In 1930, the Nazi Party established a film department in preparation to create their large propaganda for the people courtesy of Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels. Early on, they were aware of what movies could do to the public and effectively used it. In Fascist Italy, cinema was kept primarily as entertainment with narrative features, preferring realist dramas or “telephoni bianchi” comedies that would transfer itself into the sound age. This period would prove to be a feeder for young writers and directors whose names would gain international recognition from the end of World War II and beyond. A major catalyst in Italy’s film industry that is felt even today would come the son of Il Duce: Vittorio Mussolini.
Vittorio Mussolini was the eldest son of dictator Benito Mussolini, who had taken over the country in 1923 and turned into a one-party state. His sons were both interested in the arts and served in the Armed Forces later on. Vittorio flew planes to Spain to aid the victorious Nationalists in their civil war, as well as in the Second World War. In his free time, Mussolini used his clout as Mussolini’s son to spend energy in building a more robust film industry to challenge the rest of Europe. Vittorio established the Alleanza Cinematografica Italiana to produce various movies with a nationalist twist. His first film was the historical Scipio Africanus: The Defeat of Hannibal released in 1937. The film was a success in Italy as it served to be propaganda for his father and his growing ambitions to take over North Africa.
That same year, the Italian film studio Cincetta was opened under the banner, “Cinema is the most powerful weapon.” Scipio Africanus was among the first films to use the studio and Cincetta is still in wide use today for film productions around the world. While Vittorio was supporting his father’s regime, he did not take a strict route when it came to others’ political views. He became friends with writers who had left-wing sympathies and those of Jewish descent, allowing them to write in the national film magazine and take part in various productions.
Among those who took advantage included Michelangelo Antonioni and Roberto Rosselini. Vittorio permitted noted German film critic Rudolk Arnheim, who was Jewish, to live in Rome and shielded him from race laws his father would implement in 1938, which Vittorio was against. One of the most successful Italian films of the 1930s was Luciano Serra, Pilot, which Vittorio wrote a treatment for and Rossellini co-wrote. The two of them, plus Antonioni, helped on Rossellini’s first directorial effort, A Pilot Returns (1942). He even attempted to make a deal with American comic producer Hal Roach prior to America’s involvement in World War II, but Roach backed out after MGM threatened to terminate their contract with him. Had the deal gone through, the venture would’ve been called “R.A.M” – Roach and Mussolini.
Another major future director who worked with Vittorio was Federico Fellini, when he was in his early twenties. Apolitical and wanting to avoid the draft, Fellini helped on several projects, including Knights Of The Desert. It is believed Fellini co-directed it after the hired director was injured, but the movie did not get released due to Italy’s series of defeats in North Africa. In 1943, prior to his father being overthrown, Vittorio saw the debut feature of another future legend, Luchino Visconti’s Ossessione. He was angered by what he felt was an anti-Italy film instead of being the murder mystery he was promised and banned the film when Vittorio fled to his father’s puppet state in the north of Italy. Fortunately for Visconti, he kept a duplicate negative the fascists could not destroy and Ossessione would be released to the rest of the population.
In 1945, Vittorio’s father was executed and hung upside down in Milan, spat on and despised by the people he once ruled. Vittorio fled Italy for a time, never to reenter the film industry, and Rossellini released his Italian neorealism groundbreaker, Rome Open City, which is a strongly anti-fascist picture. The neorealist era would plant Italy’s flag on a global stage to make it one of the most well-renowned centers of cinema, but only after Vittorio planted the seeds to make it grow. Because he was the son of a dictator, Vittorio was relegated as revisionist of his father’s actions. However, he was key to the revitalization of the industry after the Great Depression wiped it out. Without his passion and non-discrimination against would-be political enemies, these major directors wouldn’t have gotten off the ground. So, grazie mille, Vittorio? Even though your dad was a dictator?
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