'M: Son of the Century' New Biopic, Mussolini, Ital Dictator, Suspended Democracy, Creator of Fascism,

'I want the audience to be seduced’: Joe Wright on his Mussolini biopic, The Guardian, Aug. 17, 2024. Atonement director hopes viewers get swept along by M: Son of the Century as ‘to demonise these characters absolves us of moral responsibility’
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He built up violent paramilitary gangs and terrorised political opponents, suspended democracy in favour of a dictatorship that would inspire nazism, and plunged his country into a bloody war. But a major new biographical series about the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini dares us to feel sympathy for the bull-necked creator of fascism, if only to demonstrate his diabolical charm.

In a first interview about his series M: Son of the Century, the British director Joe Wright told the Guardian: “What I hoped to do in the show is sometimes allow the audience to be seduced by Mussolini and to get excited by what he’s doing. “To demonise these characters absolves us of moral responsibility and I think that’s really, really dangerous,” added Wright, who is best known for the period dramas Atonement and Pride and Prejudice.

The eight-part biopic will premiere at the Venice film festival on 5 September before being released by Sky next spring.

It does not so much analyse fascism’s origins as dunk the viewer straight into the bath of blood, sweat and male testosterone that gave rise to the cult around the man his followers called Il Duce. Mussolini, a former editor of the Italian Socialist party’s official newspaper who fell out with the left over his support for the first world war, is shown as a morally corrupt individual, but also as a canny political operator who is able to temper his taste for violence for strategic gains.

The torchlit night-time rallies of the brutish and black-shirted fascisti are underscored by an intoxicating techno soundtrack courtesy of Tom Rowlands, one half of the British electronic music duo the Chemical Brothers. Stylistically, Wright said, the serial biopic had become “a mashup of Scarface, Man With a Movie Camera and 90s rave culture”. The series makers say that if there are moments where viewers catch themselves being swept along by the propulsive energy of the Milan-born politician’s rise to power, that is precisely what they intended...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/17/atonement-director-joe-wright-on-his-new-mussolini-biopic-m-son-of-the-century