There needs to be a good film about Italian fascism, but this isn't it. It's soap opera for the most part.
Who cares about Mussolini's daughter marrying a playboy? (And far from being a dutiful wife, she had plenty of affairs herself.) Who cares about his son, played by a young Robert Downey, taking the virginity of his girlfriend? This soap opera thinks the viewer does when I just laughed and fast forwarded.
The soap opera also hides how much Mussolini's family were nearly the evil he was. The daughter was an honorary member of Hitler's SS, the death camp killers. The son portrayed by Downey, shown as a romantic pilot with lots of hot sex scenes? The film leaves out that he bombed Ethiopian civilians, mass killing them with chemical weapons. Photos also show he was fat and homely.
The good part, the reason it doesn't deserve a 1 or 0, is George C Scott. He is perfect to show Mussolini as the blustering blowhard and mass murderer who smiled while viewing photos of mass executions he ordered and bombing African civilians while claiming he brought "civilization to these savages."
The soap opera nonsense is a wildly disturbing attempt to humanize him, or more charitably at least get the Harlequin Romance readers to sit through a history lesson.
And for the record, the rape scene didn't happen just once, but hundreds of times. Mussolini had his men bring him women for sex partners every week. Those who refused he raped.
This man was a monster who killed two million people for his own greed, power, and bigotry. The non soap parts of this film make that clear. Those posting their admiration of a mass murderer should be ashamed of their ignorance.
The final thing the film changes is how he died. He was hiding fearfully when the partisans found him. He groveled like a coward when he was executed too.
One could also wish there were more actual Italians in this film. Lee Grant and Virginia Madsen are so out of place.
