To arms, we are fascists. The title of the film, made by a group of progressive Italian filmmakers led by Lino Del Fra, was a line from the anthem of Mussolini’s time: “To arms, we are fascists!” This is the history of fascism in Italy, recorded by him. Lino Del Fra and his comrades raised the rubble of the official chronicle, all these kilometers and kilometers of celluloid, which fascist propaganda assigned the role of bronze tablets, which should preserve for distant generations the days of “triumphs of the will”. Raised to make them live a new life, to make work against those who set the tone and ordered music.
Let’s take a look at some of the documents.
First of all, let’s talk about photography. Enthusiastic tipping of the camera, located somewhere in the crowd, then at the foot of the tribune, draped with canvases with a Roman meander border (the same thing that was on the togas of senators) and bundles of lictor horns, then under the balcony, as if specially made to address the people from there. Both the crowd and the camera in the crowd are very close to the one who stands on the grandstand or on the balcony. There is almost no horizontal distance, only vertical distance. The crowd constantly sees the Duce up close and from the bottom point, creating an enlarging servile distortion of the figure.
The Fascist chronicle never showed Mussolini with an escort guarding him. On the contrary, the Duce descended from the heights of his own greatness. There was a demagogic patriarchy in Italian fascism. Mussolini liked to emphasize his labor background, vilify the plutocrats, and appeal to fellow citizens of “fascist and proletarian Italy.” He liked, pulling a worn fuffayka and belting it with a strap, spit on his hands and show working skill in handling the pickaxe. The film report recorded the day when the leader of the state with jokes was the first to throw tiles from the roof of the dilapidated house (it was supposed to destroy the Roman slums: they broke a lot, including architectural monuments, with the construction was worse...). The film report recorded how Mussolini businessily touches the levers of the tractor, leads him confidently and poorly, plowing a multi-kilometer strip around the swamp intended for drainage. The film report recorded how Mussolini throws heavy sheaves into the yawns of the threshers. Grain is poured into bags, bags get fatter, and it is not just bags, it is symbolic fruits, the emblem of achievements. And Mussolini himself, who wipes sweat from his forehead, is an emblem.
In their delight, the fascist documentarians did not notice the discrediting comic effect of the scenes they filmed as majestic: the leader's car rolls slowly down the highway among the rural plains; over the highway there are posters: "Duche!" Duce!, and along the asphalt - slender lines of cows. Cow parade. The Duce, standing in the car, shouts some slogans (he organically could not but shout them), and the cows respond to him with a united, unanimous moan, and the shepherds throw their hands away in a Roman greeting.
In the patriarchal demagoguery of Italian fascism, demagoguery predominated over patriarchy. The people were flattered, soldered with flattery and lies: it is enough to say that the fascist revolution was called a revolution. They also played on national feelings. In the painting by Lino Del Fra, shots of scrap metal surrender, footage of gold surrender, pathetic and touching shots are taken. Del Fra intersperses them with other shots: the burning round huts of Abyssinia, the black legs of the dead, the bombing of the republican cities of Spain, the tragic retreat to the French border of the defeated Republicans. This historical montage was unknown to those who dragged bed backs, bicycle frames, some boilers into the national boiler, those who participated in the solemn ceremony of surrendering valuables headed by the king. To a huge stone bowl - it stands on the square, on the hill - one by one people approach, raise their hand with an offering and lower the gold in an invisible to them common pile. And then silently, too, solemnly approach the table, where they put iron rings on their finger instead of gold rings. It is furnished as a sacrament, almost as a betrothal of a person to the state. Next to the scenes are majestically slowed down - scenes designed for tenderness: the surrender of metal to the state in kindergarten. Kids in aprons carry their scoops and moulds for sand, a doll bed and a tricycle.
There are also children in Spanish films. Killed. Then the road to the Pyrenees, to the border. Peers of Italian patriots from kindergarten are already familiar, with the dexterity from which the soul turns, using crutches. One-legged children about six. One-legged for four years. Voice-over alerts: These images are the first time on an Italian screen.
Lino Del Fra is right in emphasizing this: the people did not really know what their iron and their gold would do. Fascism in Italy revealed its essence much less than Hitlerism. He did not risk calling for genocide or building extermination factories, nor did he declare conscience a chimera. Inflaming the patriotism of the Italians, degenerating it into chauvinism, he, Italian fascism, did not openly proclaim the Latins the race of masters. He was not engaged in Hitler’s genetics, which gave the Aryan the right to kill, or rather even took this Aryan to kill. In Italian fascism there were much more covers, disguises, postures and phrases than in German. Mussolini acted selflessly, with ecstasy and obscene. This was not a manic ecstasy of Hitler, it was just acting - with reincarnations of Caesar, then in a working mason, then in the "father of the fatherland", then in the friend of athletes and children: there are shots where Mussolini in uniform and in the mask of a fencer beats on espadrons, generously recognizing the victory of a partner frightened by this victory; there are shots where he presses a bouquet and a girl to his orders. There are not so many military shows in the Del Fra film, and this is not accidental: in those years, mass sports spectacles, processions and ceremonies, crowds under the Mussolini balcony were preferable in Italy, all these performances where Mussolini was both a director and the “first lover”, the first tenor of the state. Without seeing the film Del Fra, it is simply impossible to believe that the head of government could roll such arias, build such faces, wink at the hall!
But the point, of course, is not only in the Duce’s personal clergy, but in the theatricality, ingenuity of the system, in the historical voluntarism of the fascist idea, when the life of the country was composed in advance and roles were distributed to all. It is this thought that permeates the work of Lino Del Fra.
The principle of montage of pictorial documents, chosen by Lino Del Fra, is now common: “Bloody Time” by Erwin Leiser, “So It Was” ("September, 1939) by Jerzy Bossac, “Crazy Twenties” by a group of French documentarians – this is the series in which this Italian tape appears. Faded, tired of rental footage poured today's hot blood of lyrical journalism. Nothing changes, and everything takes on a new meaning: art performs the most necessary work of our time to restore the truth. Grandiose soap bubbles of legends and myths burst, pompous decorations crumble into dust, sprawl onto the threads of uniforms, banners, screaming canvases of triumphs.
Like a grenade caught in the air and thrown in the direction from which it came, every frame of the film To Arms, We Are Fascists strikes at the past. The document explodes. And it hits hard.
And it's not a matter of verbal commentary - furious, bitter, turning everything inside out. Even those who do not know a single Italian word will understand the essence of the matter. And will feel the tragedy of the skirmish, understand the chain of causes and effects. He, the viewer of the 60s of the twentieth century, is generally well aware of what is what...
The defeated fascism covered the tracks: the corpses of the martyrs were dug out of the ditches and burned; iron boxes with archives were drowned in the bottomless mountain lakes; Sturmbannfuehrers, Scharführers, Sonderführers put their faces under the surgical knives of plastic surgery virtuosoes. And the fragile, combustible film remained intact, except that the bloodiest shots were seized - the pleasure of sadists with a camera. But the time has come, and people have come to illuminate this film with new light.
Fascism testifies against itself.
V. Shitova