2006
Elegia italiana is a filmic work by Roberto Paci Dalò, created after Italia anno zero, a scenic and musical project by Roberto Paci Dalò and Olga Neuwirth conceived and presented across Europe in 2004 and 2005. Like Italia Anno Zero, Elegia italiana is also a meditation on the timelessness of Fascism in the “Bel Paese”, which develops from texts by Antonio Gramsci, Giacomo Leopardi and Pier Paolo Pasolini. For these authors cynicism, hypocrisy, foolishness and egoism are peculiar and intrinsic characteristics of the Italian people.
As Roberto Paci Dalò explains, the work reflects on Italy as a pre and post-fascist country. The shots of Paci Dalò taken in Rome and in Predappio (Forlì), Benito Mussolini’s hometown, are followed by video images from the Istituto Luce archive. The film plays on the visual ambiguity between contemporary images and those of the past. The symbolic places of Italian Fascism of yesterday and today are evoked, such as the Colosseum and the balcony of Piazza Venezia, accompanied by disturbing close-ups of a grotesque Benito Mussolini. He is shown in his dictatorship while he pontificates, legislates and sneers both in solitude and with the Führer. A cold, omniscient voiceover penetrates the film’s texts.