‘Words lead to violence’: How a groundbreaking Mussolini drama examines the birth of fascism
‘Words lead to violence’: How a groundbreaking Mussolini drama examines the birth of fascism
Share:
Next month an epic eight-part biopic of the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini airs on Sky. Craig McLean visits the set in Rome and talks to those who worked on the project, including the British director Joe Wright, on the importance of understanding the man behind the bloodshed, why the fascist dictator appealed to so many people, and how he wrote the playbook for 21st-century strongman politics.
![[Joe Wright directing Luca Marinelli as Mussolini]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/23/12/M_EP5_210423_3130.jpg)
In the opening moments of Sky’s new, eight-part biopic Mussolini: Son of the Century, we hear the man himself speak. “For 20 years you adored me and feared me, as a god. Then you madly hated me, you desecrated my corpse,” intones Luca Marinelli, the actor playing the Italian fascist leader, over archive footage tracing the strongman’s rise and reign all the way to his execution by partisans in 1945. “Now, tell me, what was the point? Look around you… we’re still here.”.
![[‘There are a lot of theatrical moments in the show, because Mussolini was also that.’ Luca Marinelli plays the fascist in the eight-part series]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/23/12/M_EP1_070223_2599.jpg)
It’s an interesting moment in history to be broadcasting a seven-hour TV series about the ascent to power of the leader who, in inventing fascism in the 1920s, created a political ideology that would reverberate across that century – and beyond. Italy, where the series was shot, is led by its prime minister Giorgia Meloni, leader of the right-wing group Brothers of Italy, while across Europe, populist leaders are on the rise. Some of those figures and parties, notably, have been heralded by Elon Musk, the man last seen on the global stage offering what many saw as a fascist salute.
Yet for the makers of the drama, that meant resolutely avoiding crude depictions of the chest-puffing dictator and instead drilling into the psychology behind the terror, caricature and cataclysmic bloodshed. In other words, they were determined to show what made his bloody reign possible.
