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Italian neorealist film director and screenwriter who made Last Days of Mussolini, starring Rod Steiger

Carlo Lizzani, who has died aged 91, after falling from a balcony at his home, was a screenwriter and director of Italian neorealist cinema who made more than 40 feature films, as well as documentaries and television series.

His first professional experiences in the film world were as an actor, playing cameos in two powerful neorealist films: Il Sole Sorge Ancora (The Sun Still Rises, 1946), directed by Aldo Vergano; and Caccia Tragica (Tragic Hunt, 1947), Giuseppe De Santis's first feature film.

In 1947 Roberto Rossellini summoned Lizzani to Berlin where he was preparing to shoot Germania Anno Zero (Germany Year Zero). Lizzani did research with East German locals which Rossellini would find useful when the film was being made without a definitive shooting script. Lizzani said later: "Rossellini filmed the story of the boy [Edmund] as if growing up...

Nb: Films by Robert Beavers, Peter Hutton, and Luther Price were unavailable for preview. However, I said some very nice things about these men and their work in general over at The Dissolve.

In years past, I have attempted to present this extended article as a preview; my aim has been to send it off into the world either the day before of the day of Tiff's kick-off. That has proven impossible this year, and, dear reader, I am heartily sorry for having offended thee... But the fact that Wavelengths is a beat that is becoming harder and harder for one person to adequately cover is undoubtedly a sign of good health. Since last year, when Tiff enfolded the former Visions section (a space for formally adventurous narrative features) into Wavelengths (Tiff's experimental showcase), not only has interest in the section grown exponentially. The section can now more fully reflect...

A controversial new documentary exploring the path of the corpse of Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini is attracting criticisms from the Italy’s press for some of the gruesome images it portrays while forcing Italians to examine the country’s fascination with the strong-armed leader. Unlike Hilter in Germany or Franco in Spain, Italy has never completely come to terms with Mussolini, who remains an esteemed and iconic figure to many. Photos: 12 of Hollywood's Most Mysterious Deaths The documentary, Il Corpo del Duce (The Duce’s Body), examines some aspects of the country’s fixation with Mussolini in part by following the

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By Trisha Thomas, The Associated Press

Rome — A new documentary about Benito Mussolini examines the near cult-like fascination that many Italians had with the fascist dictator – and how his body became a focus for the fixation.

"Il Corpo Del Duce," ("The Duce's Corpse"), contains some gruesome, never-before-seen images of Mussolini's decayed corpse hanging upside down in a Milan square on April 29, 1945 after he was shot by anti-fascist partisans.

The film, directed by Fabrizio Laurenti, literally follows the path of Mussolini's corpse from a gas station on the square to an anonymous grave and eventually a tomb in Predappio, his birthplace in northern Italy, where thousands of supporters pay homage every year.

"The images I have in my documentary are pretty, pretty strong," Laurenti said in a recent interview. "They're not for everybody."

Some of the shots show the dictator's face grotesquely swollen, unrecognizable after being hung upside down,...

This epic, Gaddafi-funded portrait of resistance hero Omar Mukhtar is a little hammy but historically on cue

Lion of the Desert (1981)

Director: Moustapha Akkad

Entertainment grade: B

History grade: B–

Sidi Omar al-Mukhtar (Omar Mukhtar) led guerrilla resistance to Italian rule in the province of Cyrenaica in eastern Libya until he was captured and hanged in 1931.

Casting

Omar Mukhtar is honoured in Libya as an Arab hero who offered staunch resistance to imperialism. It is surprising, then, that this biopic casts in almost every Libyan speaking role an American or European actor – notably, John Gielgud as Sharif al-Ghariyani, and Anthony Quinn as Omar Mukhtar himself. If you're thinking "typical Hollywood", think again. Far from being a Hollywood movie, Lion of the Desert was funded by Libyan dictator, fashion plate and occasional Charlie Sheen impersonator Muammar Gaddafi. Perhaps Gaddafi thought western audiences would take his film more seriously if he cast A-list British and American actors.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

I fear Mein Bester Feind (My Best Enemy), which screened out of competition at Berlinale, is one for the German crowd only. The World War Two farce/body swap comedy/holocaust movie passed me by almost completely, looking camp, silly and seeming in slightly poor taste. A German-speaking friend explained to me that a lot of the jokes were very geared towards a home crowd, culturally and in terms of language. This, I suppose, will have to do as an explanation for the huge belly-laughs it generated for most of the audience. Well that, or chronic sense of humour failure on my part.

The central premise is complicated: a pair of Austrian best friends – one of whom is a Jew – are turned against each other by the 1938 annexing of Austria and the outbreak of the Second World War. It’s a set-up reminiscent I suppose of...

By Christopher Stipp

The Archives, Right Here

Check out my other column, This Week In Trailers, at SlashFilm.com and follow me on Twitter under the name: Stipp

Centurion Blu-Ray Six Shooter Giveaway!

What I love about modern film distribution is that first-run films are sometimes available to see in your house before you’re able to see them in the theater. Such is the case with Neil Marshall and Michael Fassbender’s newest film, Centurion, which is currently available on VOD, Xbox, Vudu and Amazon.com. Now, Centurion also opens in theaters August 27, 2010 if you care to see it with a bunch of other like minded individuals but I am thrilled to see that the models of getting movies to people how they want, when they want, are evolving.

In honor of Centurion’s recent premiere on VOD, Xbox, Playstation, Vudu and Amazon, I want to offer one of...

It’s a daunting task to try to create a sympathetic character who’s devotedly in love with one of history’s most notorious tyrants, and yet that’s just what this film does. Director/writer Marco Bellocchio’s Vincere tells the little known tale of Ida Dalser, the first wife of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, who ultimately becomes one of his victims and yet never stops loving the madman.

