Latest / MUBI Podcast / MUSSOLINI: SON OF THE CENTURY — Joe Wright gazes into the abyss
Transcript
- 0:00Heads up, this episode includes some adult language and spoilers.
- 0:08The music was the first idea I had.
- 0:10As I was reading the book, I was thinking, I need to make sure that this has a modernity.
- 0:15I need to make sure that it speaks to what's happening now.
- 0:20So I asked Tom Rowlands, who I'd worked with before and have known for many years, one half of the Chemical Brothers, to do the music.
- 0:31That was the very first choice I made, and so the imagery came out of the music rather than the other way round.
- 0:42That is filmmaker Joe Wright.
- 0:44And yeah, his new streaming series is based on a book about the dark past.
- 0:48But as you can hear from this Tom Rowlands track definitely feels like the freaky present.
- 0:56The show is calledMussolini: Son of the Century about dictator Benito Mussolini and his violent rise from bitter, power hungry newspaper editor to founder of fascism, to strongman ruler of Italy.
- 1:08Its surreal, blackly comic and, for me, pretty unsettling.
- 1:12A few minutes into the opening episode, Mussolini looks right into the camera
- 1:23and says: "I'm like an animal.
- 1:24and says: "I can smell the times ahead, and this is my time." He's talking about the run up to World War Two, but also the times ahead could be right now.
- 1:40and says: I'm Rico Gagliano.
- 1:40and says: Welcome back to the MUBI Podcast.
- 1:43and says: MUBI's the global film company that champions great cinema.
- 1:45and says: On this show we tell you the stories behind great cinema.
- 1:48and says: Thanks to Simran Hans for her fabulous job guest hosting last season.
- 1:51and says: I couldn't be happier to be back and cooking up season ten for you.
- 1:54and says: That is coming in November.
- 1:56and says: But first this special episode.
- 1:58and says: It is my interview with Joe Wright about Mussolini: Son of the Century.
- 2:02and says: You can watch every episode on MUBI right now in the US, Canada, Latin America and many other countries.
- 2:07and says: But a few weeks back before it debuted, we screened the first two episodes here in LA at the American Cinematheque Los Feliz 3 cinema.
- 2:15and says: Afterwards, I spoke to Joe live on stage and you are about to hear the conversation.
- 2:20and says: I started with a rundown of his impressive resume.
- 2:25and says: He is the director of Pride and Prejudice,Atonement, Hanna,Darkest Hour, that's just a few.
- 2:30and says: His movies have been nominated for 22 Oscars and won four.
- 2:35and says: Please welcome the director of M: Son of the Century, Joe Wright.
- 2:43and says: - Hi.
- 2:43and says: - That's Joe.
- 2:45and says: Hello. Hello.
- 2:46and says: That's the audience. Hello.
- 2:49and says: So, just to address the elephant in the room right off the bat, you have said straight up that you wanted to do a movie about fascism because of the kind of rise of the right wing around the world.
- 3:01and says: And I'm wondering at what moment the story of Mussolini became the lens that you were going to tell that story through.
- 3:08and says: Like what brought you to Mussolini?
- 3:11and says: Lorenzo Mieli.
- 3:11and says: Lorenzo Mieli is the Italian producer of Paolo Sorrentino's movies and some of Guadagninos movies, and so I wanted to work with him.
- 3:23and says: I was a big fan of his work and also the show Gomorrah, which was written by Stefano Bises, the same writer.
- 3:33and says: About the Mafia?
- 3:34and says: Yeah. And so we started talking around-- I was releasing Cyrano and he was releasing Hand of God.
- 3:41and says: And so we kept on sort of bumping into each other around the place, and we started talking, and that was the beginning of it.
- 3:48and says: What did you know of Mussolini at that time?
- 3:50and says: I mean, to what extent were you familiar.
- 3:52and says: Not a huge amount, to be honest with you.
- 3:54and says: He kind of, he was always just a bit of a comical figure.
- 3:58and says: I remember seeing some film of him when I was a teenager and sort of impersonating him, these sort of ridiculous gestures and so on.
