In this episode Russ Kilbourn and our guest Sandra Parmegiani, a specialist in contemporary Italian literature, explore the background to Antonio Scurati’s internationally successful 2018 novel ‘M: Il Figlio Del Secolo’ (M: Son of the Century) about Benito Mussolini’s rise to power, adapted for the screen by Sky as ‘Mussolini: Son of the Century’, in eight parts. The series starred Luca Marinelli as Mussolini and was directed by Joe Wright. Sandra describes the Scurati work before the M series, one of which, like M, won the Strega prize. She outlines the story ‘M’ tells and the unusual use of contemporary quotations from many sources. We discuss Mussolini’s relationship with women and also poet/activist D’Annuncio, essentially a prototypical fascist. The novel and series culminates in the murder of socialist deputy Giacomo Matteotti, an individual who, 90 years on, continues to provoke political controversy. Turning to the TV series, we discuss the unusual range of visual story telling styles employed by Joe Wright, especially often non-realistic studio setting and the use of puppets, the latter tapping into both Wright’s early years as the son of puppeteers, and their artistic and political importance in Italy. Russ sees echoes of the multi-faceted theatre of Brecht in Wright’s staging and direction and also references Walter Benjamin’s early media criticism in his discussion. We echo the positive critical reaction to Marinelli’s performance and discuss the decision not to adapt the other novels in the series.

Participants:

Sandra Parmegiani is Associate Professor, European Studies & Italian School of Languages and Literatures, University of Gelph, Ontario, Canada.

https://www.uoguelph.ca/arts/solal/

Russ Kilbourn, Professor of English and Film Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario (Canada) http://rjakilbourn.com/

Ken Barrett, UK based visual artist, writer, podcaster and short film producer http://www.kenbarrettstudio.co.uk/

Antonio Scurati: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Scurati

The novel: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._Il_figlio_del_secolo

The series: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt19386538/

The article by Maria Bonaria Urban we discuss appeared in Annali d’Italianistica. https://annali.org/volume-41-2023/

Walter Benjamin’s ‘The Work of Art in the Age of

Its Technological Reproducibility’ https://monoskop.org/images/6/6d/Benjamin_Walter_1936_2008_The_Work_of_Art_in_the_Age_of_Its_Technological_Reproducibility_Second_Version.pdf

Theme music: Tarantella composed by Stephen Brown.

Artwork by KB

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