"Vincere" tells the story of Ida Dalser (Giovanna Mezzogiorno), a woman who fell in love, married, and bore a child to a young, fiery and idealistic Benito Mussolini (Filippo Timi) before the tumult of the First Great War. When the two came back in contact, and Benito was remarried and well on his way to becoming Il Duce, he spent the rest of his life covering up his first marriage in the most horrid manner. Marco Bellocchio's film is an odd piece of historical representation that turns its little known story into heightened soapy melodrama and isn't quite as involving as it should be. It is also tarnished by the distracting soundtrack, which borrows heavily from Bernard Herrmann's famous "North by Northwest" scoring.