- 4:08and says: And in a way, I feel like, you know, as teenagers, we used to go around calling any authoritarian figure fascist, you know, we'd call the police fascists and we'd call our teachers fascists.
- 4:22and says: And and we kind of trivialized the word.
- 4:24and says: And then sort of, I guess around 2016, when the word started to reemerge in the public consciousness, and I felt it was sort of incumbent upon...
- 4:36and says: us all really to understand what it was and the etymology of the word, where it came from.
- 4:42and says: And so this was an opportunity to educate myself.
- 4:46and says: It's interesting that you were talking about how he's seen as a goof,'cause that was my sum total knowledge of like, somehow he is like the fascist, the less scary fascist of that era, somehow.
- 4:58and says: Why?
- 4:58and says: How is it that he clearly terribly dangerous and violent person, got this reputation as being the kind of clown of that era?
- 5:06and says: Is it just like by virtue of not having had a Holocaust?
- 5:10and says: I think it's partly by virtue of his delivery, his speeches.
- 5:14and says: You know, they are so kind of absurd, the way he spoke and moved.
- 5:20and says: I think also there's some kind of racism in there as well, possibly towards the Italians, you know, in the 20s and 30s and so on.
- 5:28and says: I mean, if you look at Howard Hawks'Scarface and the way people thought about Italians, they were kind of a joke.
- 5:36and says: Do you think that's why there are so few?
- 5:38and says: 'Cause the other thing I was trying to think of was like, how many movies really grapple with Mussolini as a figure?
- 5:43and says: - None.
- 5:43and says: - Yeah.
- 5:44and says: And not even Italian movies.
- 5:47and says: There's a great film by Marco Bellocchio called Vincere, which is sort of about one of his mistresses, more than it's about him, but that's basically it.
- 5:59and says: There's a Tea with Mussolini which deals with him indirectly, but I think the Italians, you know, after the fascist period, after the Second World War, brushed the whole thing under the carpet.
- 6:12and says: There was no Nuremberg trials, there was no truth and reconciliation.
- 6:18and says: There were a few kind of, quite a lot of localized retributions, but there was no national kind of accountability, really, which is why also I think that latent fascism was allowed to keep going, you know, and I was really shocked when making this in Italy, talking to people, you know, lots of people talking about how, you know, "He was okay, Mussolini.
- 6:45and says: "He was, you know, he was all right.
- 6:45and says: He fell in with this guy, Hitler.
- 6:49and says: "He was a bad apple, you know. Spoiled him." But Mussolini himself was okay.
- 6:55and says: This was prevalent?
- 6:56and says: Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah.
- 6:58and says: Even thinking, like, within kind of like filmmaking circles and like showbiz circles.
- 7:02and says: - I mean?
- 7:02and says: - It's where you go as well, you know.
- 7:04and says: But I mean, you know, every year at Mussolini's grave, there are large gatherings of neo fascists doing the salute, you know.
- 7:14and says: What do you attribute that to that?
- 7:16and says: You know, whereas in Germany, obviously there was a huge reckoning and continues to be.
- 7:20and says: I don't know. I don't know why I don't know why there wasn't that reckoning.
- 7:23and says: I guess the focus was really on the Nazis and not so much on the Italians.
- 7:29and says: When you were doing this research, it makes me wonder if you've come across stuff that surprised you beyond that.
- 7:36and says: It's all pretty extraordinary, really.
- 7:40and says: The classic fascist salute which they attributed to the Romans.
- 7:46and says: But actually the Romans never saluted like that.
- 7:49and says: I like that one.
- 7:50and says: - Where did it come from?
- 7:50and says: - They made it up.
- 7:52and says: I mean, they kind of thought it was a bit like a Roman one, but it wasn't.
- 7:55and says: But it's the same deal.
- 7:57and says: It's the you know, they harked back to their Roman roots as the, you know, Nazis harked back to their Teutonic kind of glory days.
- 8:06and says: It's that kind of reactionary feeling that you get with these ultra right wing people.