The film is visually engrossing, simultaneously capturing the growing architectural grandeur of Italy in the 20s and 30 and revealing the growing darkness in the increasingly restrictive police state. Bellocchio makes good use of archived news footage as a story telling device. We see actual speeches performed by Il Duce, who’s favorite word to use was “Vincere” (Meaning “win”.)

Our tragic tale begins prior to World War I, when a young Mussolini (Filippo Timi) is the editor of “Avanti” and an up-and-coming socialist party leader.

Reviewer: James van Maanen

Rating (out of 5): ****

I first saw Vincere when it had its American premiere during last year's New York Film Festival, but the film -- directed and co-written (with Daniella Ceselli) by Marco Bellocchio -- is so smart, dark and telling that it easily rewards a second viewing. Marco Bellocchio's skills as a filmmaker have only grown as he has aged.

Bellocchio tells his version of Benito Mussolini (aka Il Duce) as combination black comedy, opera, history, horror, politics, and masochistic love story of the woman who fixated on Mr. M, married him and fathered his child. In that role you'll discover a very different side of popular Italian actress Giovanna Mezzogiorno (Ferzan Ozpetek's Facing Windows), who at times seems very nearly feral in this film, while getting yet another taste of the fellow who may well be the most talented, versatile and charismatic young actor in Italy,...

Pardon my French (or, shall I say Italian) but, history has produced some truly monstrous assholes. One of these terrible men of history, among many from the first half of the 20th century, is Benito Mussolini. Vincere is the story of how inhuman the man known as Il Duce truly was, measuring Mussolini.s value as a human being on the world stage by how he treated his own family.

Written and directed by Marco Bellocchio, director of the controversial and sexually-charged 1986 film Devil In The Flesh, he brings Mussolini.s darkest colors to light in this part operatic, part dramatic biographical film, focusing on the torment subjected upon his wife and son in an attempt to hide that part of his personal life from the spotlights of his rising power in the political arena.

Vincere –which means, .Win. in Italian– begins with Benito Mussolini as a younger man, played by Filippo Timi,...

John Edwards' secret life is nothing compared with Benito Mussolini's as presented in the melodramatic "Vincere" by Marco Bellocchio, one of Italy's most respected directors. Long before he became Il Duce, Mussolini married a woman named Ida Dalser, who bore him a son. After rising to power, Mussolini discarded Ida and son in favor of another woman, to whom he also was wed. But Ida was not to be silenced and...

An operatic look at the largely forgotten life and times of Benito Mussolini’s first wife Ida Dalser (Giovanna Mezzogiorno), veteran Italian helmer Marco Bellocchio’s Vincere is a tragedy on scales both intimate and national. Il Duce’s transformation from a anti-war journalist to socialist rebel rouser to brutal fascist dictator is glimpsed through the lens of his misbegotten first marriage to Dalser, a beautiful and politically conscious Milano hair dresser who, enraptured by his charms and ideals, sells off her business and belongings to fund his early publishing efforts. However, in the wake of their marriage and the birth of their first child, Mussolini abandons her and reveals that in fact has another family already...

Today we're happy to debut the excellent poster for Marco Bellocchio's Vincere, which premiered in Competition at Cannes last year before hitting Telluride, Tiff and the Nyff. IFC opens the film in the States next month. Vincere is the story of Ida Dalser (Giovanna Mezzogiorno), who was reportedly the first wife of Benito Mussolini and the mother of his first son. As Il Duce's career progressed he married another woman and Dalser was marginalized, estranged and, eventually, forcibly institutionalized. Why do you care? Because Mike D'Angelo, a critic that is pretty damn hard to please, wrote in his Av Club Cannes coverage that Vincere "unleashed an aural and visual assault so dizzying and unrelenting that it more or less recapitulates the birth of Fascism in cinematic form." Time Out London is less forceful but equally impressed. "What distinguishes ‘Vincere’ is the flair with which the tale is related.

IFC Films

Reviewed for Arizona Reporter by Harvey Karten

Grade: B+

Directed by: Marco Bellocchio

Written By: Marco Bellocchio, Daniela Ceselli

Cast: Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Filippo Timi, Fausto Russo Alesi, Michela Cescon, Pier Giorgio

Screened at: Review 2, NYC, 12/14/09

Opens: March 19, 2010

Silvio Berlusconi, the current prime minister of Italy, had his nose broken by a man in the crowd on December 13. Considering the rising level of violence in that country recently, anyone with a sense of history will be reminded of Italy.s days under fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. The best news might have been that Mussolini had his nose.and other parts--broken by a partisan because Il Duce allied himself with the wrong guy during World War II. He got his comeuppance in .45, but his first wife and their son got the shaft early on.

At least that.s the way Marco Bellochio would have us believe in a film whose...

• An Italian friend of the site scolded me for not having seen Marco Bellocchio's 2003's Good Morning, Night. It took me forever to settle down with the film on disc, and I've been curious ever since to see where the veteran Italian director would go next, especially films that deal with complicated political landscape found in his backyard. Bellocchio could not have picked a bigger canvas in which to work with when he commenced working on history book bad guy Benito Mussolini. Headed off to Cannes in the Main Competition, Vincere focuses on the scorned/stubborn lover/wife's journey. In the trailer below, you don't need to comprehend Michelangelo's main tongue to grasp how Benito tried to keep his past and relationship with Ida Dalser in the dark. Here is the synopsis, and after the jump you can find the trailer. Before became a powerful dictator, Mussolini had a a past.

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