1
00:00:50,660 --> 00:00:52,660
God, Allah, Yahweh.

2
00:00:53,900 --> 00:00:58,500
These nightmarish psychopaths obtain
immortality without having lived.

3
00:00:58,500 --> 00:01:00,740
No matter what you call them,

4
00:01:00,740 --> 00:01:04,500
they're wrathful,
slow to bless and swift to chide.

5
00:01:04,500 --> 00:01:08,500
They're mass murderers,
psychotic bullies.

6
00:01:08,500 --> 00:01:12,540
They exercise the right of life
and death. They destroy on a whim.

7
00:01:13,820 --> 00:01:17,100
And they provide a wretched
example to living gods -

8
00:01:17,100 --> 00:01:22,100
Hitler, Stalin, Mao,
Khomeini, Mussolini,

9
00:01:22,100 --> 00:01:25,260
such truly grotesque pieces of work,

10
00:01:25,260 --> 00:01:28,980
but it's a matter of some wonder
that millions were persuaded

11
00:01:28,980 --> 00:01:31,980
not just to believe in them,
but to worship them.

12
00:01:34,740 --> 00:01:36,340
But they did.

13
00:01:36,340 --> 00:01:39,300
And off they went to meet
their all-too-obedient death.

14
00:01:43,060 --> 00:01:47,660
There is apparently nobility
in pillage and genocide.

15
00:01:47,660 --> 00:01:52,180
There is apparently glory to be
had in being turned to vapour,

16
00:01:52,180 --> 00:01:54,460
in dying in mud.

17
00:01:54,460 --> 00:01:59,260
There is glory in gangrene,
in quadriplegia, in being gassed.

18
00:02:08,180 --> 00:02:11,940
Hundreds of thousands of men died
in the Alps around Redipuglia

19
00:02:11,940 --> 00:02:15,100
in the latter half
of the First World War.

20
00:02:17,420 --> 00:02:21,740
Italy's battles on its north-eastern
front achieved nothing

21
00:02:21,740 --> 00:02:23,100
save that the ethnic bodge

22
00:02:23,100 --> 00:02:27,220
called the Austro-Hungarian
Empire collapsed,

23
00:02:27,220 --> 00:02:31,820
so rendering Europe fertile
for the growth of yet another bout

24
00:02:31,820 --> 00:02:36,500
of tribalism, factionalism,
sectarianism, nationalism

25
00:02:36,500 --> 00:02:39,740
and the new cult of Fascism.

26
00:02:47,580 --> 00:02:53,500
The vast sacrarium at Redipuglia
is not a memorial to actual men,

27
00:02:53,500 --> 00:02:56,900
to flesh and blood,
somebody's lover, somebody's son.

28
00:02:58,020 --> 00:03:01,540
It's an opportunistic
celebration of mass sacrifice

29
00:03:01,540 --> 00:03:04,420
and exhortations
to further sacrifice.

30
00:03:14,700 --> 00:03:16,940
It is grossly exploitative

31
00:03:16,940 --> 00:03:20,420
because the men who were reduced
to bonemeal and body parts

32
00:03:20,420 --> 00:03:23,220
in the mountains were not Fascist.

33
00:03:23,220 --> 00:03:26,260
They had never heard of Fascism.

34
00:03:26,260 --> 00:03:30,340
It tells the lie that Fascists -
ex post facto Fascists -

35
00:03:30,340 --> 00:03:34,060
will be united in death
as they are in life.

36
00:03:36,580 --> 00:03:41,740
The word "fasces" signifies a bundle
of branches tied together tightly.

37
00:03:41,740 --> 00:03:44,740
It is strong in a way
that loosely tied branches,

38
00:03:44,740 --> 00:03:48,020
let alone single branches,
cannot be.

39
00:03:48,020 --> 00:03:51,460
The individual, then,
is subservient to the whole.

40
00:03:51,460 --> 00:03:54,060
Might is achieved by numbers.

41
00:03:56,700 --> 00:04:00,060
No doubt some of the men who
lie here might have become Fascists

42
00:04:00,060 --> 00:04:01,980
had they lived.

43
00:04:01,980 --> 00:04:05,660
Bu they might equally,
having experienced hell on earth,

44
00:04:05,660 --> 00:04:10,380
have dismissed Benito Mussolini's
marshal ranting as that of a man

45
00:04:10,380 --> 00:04:14,900
who had been invalided out of
the Army after less than 18 months.

46
00:04:19,500 --> 00:04:23,620
Nonetheless, their trashed corpses
were posthumously recruited

47
00:04:23,620 --> 00:04:25,540
to the Fascist cause.