- 8:12and says: And there is some sort of obvious through lines between all these kind of strongman figures throughout history.
- 8:18and says: What do you think is the kind of baseline background maybe that was in Mussolini's background that runs through all of these kind of guys?
- 8:25and says: Toxic masculinity, really.
- 8:28and says: What I kind of ended up feeling-- for a start, I was trying to figure out what fascism really was.
- 8:35and says: And at the end of the day, there is a great big void at the center of it, and there is nothing there.
- 8:42and says: But what it does seem to me to be the politicization of toxic masculinity, and that can exist in a relationship or in a family or in a small community, or it can exist on a national level, as it does in the case of fascism.
- 9:00and says: Do you know how that manifested itself in him to start with?
- 9:04and says: Like where that came from with him?
- 9:05and says: Bitterness and resentment and a feeling like, people didn't take him seriously enough.
- 9:11and says: I know that he thought of himself as a kind of intellectual.
- 9:14and says: Was there a point where he wasn't taken seriously, as...
- 9:16and says: He was never an intellectual. Really.
- 9:19and says: I mean, he was incredibly smart in some ways.
- 9:23and says: His manipulation of media, he invented that, really the kind of modern manipulation of media.
- 9:31and says: But, he was a school teacher for a while.
- 9:36and says: He was just someone who felt like he'd been hard done by, really and wanted to set out to prove himself.
- 9:44and says: But I think at the center of him was a great you know, as I said about fascism, at the center of him was also a great big void of nothingness.
- 9:53and says: And he tried to fill that with power and glory, which worked for a while.
- 9:59and says: And then it didn't.
- 10:00and says: - Yes. Usually ends up that way.
- 10:00and says: - Yeah.
- 10:03and says: You've grappled with this era before this kind of lead up to World War Two in Atonement, and then in Darkest Hour.
- 10:12and says: First of all, what attracts you to that era?
- 10:15and says: I don't know. It's like, I think I feel like I was born in the wrong time.
- 10:20and says: When I was a kid, like 13, I became obsessed with Noel Coward, and...
- 10:28and says: and I used to kind of, you know, carry around a boombox playing Noel Coward and wearing cravats.
- 10:34and says: Which didn't go down very well in my inner city environment.
- 10:39and says: - This would be like the 80s, right?
- 10:39and says: - Yeah.
- 10:41and says: - Yeah.
- 10:41and says: - Really, really cool.
- 10:43and says: Really like 1983-4.
- 10:46and says: You're blastingWhy Do the Wrong People Travel? Yes, I'm Mad About the Boy.
- 10:52and says: Got the shit kicked out of me.
- 10:53and says: - Where the hell did that come...?
- 10:53and says: - By the local fascists.
- 10:56and says: I don't know.
- 10:56and says: I mean, my dad was born in 1906.
- 11:00and says: He was 65 when I was born, so I kind of felt like, I did the maths, and I kind of thought, well, maybe I should have been born in, like, you know, the late 20s and...
- 11:08and says: - Spiritually.
- 11:08and says: - Yeah.
- 11:09and says: And also, I guess it's a way of getting to figure out who he was, you know, trying to understand him through the times he lived.
- 11:17and says: - Your dad?
- 11:17and says: - Yeah.
- 11:18and says: So but I mean, just kind of culturally you were kind of interested in the music...
- 11:22and says: I loved all of that, you know?
- 11:23and says: I mean, I was also I used to go to, we didn't have a TV, and there was a wonderful woman called Joan who lived around the corner.
- 11:31and says: And every Friday her husband would cook me fish and chips, and Joan and I would watch, you know, Greta Garbo and Errol Flynn and all those wonderful movies, you know, Boulting Brothers,Brighton Rock.
- 11:46and says: Brief Encounter was a big one.
- 11:46and says: You know?
- 11:48and says: These are I mean, these are all the wonderful aspects of that era, but you're dealing with very specifically, like the lead up to war, like one of the most horrific things that's ever happened to the world.
- 11:57and says: Yeah, yeah, I know it's weird, isn't it?
- 12:00and says: I mean, it's kind of, I think probably I had a certain romance about the period as well.
