Finding Allies in the Fight Against Fascism

James Peron
Aug 31, 2018 · 4 min read

A subtle but interesting film, largely ignored and unknown by most film goers, is the 1977 Italian production A Special Day with Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastrioanni, set on May 8, 1938 at the height of fascism in Italy.

It is the day Adolph Hitler and his murderous entourage come to Rome to pay respect to Benito Mussolini. Antonietta,played by Loren, is a housewife obedient to fascism, ignored by husband except as a breeding machine, who is left home alone.

Her six children and husband, dressed in their fascist regalia are off to the parade to see Il Duce and Hitler exchange greetings on the eve of plunging the world into war. Antonietta has to stay home to do laundry and clean the house. All she has to look forward to is the bonus she’ll receive if they have a 7thchild. Her husband has a mistress to love and a wife to produce children as the fodder of fascism.

She meets Gabriele, a neighbor across the way from her own apartment when her myna bird escapes and is on a ledge near his apartment. She runs over to ask him to help her recover her pet. What she doesn’t know is that her knocking on the door prevented Gabriele from committing suicide with a loaded gun.

She is smitten with him and he finds relief that he hadn’t carried on doing “something stupid.” Both had assumed they were the only ones left in the building, not out celebrating. And, other than a fascist snoop who monitors the goings-on in the building they are alone.

At first the film touches on the role of women. Gabriele looks at a scrapbook of the glories of fascism that Antonietta dutifully keeps. He reads from it, “Genius in incompatible with the physiology and psyche of the female and is always strictly masculine;” a view of women so fascist Hans Hoppe could have written it himself.

Gabriele asks Antonietta if she agrees with this view. Her answer is unconvincing: “Of course I agree. Why? Aren’t the history books always full of men?” Again, a view expressed by Hoppe.

Gabriele responds, “Sure. Maybe too full. There’s no room for anyone else, least of all women.” His answer implying some are excluded intentionally.

Antonietta, in the course of their conversation, comes to acknowledge that her own husband treated her, as she put it, “like a nobody.” She desires Gabriele and starts to make herself more attractive.

But, the fascist snoop had come to apartment earlier and warned her that Gabriele was not a decent man, he couldn’t be decent as he dissented from fascism. Antonietta learns he had been a broadcaster who was fired for his anti-fascist sentiments.

The film trailer is highly misleading.

But, when she throws herself at him, in spite of knowing he’s antifascist; he tells her there was more to the accusations. He was an antifascist, but he explains he was also accused of “deviant tendencies.” He is a gay man; as such he cannot be a fascist. As he put it, “I’m not a husband, a father, or a soldier, so I’m not a man.”

Horrified Antonietta slaps his face and Gabriele points out how moralistic she has suddenly become, when only seconds earlier she wanted to commit adultery on the rooftop of her building. Yes, Antonietta was a good fascist, right down to the moral hypocrisy of this authoritarian movement.

The film turned the image of these actors inside out. Loren, often cast in glamorous roles is a frumpy housewife in a housedress and worn out slipper left to pick up after children and being maid and servant to her husband. Mastrioanni, often type cast as the handsome womanizer, is a quiet homosexual who watched as his lover was taken away to a camp.

Throughout the entire film, as the two main characters interact, we hear the narrator at the parade for Mussolini and Hitler praising the omnipotent state of fascism against selfish individualism. There is a constant reminder these two individuals are both victims of what is happening in the background. In spite of their very different lives the two characters evolve into allies against a common oppression.

As the parade ends the throngs of fascists return to the building and the two separate. Antonietta has a book that Gabriele has given her and puts it away to read later. Her husband informs her that he intends to make baby seven with her that night and tells her to hurry up and join him in bed. She cleans the kitchen and looks out to realize the fascist police have come to take Gabriele into custody. Instead of going to her husband’s bed she sits down at the window to read the book.

Neither of the stars was untouched by fascism in real life. At one point Mastrioanni was himself arrested by the Nazis and put into a German prison camp in Italy. The camp itself was loosely guarded and Mastrioanni managed to escape and then hid in Venice until it was safe.

Loren’s life was touched by fascism in a more concrete way. Her sister, Maria Scicolone married Mussolini’s youngest son, Romano. His daughter Alessandra Mussolini played one of Loren’s children in the film

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The Radical Center

A blog for the Moorfield Storey Institute: a liberaltarian think tank.

James Peron

Written by

James Peron is the president of the Moorfield Storey Institute, was the founding editor of Esteem a LGBT publication in South Africa under apartheid.

The Radical Center

A blog for the Moorfield Storey Institute: a liberaltarian think tank.

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