48
00:04:27,180 --> 00:04:29,700
The word "presente" means
just that - present.

49
00:04:30,780 --> 00:04:34,700
But it also means that the
glorious dead are always with us,

50
00:04:34,700 --> 00:04:36,260
always present.

51
00:04:36,260 --> 00:04:40,380
The glorious dead fulfilling
their duty to their country.

52
00:04:40,380 --> 00:04:43,420
The glorious dead
then are the living dead.

53
00:04:45,420 --> 00:04:48,700
Presente was an omnipresent
word in Fascist Italy.

54
00:05:15,340 --> 00:05:20,420
The designers, the artifices,
the architect Giovanni Greppi

55
00:05:20,420 --> 00:05:23,020
and the sculptor
Giannino Castiglioni

56
00:05:23,020 --> 00:05:26,500
are virtuosi of visual illusions.

57
00:05:26,500 --> 00:05:30,820
They imply a two-dimensional device
in three dimensions,

58
00:05:30,820 --> 00:05:34,260
thus the step, the stairs,
the treads, the rises,

59
00:05:34,260 --> 00:05:38,860
the terraces, get marginally
narrower as they ascend.

60
00:05:38,860 --> 00:05:43,220
Consequently the vanishing point
appears further away than it would

61
00:05:43,220 --> 00:05:46,180
if the steps were of the same width,

62
00:05:46,180 --> 00:05:48,980
and the Calvary is out of scale.

63
00:05:48,980 --> 00:05:52,100
Diminutive in order to make it, too,

64
00:05:52,100 --> 00:05:54,860
appear more distant
than it actually is.

65
00:05:56,900 --> 00:06:00,220
The place is an exercise
in disorientation.

66
00:06:00,220 --> 00:06:02,460
What plane are we on?

67
00:06:02,460 --> 00:06:07,140
Vertical and horizontal
become indistinguishable.

68
00:06:07,140 --> 00:06:09,420
Are we still on Earth?

69
00:06:09,420 --> 00:06:12,180
Life and afterlife allied.

70
00:06:24,420 --> 00:06:27,580
100 or so kilometres
away from Redipuglia

71
00:06:27,580 --> 00:06:29,620
stands another massive sacrarium.

72
00:06:36,980 --> 00:06:42,060
Monte Grappa is a work of a few
years earlier by the same designers,

73
00:06:42,060 --> 00:06:44,980
Greppi and Castiglioni.

74
00:06:44,980 --> 00:06:49,180
The contrast between the two
could hardly be more marked.

75
00:06:56,980 --> 00:07:01,740
Monte Grappa is equally magnificent
in another register.

76
00:07:03,020 --> 00:07:07,100
It is indebted
to several disparate eras.

77
00:07:07,100 --> 00:07:09,940
It blends its thefts
with sombre brillo.

78
00:07:21,860 --> 00:07:26,940
The very core of this structure
is founded in anachronism.

79
00:07:26,940 --> 00:07:31,380
The repetitive niches are
blind Diocletian windows.

80
00:07:31,380 --> 00:07:33,660
Atypically for a Roman emperor,

81
00:07:33,660 --> 00:07:37,860
Diocletian was lucky enough
to die in his bed.

82
00:07:37,860 --> 00:07:40,340
Of the 20th-century's
European tyrants,

83
00:07:40,340 --> 00:07:43,460
only Francisco Franco emulated him.

84
00:07:44,700 --> 00:07:48,620
Its concentric form is
daylight robbery from a variety

85
00:07:48,620 --> 00:07:51,740
of historical
and prehistorical eras.

86
00:07:52,940 --> 00:07:56,780
It is unambiguously architectural,

87
00:07:56,780 --> 00:08:01,420
and it alludes to forms
of inhumation that belong to

88
00:08:01,420 --> 00:08:06,100
a variety of epoques, places,
religions and cultures.

89
00:08:43,180 --> 00:08:46,340
Both Redipuglia and Monte Grappa

90
00:08:46,340 --> 00:08:49,420
are exhortations to patriotic death.

91
00:08:50,700 --> 00:08:53,460
They sussurate the desirability
of death,

92
00:08:53,460 --> 00:08:56,060
which they tell you last forever...

93
00:08:57,220 --> 00:08:59,780
..which is more than
can be said for life.

94
00:08:59,780 --> 00:09:01,260
Death is sustainable.

