Anche Roger Ebert assegna tre stellette e mezzo a Vincere, in una recensione decisamente positiva.
Per il decano dei critici cinematografici e televisivi d’america
The image of Benito Mussolini has been shifted over the years toward one of a plump buffoon, the inept second fiddle to Hitler. We’ve seen the famous photo of his ignominious end, his body strung upside down. We may remember his enormous scowling visage trundled out on display in a scene from Fellini’s “Amarcord.” What we don’t envision is Mussolini as a fiery young man, able to inflame Italians with his charismatic leadership.
That’s the man who fascinates Marco Bellocchio…
Bellocchio, once himself a fiery young artist (“Fists in the Pocket”), now a legend of the generation of Bertolucci, is concerned with Mussolini’s fascism primarily as backdrop. His film is focused on Ida. The last time she sees him in the flesh is the last time we do. Thereafter he’s seen only in newsreels — a convenient way for Bellocchio to age and fatten him.
Ebert ha parole di grande elogio anche per Giovanna Mezzogiorno:
Bellocchio bases his film on the performance of Giovanna Mezzogiorno. She is one of those actresses, like Sophia Loren, who can combine passion with dignity. As Mussolini, Filippo Timi avoids any temptation to play with the benefit of hindsight. He is ambitious, hopeful, sometimes unaware of success. The film’s title, which translates as “victory,” reflects for much of the film a hope, not a certainty.
La chiusura è particolarmente efficace ed azzarda un paragone inquietante:
The film is beautifully well-mounted. The locations, the sets, the costumes, everything conspire to re-create the Rome of that time. It provides a counterpoint to the usual caricature of Mussolini. They say that behind every great man there stands a great woman. In Mussolini’s case, his treatment of her was a rehearsal for how he would treat Italy.
Sul New Yorker, severissimo e serioso settimanale di opinione, David Denby esalta la capacità metaforica di Bellocchio:
Bellocchio gets the opera-buffa and the carnival side of Italian Fascism, and parts of the movie are excruciatingly funny, like the sequence in which Mussolini, who has been wounded in the First World War, lies on his back and stares in ecstasy at the ceiling of a church where a silent film of Christ on the cross is projected—his fantasy of what he will mean to his people.The movie tries to plumb a mystery: the submission of millions, with Ida Dalser as a surrogate for the Italian people.Yet audiences may not accept Dalser’s suffering in the spirit in which it is offered. Is misguided obsession necessarily tragic? Why did she passively accept her lover’s transformation from Socialism to military nationalism? Didn’t she ever notice that he wasn’t looking at her when they made love?
