Mark Cousins Explores Roots of Fascist Propaganda in ‘March on Rome’ Documentary (EXCLUSIVE)
variety.comNick Vivarelli International CorrespondentAward winning film director and historian Mark Cousins (“The Story of Film: A New Generation”) is at Rome’s Cinecittà Studios making a doc titled “March on Rome” that will explore the roots of fascism by analyzing films, photographs, and other documents found in Italian archives.The high-profile documentary — pegged to the centennial of the infamous late October 1922 insurrection by which Benito Mussolini came to power in Italy — will take its cue from the Fascist propaganda film “A Noi” by director Umberto Paradisi, produced in 1923 as an official Fascist party document celebrating the March on Rome.Italian writer and director Tony Saccucci (“The Duce’s Boxer”), who originated the project and did meticulous research for it, serves as a co-writer with Cousins.
Saccuci cross-checked Paradisi’s film with other sources of the time to reveal details of the pic that provide a completely new take on the history of those dramatic days, according to the synopsis.
Obviously many of the images in the film “A Noi” are extensively manipulated. But some of the scenes that are completely staged reveal all the power of great propaganda and exaltation of masculinity, “which has always been at the center of fascism’s communication strategies,” the synopsis says.
The speeches and references, exuding Mussolini’s machismo “today are those of Putin – who also gets shirtless – and of the undemocratic leaders of Hungary, India, Brazil,” the synopsis notes.Leading us in the creative doc’s narration is Anna, played by Italian A-list actor Alba Rohrwacher (“The Lost Daughter”).
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