Mussolini: The Untold Story

Although it says here it is a seven hour title, I disagree. I recorded the series when it was broadcast in 1985/6, in the USA on a Betamax system, and it was five and half hours long.

I also recorded it in 1989 here in the UK on a VHS system.

The DVD is exactly the same running time today and is exactly the same program scene by scene.

Unless it was drastically cut by one and half hours before it was originally broadcast,I cannot see how it was seven hours long.

All three programs are exactly the same running length.

This does not detract from the program which I think is an excellent portrayal of a man who was corrupt, immoral, and blinded by his own power and ideology.

The acting by George C Scott and Raul Julia is superb,who demonstrate the differences between the two men.

Although not always historically accurate, it does provoke thought about WWII not just from the usual UK/USA & Germany angle, but to the situation in Italy which was still only a country 50 years old and full of conflict after the results of the 1st world war.

I would recommend this to any person interested in a different aspect to troubled period.

It starts out once he's already in power. I was hoping it would explore how he developed from a boy to a man. What moulded him psychologically. Instead it's mostly about his family life. A few brief bit of politics, but most lovey-dovey daytime tv poop (romance is the genre I'm thinking of). That said, the acting is good so I lasted 2hrs. Perhaps the downfall in the later half is better, but I doubt it.

If you can find this anywhere, watch it. An excellent cast, featuring George C. Scott and Raul Julia, propel this engaging and often historically-accurate tale of one of the Twentieth Century's most influential men. Memorable production values.

This miniseries has stayed with me long after I saw it. I was thinking about actors who never got rid of their local accents but were still great actors. Raul Julia was one of them. He could have played Count Ciano way over the top here, but he didn't. Yet he was so moving as Mussolini's conniving, but very human son-in-law. I hope you're doing well wherever you are, Raul.

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.