In 1940 I was left alone. The others had ceded their shares in Dolomiti Film to me. And the request came for a documentary on Mussolini’s estate, which they said had already been agreed upon. I truly love landscapes that run towards infinity. And the cinema. The Predappio landscape struck me. That was the period in which I still let myself be seduced by Dreyer’s images. So I filmed those craggy scenes, the bleak hillsides with silhouettes of the farmers, scythe in hand, and a storm on its way, which I then created with a pump. To escape from the rain, the farmers put their cloaks over their heads and ran towards the farm houses. I then focused on one, the house of Mussolini’s parents. The panoramic shot continued towards the cypresses, finishing on the parents’ gravestone. While Mussorgsky’s gloomy music (Night on Bald Mountain) was growing, I put in the only phrase in the film, I thought it was poetic: “We were no longer unacquainted with pain and death”. […] When the film is almost over, after the phrase about pain and death, Mussolini stands up and starts screaming like a madman: “Bagolon, brut vigliac! Menagrami, maldit!” (“Cowards, birds of ill omen, Damn you!”). They told me he was swearing in Romagnolo dialect. Mussolini immediately gave the order to burn everything, print and negative both.

Luciano Emmer