95
00:09:06,900 --> 00:09:09,740
Despite their being by the same
pair of artists,

96
00:09:09,740 --> 00:09:13,580
these two remarkable structures
are remarkably disparate.

97
00:09:14,820 --> 00:09:16,300
On the one clenched hand,

98
00:09:16,300 --> 00:09:20,100
Redipuglia,
optimistically prospective,

99
00:09:20,100 --> 00:09:24,300
hymning the refulgent
Modernist future to come.

100
00:09:24,300 --> 00:09:27,460
On the other gloved hand,
Monte Grappa,

101
00:09:27,460 --> 00:09:29,700
boastfully retrospective,

102
00:09:29,700 --> 00:09:33,940
summoning some indefinable
yet glorious past.

103
00:09:36,020 --> 00:09:39,820
They are, then, exemplars
of the two contrary mainstreams

104
00:09:39,820 --> 00:09:44,020
of architecture and design that
flowered in Italy under Fascism.

105
00:09:45,300 --> 00:09:48,060
They did not displace
or succeed each other,

106
00:09:48,060 --> 00:09:52,380
they coexisted uncomfortably
in a state of mutual mistrust.

107
00:09:53,860 --> 00:09:57,380
But they were indubitably
both built in Italy

108
00:09:57,380 --> 00:10:00,060
in the Fascist era
in the Fascist cause.

109
00:10:01,740 --> 00:10:04,460
Vincere!
CHEERING

110
00:10:10,220 --> 00:10:11,700
What is Fascism?

111
00:10:12,940 --> 00:10:16,220
The response that it's
a pathology of the extreme right

112
00:10:16,220 --> 00:10:19,020
is idle, thoughtless.

113
00:10:19,020 --> 00:10:23,740
Equally, the response that it's
a cancer of the extreme left

114
00:10:23,740 --> 00:10:26,380
is idle, thoughtless.

115
00:10:26,380 --> 00:10:28,020
HE NEIGHS

116
00:10:29,660 --> 00:10:32,820
If the extreme right is a racehorse,

117
00:10:32,820 --> 00:10:35,860
and the extreme left is a carthorse,

118
00:10:35,860 --> 00:10:39,140
what sort of horse is Fascism?

119
00:10:39,140 --> 00:10:43,220
It's the sort of horse called
a combine harvester.

120
00:10:43,220 --> 00:10:46,020
Which is, of course, not a horse.

121
00:10:46,020 --> 00:10:48,460
It's not even an animal.

122
00:10:48,460 --> 00:10:51,060
It is a category error to invoke

123
00:10:51,060 --> 00:10:54,740
right and left in an explanation
of this phenomenon.

124
00:10:54,740 --> 00:10:59,620
Fascism exists in a world
parallel to that of democracy.

125
00:11:04,100 --> 00:11:07,420
It does not belong to
the same moral system,

126
00:11:07,420 --> 00:11:09,180
the same thought system.

127
00:11:09,180 --> 00:11:12,620
It does not exist
without a hold on power.

128
00:11:12,620 --> 00:11:16,900
It does not function as a form
of legitimate opposition.

129
00:11:16,900 --> 00:11:21,420
It is not part of a mocking,
childish adversarial system.

130
00:11:21,420 --> 00:11:25,980
It is not tolerant of dissent.
It is not considerate.

131
00:11:25,980 --> 00:11:30,060
It does not spare the rod, the
noose, the axe, the firing squad.

132
00:11:30,060 --> 00:11:32,340
It does not balk at genocide.

133
00:11:32,340 --> 00:11:34,180
Not, not, not.

134
00:11:34,180 --> 00:11:38,220
Its attributes are
all too obviously not positive.

135
00:11:43,740 --> 00:11:47,700
But then the same could be said
of other forms of tyranny.

136
00:11:47,700 --> 00:11:51,260
Absolute monarchy,
theocratic dictatorship,

137
00:11:51,260 --> 00:11:55,100
the police state,
the communist imperium -

138
00:11:55,100 --> 00:11:58,300
much older forms which have
been around for millennia,

139
00:11:58,300 --> 00:12:02,580
for much longer than democracy,
which as the 20th century

140
00:12:02,580 --> 00:12:05,500
emphatically showed us,
is easily dismantled.

141
00:12:07,860 --> 00:12:11,380
Sure, democracy may be
elective dictatorship,

142
00:12:11,380 --> 00:12:14,380
but it is at least elective.

143
00:12:14,380 --> 00:12:17,060
We take it for granted at our peril,

144
00:12:17,060 --> 00:12:20,220
given that all politicians
yearn to be dictators.

