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"Fiume O Morte " Brilliantly Dramatizes the Rise of a Demagogue

Igor Bezinović’s film thrusts century-old archival footage into the present, restaging the brazen reign of an autocrat whose tactics feel startlingly resonant today.

Some of these scenes require drastic transformations: the storefront that housed D’Annunzio’s favorite tavern, reputedly the site of his and his cronies’ licentious revels, is now a nail salon, which, with the consent of its owner, the cast and crew turn into a set-like reproduction of the long-ago haunt. Sports played a role in the authoritarian ethos imposed by D’Annunzio, and so did culture—he created a code of conduct that required his troops to excel in a wide range of athletic skills, singing and dancing, and the odd practice of imitating human and animal voices. The playful enthusiasm that his soldiers had hitherto displayed in martial training and sporty festivities, and the esprit de corps forged in their common cause, gave way to their bloodied corpses; the film’s depictions of their gory stillness, in full color, come as a shock.

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