Vincere 2010

The film opens in 1907, with Ida Dalser watching a speech by the young journalist and socialist Benito Mussolini. She immediately falls in love with him, and they begin a torrid affair. Mussolini initially opposes Italian involvement in the European Great War, but then reverses his position. This leads to his expulsion from the Socialist Party, and he develops a new political philosophy, which will become fascism. He decides to start a newspaper to expound his views, and Dalser sells all her belongings to finance it. They have a son, Benito, then Mussolini goes to war, and Dalser does not hear from him for a long time. When she does, he is in hospital recovering from wounds, but when she goes to visit him, she finds that he has a new wife and a daughter. Dalser insists that he is legally married to her, but he denies it.

From then on, Mussolini appears in the film only in newsreels, reflecting the fact that Dalser never sees him in person again. By the early 1920s, he is Italy’s leader, and in the process of concluding a concordat with the Vatican. Dalser intensifies her campaign to prove that she is Mussolini’s wife and that her son, Benito Albino, is legitimate. She finds that all the might of the fascist state is turned against her. She is committed to an asylum, and when she continues to protest from there by writing to the newspapers, and even to the Pope, Benito Albino is committed to a different asylum. Dalser descends gradually into madness. Although the film ends with a caption listing the official cause for their deaths (Dalser in 1937 and Benito Albino in 1942), the film’s last scenes hint at the possibility that one or both of them were murdered.