145
00:12:22,900 --> 00:12:25,340
Is Vlaams Belang fascist?

146
00:12:25,340 --> 00:12:27,620
Is the BNP fascist?

147
00:12:27,620 --> 00:12:30,020
Is Le Front National fascist?

148
00:12:30,020 --> 00:12:31,860
Is La Lega Nord fascist?

149
00:12:33,100 --> 00:12:36,060
The zealots of anti-fascism
would have no hesitation

150
00:12:36,060 --> 00:12:38,940
in describing these paltry
parties as fascist.

151
00:12:40,140 --> 00:12:43,020
But anti-fascism mirrors fascism,

152
00:12:43,020 --> 00:12:44,900
equally intolerant,

153
00:12:44,900 --> 00:12:50,300
equally minoritarian, equally
impotent, equally anti-Semitic.

154
00:12:50,300 --> 00:12:54,260
This is what they do to protect
the Nazis. Shame on you, BBC!

155
00:12:54,260 --> 00:12:55,580
Shame on you!

156
00:12:57,340 --> 00:13:01,620
Fascism is broadly a label
to be attached to whatever

157
00:13:01,620 --> 00:13:04,700
anti-Fascism disproves of.

158
00:13:04,700 --> 00:13:06,580
Fascist... Fascist...

159
00:13:06,580 --> 00:13:09,740
Fascist... Fascist scum.
Fascist... Crypto fascist...

160
00:13:09,740 --> 00:13:12,820
The fascist Daily Mail.
Racist, fascist.

161
00:13:12,820 --> 00:13:14,420
Fascist, racist.

162
00:13:14,420 --> 00:13:17,060
Fascistic. Fascists. Fascists.

163
00:13:17,060 --> 00:13:19,100
What's so wrong with
being a fascist?

164
00:13:21,540 --> 00:13:23,020
Fascism ought to alarm us,

165
00:13:23,020 --> 00:13:27,940
but the word's appropriation
by the mob devalues it.

166
00:13:27,940 --> 00:13:30,580
Atrocity is diluted, normalised.

167
00:13:30,580 --> 00:13:34,180
Further, fascists,
both noun and adjective,

168
00:13:34,180 --> 00:13:37,060
have been shorn of meaning
by their ubiquity.

169
00:13:39,540 --> 00:13:42,500
Body fascist, kitchen fascist,

170
00:13:42,500 --> 00:13:45,300
green fascist, mamil fascist...
BELL RINGS

171
00:13:45,300 --> 00:13:49,660
..fascist referee... All referees,
it goes without saying, are fascist.
WHISTLE BLOWS

172
00:13:49,660 --> 00:13:53,100
Fascist jobsworth, fascist troll,

173
00:13:53,100 --> 00:13:54,820
fascist MFH...
HORN BLARES

174
00:13:54,820 --> 00:13:57,700
..fascist banker, fascist pig.

175
00:13:57,700 --> 00:13:59,700
PIG OINKS

176
00:13:59,700 --> 00:14:02,540
And, of course, Fascist dictator.

177
00:14:03,980 --> 00:14:06,780
An occupation fraught with risks,

178
00:14:06,780 --> 00:14:09,380
not least from other
Fascist dictators.

179
00:14:10,580 --> 00:14:11,740
Live dangerously.

180
00:14:15,540 --> 00:14:19,500
Engelbert Dollfuss, 39, shot,

181
00:14:19,500 --> 00:14:22,700
Vienna, 25th July 1934.

182
00:14:24,220 --> 00:14:28,260
Corneliu Codreanu, 39, garrotted,

183
00:14:28,260 --> 00:14:32,420
Tancabesti, 29th November 1938.

184
00:14:33,620 --> 00:14:37,180
Vidkun Quisling, 58, shot,

185
00:14:37,180 --> 00:14:40,620
Oslo, 24th October 1945.

186
00:14:42,140 --> 00:14:45,300
Jozef Tiso, 59, hanged,

187
00:14:45,300 --> 00:14:49,060
Bratislava, 18th April 1947.

188
00:14:50,380 --> 00:14:53,620
Adolf Hitler, 56, suicide,

189
00:14:53,620 --> 00:14:57,060
Berlin, 30th April 1945.

190
00:14:58,420 --> 00:15:01,500
Ferenc Szalasi, 49, hanged,

191
00:15:01,500 --> 00:15:04,620
Budapest, 12th March 1946.

192
00:15:05,700 --> 00:15:08,940
Ante Pavelic, 60, shot,

193
00:15:08,940 --> 00:15:12,540
Madrid, 28th December 1959.