- 12:06and says: You know, I think, I think I probably liked the sense in which things were very-- seemed simpler.
- 12:14and says: But I feel like your movies are kind of revealing that that's not the case.
- 12:17and says: Yeah, I think that's true.
- 12:19and says: Do you think that this is an exercise in kind of disabusing yourself of nostalgia?
- 12:22and says: - Maybe on some level?
- 12:22and says: - Yeah, I think that's true.
- 12:25and says: I think because also, I mean, you know, I was brought up in this weird kind of fairy tale home with this kind of venerated older father.
- 12:36and says: And then you go into the streets of London in the 80s and there were, you know, on one side of the street you had the socialists selling their newspaper, and on the other side of the street you had the fascists, the National Front selling their newspaper.
- 12:51And then at about 4: 00, when the market was over, they'd put their papers down and have a fight.
- 12:55And then at about 4: And it was quite a violent world, kind of.
- 12:58And then at about 4: So it's always trying to reconcile those two things, really, those two experiences.
- 13:03And then at about 4: I mean, fascinating that you then make a movie about fascists and socialists literally fighting.
- 13:08And then at about 4: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
- 13:10And then at about 4: The thing that I think that really connects all three of these movies is- that they're about the lead up to a war.
- 13:13And then at about 4: - Yeah.
- 13:16And then at about 4: And you seem less interested in the war part.
- 13:18And then at about 4: There's a little bit of it in Atonement.
- 13:20And then at about 4: Kind of the middle act of Atonement has some battle scenes.
- 13:23And then at about 4: But it's about the lead up and the aftermath.
- 13:26And then at about 4: What do you think?
- 13:28And then at about 4: It's that really strange period.
- 13:28And then at about 4: And it's the Noel Coward period, you know?
- 13:31And then at about 4: It's the Bright Young Things, period.
- 13:31And then at about 4: It's this, it was this kind of strange fever dream period of, you know, Otto Dix and...
- 13:39And then at about 4: Who's that?
- 13:40And then at about 4: Isherwood, and Otto Dix was a German painter, and he painted these kind of grotesque cabaret paintings and etchings.
- 13:49And then at about 4: And it's this kind of strange, expressionistic period that I find really fascinating.
- 13:55And then at about 4: And then also you have, there's all the lies around it as well.
- 13:59And then at about 4: You know, there's all the kind of bullshit that suggests that Britain was, you know, always against fascism, which was rubbish.
- 14:06And then at about 4: You know, there was a huge I mean, even the royal family were pretty fascist at the time.
- 14:11And then at about 4: I mean, Churchill wrote letters of congratulation to Mussolini when he took power after the march on Rome.
- 14:19And then at about 4: There's a kind of really strange myth that's told about Britain at that time.
- 14:26And then at about 4: And I find that whole kind of period dark and and strange and fascinating.
- 14:32And then at about 4: The first inkling that I got that that existed, I'm going to forget the name of the series it's about the detective in Britain during this period.
- 14:39And then at about 4: Oh, yeah. Foyle's war.
- 14:41And then at about 4: - Foyle's War.
- 14:41And then at about 4: - Yeah, yeah.
- 14:42And then at about 4: Where it's like this guy investigating things while there's a war going on.
- 14:45And then at about 4: And it's the first inkling that I ever had as an American that like, oh, yeah, there were UK people who were really into Nazis during World War Two.
- 14:52And then at about 4: Yeah, absolutely.
- 14:53And then at about 4: You know, oh, we have a long history of fascism in Britain.
- 14:57And then at about 4: - We'll get more into that in a second.
- 14:57And then at about 4: - Yeah.
- 15:00And then at about 4: You have said that you have, one of the things that you had a hard time with or that you wanted to do with this was find this balance in portraying Mussolini.
- 15:07And then at about 4: You didn't want to portray him without charm, because then Italians would seem like they were idiots to have been enthralled by him.
- 15:15And then at about 4: But then you don't want to make him too charming, because you don't want to create this character that on some level is, like, relatable and like you feel like is cool.
