So what was the duel about, and who was it with? Is it historical? (No mention in English or Italian wiki articles on Mussolini). Reading between the lines, perhaps it was due to someone spreading the information that he had two children by different women?
shareI found this:
http://tinyurl.com/39wupkrI think the the purpose of this scene is to show Mussolini's undaunted and "heroic" behaviour when, after being wounded, he refuses to be treated because he wants to be sure that the judge of the duel is correctly drawing up the record. share
In the same month of March 1915 there was a well-known quarrel with Claudio Treves, which ended in a furious duel with swords. The quarrel arose from an anti-Semitic insult, although of an extremely tortuous kind. The main point in Mussolini's attacks against Treves was the use of an undoubtedly offensive sobriquet: "palancagreca". The meaning of the word is not entirely clear, but it somehow alluded to Treves' alleged greed for money of which Mussolini had supposedly been a witness. It was, in short, the traditional allegation against Jews.
Thanks Caugusto for the explanation, and the link to the very interesting book. As with so many of the more elliptical references in the film, it's hard to know if the director expected an Italian audience to know this sort of background, or whether he simply forgot to do the mundane joining of dots that would have made the context clear to everyone.
shareI don't think he expected the average Italian moviegoer to know the background and I totally agree with you about the screenplay being too elliptical. If this movie had had a better script, I wouldn't hesitate to call it a masterpiece.
shareI couldn't agree more!!! Watching the film was very confusing ... it is filled with dead ends and lose ends and false leads and alarms. Such a shame that the Director did not feel the need to clean up the script as it could have been a masterpiece.
Perhaps I should watch a second time to see how it goes down because I did like it a lot!!!