at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival.[1]

It won four Silver Hugos at the Chicago International Film Festival (Best Actor (Filippo Timi), Best Actress (Giovanna Mezzogiorno), Best Director,and Best Cinematography (Daniele Ciprì).[2] and won four Silver Ribbon (Actress (Giovanna Mezzogiorno), Cinematography, Editing and Art Direction). Giovanna Mezzogiorno was rewarded with the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actress 2010.

Synopsis

The movie relates the story of Ida Dalser, who fell in love with the future Italian Fascist leader, Benito Mussolini, supported him while he was unemployed in the early 1910s, and married him, presumably around 1914. She bore Mussolini a son, Benito Albino, before the outbreak of World War I. The two lost touch during the war years and, upon discovering him again in a hospital during the war, she also discovered Rachele Guidi, who had married Mussolini in 1915, and a daughter born in 1910 when Guidi and Mussolini were living together.

Historically, following his political ascendency, Mussolini suppressed the information about his first marriage and he (through the Fascist party) persecuted both his first wife and oldest son and committed them forcibly to asylums. Dalser died in an asylum in Venice in 1937 at the age of 57 of brain haemorrhages and Benito Albino died in 1942 at the age of 26 in an asylum near Milan after repeated coma-inducing injections.