194
00:15:14,020 --> 00:15:17,740
Benito Mussolini, 62, shot,

195
00:15:17,740 --> 00:15:21,980
Giulino di Mezzegra,
28th April 1945.

196
00:15:26,940 --> 00:15:28,620
Il Duce.

197
00:15:28,620 --> 00:15:33,260
The organ grinder himself,
the combine harvester's mouth -

198
00:15:33,260 --> 00:15:36,820
the very embodiment
of Fascism, the founder.

199
00:15:39,340 --> 00:15:43,060
The man who, for those of you
with archaic spelling,

200
00:15:43,060 --> 00:15:48,340
put the "schism" into Fascism, who,
all-knowing claimed to understand

201
00:15:48,340 --> 00:15:52,140
the nuances of Fascism's
vibrant diversity.

202
00:15:53,380 --> 00:15:56,940
Was there any bond,
save that of expediency,

203
00:15:56,940 --> 00:16:01,220
between Italian Fascism
and German National Socialism?

204
00:16:01,220 --> 00:16:05,220
German National Socialism may not
even have been Fascist at all.

205
00:16:08,900 --> 00:16:12,660
Mussolini was initially contemptuous
of its mythologies,

206
00:16:12,660 --> 00:16:16,940
its homoeopathic pest control,
its obsessive racism,

207
00:16:16,940 --> 00:16:21,620
its blinding greenness,
its folkish preoccupations,

208
00:16:21,620 --> 00:16:26,300
its Aryan Atlantis,
its clairvoyant pseudoscientists.

209
00:16:27,940 --> 00:16:32,740
And yet, when after his arrest
in 1943 the Nazi high command

210
00:16:32,740 --> 00:16:34,780
was trying to find where
he was imprisoned

211
00:16:34,780 --> 00:16:37,380
so that he might be rescued,

212
00:16:37,380 --> 00:16:40,660
it turned to a group of
clairvoyant pseudoscientists.

213
00:16:44,020 --> 00:16:46,220
Among them, Wilhelm Gutberlet.

214
00:16:48,140 --> 00:16:53,260
Astonishingly, Gutberlet read in the
entrails that Il Duce was being held

215
00:16:53,260 --> 00:16:56,740
on the island of Ponza,
which was indeed where

216
00:16:56,740 --> 00:16:59,980
he had been held till just
a few days previously.

217
00:17:02,060 --> 00:17:06,060
When we look back to the enormities
they occasioned, do the labels

218
00:17:06,060 --> 00:17:09,940
that we attach to these
immane regimes really matter?

219
00:17:09,940 --> 00:17:11,500
Yes, they do,

220
00:17:11,500 --> 00:17:15,020
for taxonomy is founded in detail,

221
00:17:15,020 --> 00:17:17,660
and the devil is in the detail -

222
00:17:17,660 --> 00:17:20,260
all too literally.

223
00:17:20,260 --> 00:17:23,500
Il Duce is surely the one man
who can tell us

224
00:17:23,500 --> 00:17:26,060
what Fascism really signifies,

225
00:17:26,060 --> 00:17:29,340
and what distinguishes it
from national socialism,

226
00:17:29,340 --> 00:17:36,380
the Arrow Cross, the Cross of Fire,
the Blackshirts, the Iron Guard.

227
00:17:36,380 --> 00:17:40,940
But it's too late, too late.
70 years too late to ask him.

228
00:17:47,300 --> 00:17:50,340
GUNFIRE

229
00:18:09,140 --> 00:18:12,940
It might all have turned out so
differently for the lovers Benito

230
00:18:12,940 --> 00:18:16,620
and Clara had they made it
from Lake Garda to Spain,

231
00:18:16,620 --> 00:18:19,780
which was the destination
they had set their heart on.

232
00:18:24,780 --> 00:18:28,940
They'd have whiled away their dotage
in some grace and favour home

233
00:18:28,940 --> 00:18:31,900
grudgingly granted them
by Francisco Franco,

234
00:18:31,900 --> 00:18:37,700
a sometime chum of sorts - a
fair-weather ally, if truth be told.

235
00:18:37,700 --> 00:18:42,140
Benito would have fulminated at the
ingratitude of the Italian people,

236
00:18:42,140 --> 00:18:44,980
concocted plots,
dreamt of a comeback.

237
00:18:53,540 --> 00:18:56,260
Escape to Spain was their last hope.

238
00:18:56,260 --> 00:18:59,220
But they didn't even get
as far as Switzerland.

