Vincere Tagged Articles at Cinematical

When becoming an actress, I'm sure that there's a lot of potential roles that a woman dreams about playing. Perhaps she's a bit rough and rockery, and wants to be the ever-stunning Grace Slick. Or maybe she digs philosophy and feminism and wants to take on Simone de Beauvoir. Or maybe a fictional heroines from Wonder Woman to Jane Eyre. Or maybe the terribly scorned and tossed aside mistress of Benito Mussolini?

Variety reports that Italian actress Giovanna Mezzogiorno, who most recently played Fermina Urbino in Love in the Time of Cholera, is going to play Ida Dalser in Marco Bellocchio's upcoming film, Vincere. (This is the film I told you about here and here.) The production follows Mussolini's Secret by Gianfranco Norelli and Fabrizio Laurenti, and to review, the film focuses on the struggles and abbreviated life of Mussolini's mistress, Dalser. You can't really call her "Mussolini's love," because the woman went through hell. As Benito rose to power, Fascist agents tried to remove all proof of the relationship and Benito's son, so both were sent to asylums where young Benito died from coma-inducing injections, and she died of a brain hemorrhage. Happy ending? Probably not.

Production is finally getting underway in Venice this May.

Almost a year ago, I alerted you to a foreign project in the works -- one that would tell the little-known story of Benito Mussolini's secret child. It's a pretty sad and unfortunate story. Basically, before the man rose to power in Italy, he had married a beautician named Ida Dalser. All was not romantic and ever-lasting for the couple. In fact, it was the complete opposite. She had a child named Benito Albino Mussolini, but then her relationship with the soon-to-be infamous dictator hit the rocks and Fascists tried to wipe the pair off the record as the elder Benito gained power. Both mother and son were sent to asylums and ultimately, and unsurprisingly, died -- before Mussolini himself was executed.

Now Variety reports that the French sales company Celluloid Dreams has picked up the international sales rights for the upcoming drama, which is now called Vincere -- which means "to win," and was a popular song of that era. It is a pretty creepy name for the chilling story. The script is completed and the film should gear up for production this April in Northern Italy in cities such as Venice. Unfortunately, casting is still being figured out for the film, so there's no word on who will play Benito Sr. and the rest of the roles. I'm pretty interested in seeing who they get to play father Benito -- he definitely had a memorable and unique visage.