TERRY GROSS, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. "Mussolini: Son Of The Century," is a new eight-part TV series that chronicles the ferocious rise of the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Directed by Joe Wright, who made his name with the Keira Knightley "Pride & Prejudice" film, this series is rolling out one episode per week on the streaming service MUBI. Our critic-at-large John Powers has seen the first four episodes. He says that while the show is a bit too eager to make Mussolini entertaining, the story it tells couldn't be any more timely.
JOHN POWERS, BYLINE: We live in an era dominated by populist strongmen. Some elected, some crookedly elected, some who just seized power. Skeptical of liberal democracy, this breed of leader celebrates national pride, restless activity, old-school masculinity and, of course, themselves. The man who set the template for all this was Benito Mussolini, the creator of fascism who became Italy's prime minister in 1922, a full 12 years before Hitler took over Germany, and ruled until 1943. His rise is the subject of "Mussolini: Son Of The Century," a darkly bouncy historical drama on the streaming service MUBI.
Based on a teeming 800-page novel by Antonio Scurati, this eight-part series follows Mussolini from his founding of the Fasci Italiani movement until he assumes dictatorial powers in 1925. Shot in Italian by the British filmmaker Joe Wright, who made the mythologizing Churchill film "Darkest Hour," "Son Of The Century" may leave you reeling from all its present-day resonances. When we first meet Mussolini, superbly played by Luca Marinelli, he's the charismatic 35-year-old editor of a populist newspaper. I'm like an animal, he boasts, I can smell the times ahead.
A one-time socialist, he's now a right-wing rabble-rouser whose early acolytes are disaffected World War I vets and an assortment of thugs who just like beating people up. They become his notorious Blackshirts. Although sometimes laughable, Il Duce, as he was known, is a master of political theater.
We watch him play on resentments against the ruling elite and use his thugs to intimidate and murder the political opposition. He deliberately stokes chaos, fear and hatred so he can offer fascism as the cure. Along the way, he lies, sells out his allies and changes policies on a dime if it helps him. His tactic is to feed the public imagination by always doing something. Our only doctrine, he says, is action.
He's no more idealistic in his private life. Bored senseless by domesticity, he ignores his wife, Rachele, and his kids, but he does have time for his mistress, Margherita Sarfatti, a cultured Jewish socialite who dubs him my savage. Rightly so. When Il Duce needs an emotional pick-me-up, he simply pushes some young woman against a door and has his way with her. Fascism isn't big on foreplay.
Mussolini's ascent is such an epic story that one wonders - what's the best way to tell it? In his painstakingly researched historical novel, Scurati employs a panoramic style that hopscotches between documents, news articles and scads of major characters, not just Mussolini. When he does take us inside Il Duce's thoughts and feelings, Scurati is careful not to make him larger than life. His Mussolini is only part of a bigger picture. Scurati shows the foolishness of the ruling elite, which makes the classic mistake of asking the fox into the henhouse and thinking they can control it. He tracks the ineptitude of the Italian left, which outnumbered the fascists by millions, but dithered, bickered and froze in history's headlights.
In contrast, the TV series, perhaps by necessity, has simplified everything radically. It has little time to explore questions of social class, Mussolini's political enemies or even complex events. And perhaps seduced by Mussolini's potential as a vivid TV character, Wright doesn't keep Scurati's cautious distance. Instead, his Il Duce talks to us directly like "Richard III," or more accurately, like Kevin Spacey's Frank Underwood in "House of Cards," which is to say like a roguish pop culture villain, not a murderous dictator. We see things from his point of view. Mussolini prized emotion over reason, and the series unfolds as if it were his fever dream. Not a little vainglorious himself, Wright keeps trying to wow us with his style and his audacity, even tossing in an embarrassingly explicit swipe at Donald Trump along the way.
Now, to be fair, Wright's flashy approach does suit Mussolini's flashy character. And there's no denying that "Son Of The Century" pulls you along and gets you thinking about how dictatorships happen. It's helped by Marinelli's magnetic, shape-shifting performance. He gives us not only the absurd, chin-jutting bully we know from old newsreels, but the sometimes charming politician who was canny enough to get millions of people to believe in him - for a while, anyway. Mussolini did, of course, wind up with his corpse being hanged upside down from the roof of a gas station in Milan. But that didn't happen until 1945, 20 years after the events we've been watching. In "Son Of The Century," the bad guy wins, and I can imagine Il Duce really enjoying this series.
GROSS: John Powers reviewed the new series "Mussolini: Son Of The Century." It's streaming on MUBI. If you'd like to catch up on FRESH AIR interviews you missed, like this week's with bluegrass guitarist and singer Billy Strings or Rob Reiner, who directed the new sequel to his film, "This Is Spinal Tap," or Richard Hasen about new threats to voting rights, check out our podcast. You'll find lots of FRESH AIR interviews. And to find out what's happening behind the scenes of our show and get our producers' recommendations for what to watch, read and listen to, subscribe to our free newsletter at whyy.org/freshair.
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GROSS: FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our engineer today is Adam Staniszewski. Our managing producer is Sam Briger. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Roberta Shorrock, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Susan Nyakundi and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Our consulting visual producer is Hope Wilson. Thea Chaloner directed today's show. Our co-host is Tonya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
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