239
00:18:59,220 --> 00:19:03,260
They ended up near Lake Como in
a farmyard that became an abattoir.

240
00:19:03,260 --> 00:19:04,420
GUNSHOTS

241
00:19:04,420 --> 00:19:05,660
PIG SQUEALS

242
00:19:05,660 --> 00:19:08,380
So maybe some other time,
Benito, old son.

243
00:19:23,580 --> 00:19:26,460
Witnesses remarked
on the petrol in puddles,

244
00:19:26,460 --> 00:19:29,780
nacreous puddles,
petrol that was spent,

245
00:19:29,780 --> 00:19:33,540
like the lives of the beings
suspended above the puddles.

246
00:19:55,620 --> 00:19:57,860
Throughout the Spanish Civil War,

247
00:19:57,860 --> 00:20:01,060
Franco's ultimately
victorious nationalists

248
00:20:01,060 --> 00:20:05,940
relied on the Nazi Condor Legion,
non-Nazi airpower,

249
00:20:05,940 --> 00:20:07,980
most notoriously at Guernica.

250
00:20:09,020 --> 00:20:12,780
The dependence on Italian aid was
even greater.

251
00:20:12,780 --> 00:20:17,220
Air power again, light arms and
heavy artillery,

252
00:20:17,220 --> 00:20:21,660
ships, submarines and troops -
armies of them.

253
00:20:21,660 --> 00:20:26,540
Mussolini dispatched 70,000 men
to Spain -

254
00:20:26,540 --> 00:20:29,060
10,000 of them died there.

255
00:20:42,340 --> 00:20:47,260
El Caudillo did not repay his debt
to the axis.

256
00:20:47,260 --> 00:20:51,300
There was to be no "do ut des".

257
00:20:51,300 --> 00:20:55,820
His was the longest reign of all
the West's 20th century tyrants.

258
00:20:55,820 --> 00:20:58,820
He kept his country out of the war
on "the Continent",

259
00:20:58,820 --> 00:21:03,140
as Spain calls Europe
beyond the Pyrenees.

260
00:21:03,140 --> 00:21:07,380
He had the guile to dupe
both Mussolini and Hitler.

261
00:21:07,380 --> 00:21:11,580
He made entry to the war
conditional upon demands

262
00:21:11,580 --> 00:21:14,100
which he knew they could not meet.

263
00:21:14,100 --> 00:21:17,780
He made promises which he had
no intention of keeping.

264
00:21:17,780 --> 00:21:22,780
That is how you stay in power
for almost 40 years.

265
00:21:22,780 --> 00:21:25,860
The lad was a great role model
for young aspirant tyrants.

266
00:21:29,780 --> 00:21:32,740
Franco was that rare creature -

267
00:21:32,740 --> 00:21:36,020
a Fascist dictator who did
not want to go to war.

268
00:21:38,980 --> 00:21:44,260
For Mussolini, such a position was
unthinkable, inconceivable,

269
00:21:44,260 --> 00:21:47,420
maybe even incomprehensible.

270
00:21:47,420 --> 00:21:51,100
Empathy was not one of his
characteristics.

271
00:21:52,620 --> 00:21:57,300
Mussolinian Fascism was
a precursor of Islamofascism.

272
00:21:58,820 --> 00:22:02,860
Italy went to war in the name
of a dictator who believed himself

273
00:22:02,860 --> 00:22:05,700
to be a God, but wasn't...

274
00:22:06,820 --> 00:22:10,940
..whilst Islamofascism goes to
war in the name of God who

275
00:22:10,940 --> 00:22:14,860
cannot believe in himself
because he is fictional.

276
00:22:14,860 --> 00:22:17,980
There is, in neither instance,
gain -

277
00:22:17,980 --> 00:22:21,460
they share a taste for gratuitous
statused violence as a norm.

278
00:22:23,500 --> 00:22:26,740
National honour, national expansion.

279
00:22:29,820 --> 00:22:33,300
Outbreaks of peace were,
according to Mussolini,

280
00:22:33,300 --> 00:22:37,460
mere undesirable anomalies
that occur between wars -

281
00:22:37,460 --> 00:22:44,340
lacunae of wasted time to be filled
belligerently by wars.

282
00:22:44,340 --> 00:22:48,740
War should be perpetual,
war should be never-ending.

283
00:22:52,620 --> 00:22:57,780
No justification is needed.
War requires no cause.

284
00:22:57,780 --> 00:23:03,660
If a cause can be found to attach
to it, well, so much the better.