- 15:22And then at about 4: What was the moment, like the scene or the sequence in this that was hardest to kind of strike that balance?
- 15:28And then at about 4: I guess the idea, I'm quite into Bertolt Brecht having directedLife of Galileo on stage in London, and I quite liked the idea of playing with the kind of balance between critical distance and empathy.
- 15:46And then at about 4: And I felt very strongly that he needed to seduce the audience at times.
- 15:51And then at about 4: And then the challenge was to flip that and have the audience catch themselves empathizing.
- 15:59And then at about 4: So really, as the show goes on at about the kind of change from episode 4 to 5, it takes on a very different tone and becomes a lot less funny and much, much darker.
- 16:15And then at about 4: And that's really the tipping point.
- 16:17And then at about 4: But I'll say that this does not strike me as like, not dark.
- 16:21And then at about 4: Yeah, yeah yeah, yeah.
- 16:21And then at about 4: It gets darker.
- 16:28And then at about 4: On first watch that may seem hard to believe because in the first two episodes, there are shocking, brutal battles between Mussolini's fascists and their political enemies, the socialists.
- 16:37And then at about 4: Like, in an early scene, Mussolini's eating dinner at a restaurant with his crew of thugs when all around them diners defiantly rise and start singing the socialist anthem.
- 16:50And then at about 4: With a nod, Mussolini sends his thugs to beat them senseless.
- 16:57And then at about 4: One of them knocks a guy to the ground and kicks him viciously again and again and again.
- 17:12And then at about 4: "Savage, fluid, necessary" Mussolini says, gazing directly into the camera.
- 17:17And then at about 4: The way violence should always be.
- 17:21And then at about 4: It'll triumph.
- 17:27And then at about 4: To me, in this first two episodes, the portrayal of violence really struck me because it's excessive in a way that it's not in, I would say in a lot of your work.
- 17:38And then at about 4: It seems, it's like a real choice to sort of like have us confront it.
- 17:43And then at about 4: Why that choice and what led you to that?
- 17:46And then at about 4: I think violence well, for a start, a lot of the Italians don't understand how violent he was.
- 17:53And then at about 4: And to an extent, one was making it for an Italian audience.
- 17:57And then at about 4: - Really?
- 17:57And then at about 4: - Yeah.
- 17:59And then at about 4: Giorgia Meloni came to power during pre-production.
- 18:03And then at about 4: At one point, we were going to have all the direct address stuff spoken in English, and the dialog between characters in Italian.
- 18:11And then at about 4: - Wow.
- 18:11And then at about 4: - And then...
- 18:13And then at about 4: the morning after her election victory, I realized that I wanted every single Italian to understand every single word.
- 18:21And then at about 4: But a lot of the Italians don't kind of understand how violent his rise was, and they all thought it was democratic, you know, that he won the election.
- 18:31And then at about 4: So therefore he was, you know, chosen by the people, which wasn't really the case.
- 18:37And then at about 4: So I felt it was important to, to really stress just how violent he and his, you know, fascists were.
- 18:45And then at about 4: I feel like this is not just endemic to Italy.
- 18:48And then at about 4: I feel like there's a lot of I mean, just, like, casually, I hear this on, you know, many sides of the political spectrum.
- 18:54And then at about 4: It's like, "You know, there's going to be a civil war." And like, do you know what that means?
- 18:57And then at about 4: It means that the guy down the street is going to try to kill your kid.
- 19:00And then at about 4: - Like, this is for real.
- 19:00And then at about 4: - Yeah.
- 19:02And then at about 4: I'm wondering if that's the kind of thing that was going through your head.
- 19:04And then at about 4: Very much so.
- 19:04And then at about 4: It's real and it's terrifying.
- 19:07And then at about 4: But also, they had a very different relationship with violence.
- 19:10And then at about 4: I mean, coming out of the First World War, they and, you know, the futurist Marinetti and so on, they had this idea that violence was somehow cleansing.
- 19:22And then at about 4: I think we have now post the Second World War and post the Holocaust, have a very different relationship with violence.
