Resumen de Mussolini en el cine: estrategias de hibridación
This paper begins with a brief overview of the difficulties involved in depicting the image of Mussolini in contemporary Italian cinema. From among the many portrayals of Mussolini to be offered in the last fifty years, special emphasis is given to two, namely the film Amarcord (Fellini, 1973) and the text “Rittrati del duce” (Italo Calvino,1983). The paper then goes on to analyze the development of policy regarding Mussolini’s image in the period between the march on Rome (1922) and the armistice (1943). As opposed to the traditional notion of transformationism used to refer to the strategy of “dressing up” Mussolini as a harvester, a pilot, a horseman, etc., we prefer to speak of a hybridization of models and media, with special reference to the techniques used by futurists of the vanguard of the time and against the background of the birth of mass culture.
With the foundation of the Empire and Italy’s entrance in the war, Mussolini succumbed to the temptation to “monumentalize” his own image. This tendency in his image strategy, destined to fail along with his political and military strategies, is examined within the context of documentaries abstract from the Istituto LUCE and fictional films.