285
00:23:05,460 --> 00:23:07,020
At various times,

286
00:23:07,020 --> 00:23:12,300
he considered attacking newly
Nazi Germany in order to protect

287
00:23:12,300 --> 00:23:16,780
Dollfuss' regime in Austria and to
demonstrate Italy's superiority.

288
00:23:23,740 --> 00:23:25,540
France was a possible target,

289
00:23:25,540 --> 00:23:29,180
because it would not cede Corsica
and Nice to him.

290
00:23:29,180 --> 00:23:32,820
And an attack would demonstrate
Italy's superiority.

291
00:23:41,500 --> 00:23:45,300
War with Britain was briefly
considered because it opposed

292
00:23:45,300 --> 00:23:50,020
his colonial ambitions and his
desire to rule the Mediterranean -

293
00:23:50,020 --> 00:23:51,940
"our sea".

294
00:23:51,940 --> 00:23:53,460
And because an attack on Britain

295
00:23:53,460 --> 00:23:55,460
would demonstrate
Italy's superiority.

296
00:23:55,460 --> 00:23:58,020
# Run, rabbit, run, rabbit

297
00:23:58,020 --> 00:24:00,740
# Run, run, run... #

298
00:24:09,100 --> 00:24:13,580
This was a demagogue who could pick
a fight with his own shadow.

299
00:24:13,580 --> 00:24:16,500
He fulfilled those
colonial ambitions

300
00:24:16,500 --> 00:24:18,940
in Libya, Greece and Ethiopia,

301
00:24:18,940 --> 00:24:21,980
but at a huge economic
and strategic cost.

302
00:24:22,980 --> 00:24:28,700
He prosecuted war, it might be said
he frivolously prosecuted war,

303
00:24:28,700 --> 00:24:33,300
in order to show off that capacity -
the ability to prosecute war.

304
00:24:34,460 --> 00:24:38,820
For Mussolini, war was
nothing more or less than

305
00:24:38,820 --> 00:24:41,940
the expression of ostentatious
bellicosity

306
00:24:41,940 --> 00:24:46,100
and martial can-do -
it was an end in itself.

307
00:24:46,100 --> 00:24:48,740
That was the nearest thing
he had to an ideology.

308
00:25:03,020 --> 00:25:06,580
In Mussolini's worldview,
power and stability

309
00:25:06,580 --> 00:25:09,540
could be maintained only
by brute force.

310
00:25:10,940 --> 00:25:14,860
This coarse, dog-eat-dog perception
was founded early on

311
00:25:14,860 --> 00:25:18,500
in the playground, where from
the age of six years old -

312
00:25:18,500 --> 00:25:23,460
six! - he routinely attacked
his fellow pupils, stabbing them

313
00:25:23,460 --> 00:25:27,420
with compasses and dividers,
stealing from them

314
00:25:27,420 --> 00:25:29,980
and threatening them
should they grass him up.

315
00:26:02,940 --> 00:26:06,220
NEWSREEL: Fascism has been
Mussolini's dream for seven years.

316
00:26:06,220 --> 00:26:08,260
Now the march on Rome.

317
00:26:08,260 --> 00:26:10,660
His movement numbers a million
members,

318
00:26:10,660 --> 00:26:15,060
including uniformed Blackshirts and
Mussolini successfully forces

319
00:26:15,060 --> 00:26:17,980
his leadership on the Italian King
and people.

320
00:26:17,980 --> 00:26:21,620
He boasted of having seized power
by force at the end

321
00:26:21,620 --> 00:26:24,660
of the much-vaunted march on Rome
in 1922.

322
00:26:26,260 --> 00:26:29,740
In fact, power was yielded to him
without a struggle

323
00:26:29,740 --> 00:26:32,980
and he had joined the march
only intermittently for what were

324
00:26:32,980 --> 00:26:35,780
not yet called photo opportunities -

325
00:26:35,780 --> 00:26:40,100
exercises in self aggrandisement
and myth-making.

326
00:26:40,100 --> 00:26:42,780
How is a man to become a God

327
00:26:42,780 --> 00:26:45,100
if he does not proclaim himself
to be a God?

328
00:26:47,740 --> 00:26:53,100
Other required qualities - an utter
absence of irony is of course

329
00:26:53,100 --> 00:26:54,940
essential to the apprentice God.

330
00:26:56,300 --> 00:27:00,220
So too is the conviction,
held without any corroboration

331
00:27:00,220 --> 00:27:03,940
save that of crawling yes-men,
that one is always right.