- 19:31And then at about 4: - How so?
- 19:31And then at about 4: - For us, I feel like violence is unequivocally bad.
- 19:37And then at about 4: There's a line drawn there.
- 19:39And then at about 4: Whereas I think for them and he speaks about it.
- 19:43And then at about 4: D'Annunzio also talked about it.
- 19:45And then at about 4: There's this sense in which life was a bit cheaper and that violence was somehow a purifying force or could be rational violence, so to speak, was cleansing.
- 19:59And then at about 4: You think that's less so now?
- 20:00And then at about 4: - I mean, like, I get what you're saying.
- 20:00And then at about 4: - Yeah, I do.
- 20:03And then at about 4: I think we have a different relationship with violence now.
- 20:06And then at about 4: Do you think that maybe, like, as some of these countries go towards full right wing, that maybe is this pie in the sky task or will we avoid it?
- 20:15And then at about 4: - Avoid the violence?
- 20:15And then at about 4: - Yeah.
- 20:16And then at about 4: No, no, of course not.
- 20:19And then at about 4: You know, and I think that what's shocking I mean, listen, I'm not an ethicist or a politician or, you know, so what do I know?
- 20:26And then at about 4: But the-- I think the further we get from the events of the Second World War and from these events, the more we're able to forget.
- 20:36And then at about 4: So it feels important to remember.
- 20:40And then at about 4: To that extent was there something when you're researching this and you're making this movie, were there mistakes that you saw made back then that maybe you feel like we could avoid now?
- 20:53And then at about 4: Yeah, people didn't speak up.
- 20:55And then at about 4: People thought that someone else would deal with it, that it's not really my responsibility.
- 21:00And then at about 4: And in fact, the very, you know, the very last scene of the last episode is really about our collective responsibility and that he didn't exist and a void.
- 21:13And then at about 4: And there were those that actually actively supported him, certainly.
- 21:17And then at about 4: But there were also, you know, a vast majority who just didn't speak, didn't respond, didn't speak up, didn't fight back.
- 21:25And then at about 4: And even the socialists, in government.
- 21:27And then at about 4: When there still were some, they would stage a protest, and the protest would be that they would stage a walkout and they'd walk out and they'd stand on the steps and they'd sort of wave their placards, but they weren't there for the crucial votes, and they weren't there for the debates, and they weren't there to raise their voices, you know?
- 21:47And then at about 4: I don't think I'm giving too much away by saying that the last word of the entire eight hours is silencio.
- 22:00And then at about 4: Joe Wright, he directed the seriesMussolini: Son of the Century.
- 22:04And then at about 4: It's showing now on MUBI in the US, Canada and many more countries.
- 22:07And then at about 4: Check the show notes for details on how to watch.
- 22:10And then at about 4: Meanwhile, follow us for more episodes about great films and great filmmakers.
- 22:14And then at about 4: Next time I travel to a modern day place where some filmmakers are grappling with an authoritarian regime right now and making great movies anyway.
- 22:22And then at about 4: It's my journey to Turkey and the cinema scene of its main city, Istanbul.
- 22:26And then at about 4: Don't miss it.
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- 22:32And then at about 4: Also, if you've got questions, comments or tickets to see The Chemical Brothers, you just want to send my way, our email is podcast@mubi.com And now let's roll credits.
- 22:42And then at about 4: This episode was hosted, written and edited by me, Rico Gagliano.
- 22:45And then at about 4: Ciara McEniff is our producer with help from assistant producer Kat Kowalczyk.
- 22:49And then at about 4: Stephen Colon mastered this episode.
- 22:49And then at about 4: Our end credit music is by Yuri Suzuki.
- 22:53And then at about 4: Thanks this week to everyone at the American Cinematheque and the Los Feliz 3 cinema.
- 22:58And then at about 4: The show is executive produced by me along with Efe Çakarel Daniel Kasman and Michael Tacca.
- 23:03And then at about 4: And finally, to watch the best in cinema subscribe to MUBI at mubi.com Thanks for listening, go watch some movies, right after you register to vote.