332
00:27:08,900 --> 00:27:12,140
Polyglot vanity is also obligatory.

333
00:27:12,140 --> 00:27:15,780
Overconfident visibility to
speak French and German -

334
00:27:15,780 --> 00:27:20,260
Mussolini refused to have
interpreters in attendance

335
00:27:20,260 --> 00:27:24,020
at his meetings with Hitler, Laval,
Goring and so on.

336
00:27:24,020 --> 00:27:28,020
Consequently, he failed to
understand much of the small print.

337
00:27:32,020 --> 00:27:35,460
Then there is the laughably pompous
practice of referring to

338
00:27:35,460 --> 00:27:37,060
oneself in the third person.

339
00:27:38,300 --> 00:27:41,060
That anyway is what
Jonathan Mears has concluded.

340
00:27:44,700 --> 00:27:48,820
Above all, the tyro God must
cultivate the willingness to treat

341
00:27:48,820 --> 00:27:52,660
humans, who are of course non-Gods,
with contempt...

342
00:27:53,860 --> 00:27:56,500
..as assets,
disposable as disposable tissues,

343
00:27:56,500 --> 00:28:01,260
to be used as cannon fodder
and guinea pigs, to sate vanity,

344
00:28:01,260 --> 00:28:05,700
as expendable entities of negative
value, who deserve only extinction.

345
00:28:08,740 --> 00:28:10,980
Or treat them
as reproductive machines.

346
00:28:12,180 --> 00:28:16,300
It was Il Duce's conviction that
a high birth rate was an essential

347
00:28:16,300 --> 00:28:21,260
condition of a vigorous, healthy,
morally sound society.

348
00:28:22,620 --> 00:28:28,060
Accordingly, women were exhorted
to bear as many as 20 children.

349
00:28:28,060 --> 00:28:31,620
The fastest breeders,
biped broodmares,

350
00:28:31,620 --> 00:28:34,980
were rewarded with cash prizes.

351
00:28:34,980 --> 00:28:39,940
Most of all, a high birth rate
provides minds to be indoctrinated.

352
00:28:39,940 --> 00:28:43,820
The child has no choice,
it can be brainwashed.

353
00:28:43,820 --> 00:28:49,020
The child can look forward to the
prospect of dying for Fascist Italy,

354
00:28:49,020 --> 00:28:53,020
a destiny exclusive to children made
in Fascist Italy.

355
00:28:55,620 --> 00:28:59,100
Inanimate objects might be
made in Fascist Italy,

356
00:28:59,100 --> 00:29:00,860
but they can't be brainwashed.

357
00:29:02,300 --> 00:29:07,340
Unless we're fool enough
to believe in amulets, charms,

358
00:29:07,340 --> 00:29:10,700
religious relics,
Veronica's handkerchief and so on,

359
00:29:10,700 --> 00:29:15,220
inanimate objects do not contain
the spirit of the doctrines or

360
00:29:15,220 --> 00:29:18,380
gods or saints
they are associated with.

361
00:29:18,380 --> 00:29:22,420
There is no such thing as spirit,
save in the mind of the deluded.

362
00:29:23,740 --> 00:29:26,700
And the attribution
to inanimate objects

363
00:29:26,700 --> 00:29:31,220
of humours or moral qualities is
half-witted,

364
00:29:31,220 --> 00:29:35,540
yet it is apparently
an irresistible human urge.

365
00:29:35,540 --> 00:29:37,780
It's an urge I don't share,

366
00:29:37,780 --> 00:29:41,940
but that's no doubt due
to my finely-honed insensitivity.

367
00:29:44,900 --> 00:29:48,820
If all the pieces of wood from
the cross on which the probably

368
00:29:48,820 --> 00:29:52,260
fictional character called
Jesus is said to have died

369
00:29:52,260 --> 00:29:54,700
were collected together,

370
00:29:54,700 --> 00:29:58,140
they would form a structure higher
than any in the world today.

371
00:30:00,500 --> 00:30:01,980
Made in Fascist Italy.

372
00:30:03,140 --> 00:30:06,700
Epochal considerations apart,
what does that mean?

373
00:30:06,700 --> 00:30:10,180
What are the implications
of the label?

374
00:30:10,180 --> 00:30:13,340
Many sorts of intimate objects were
manufactured

375
00:30:13,340 --> 00:30:14,900
during the Fascist era -

376
00:30:14,900 --> 00:30:19,420
frying pans, chairs, coffee kit,

377
00:30:19,420 --> 00:30:22,540
inventive fishing equipment
and white telephones.

378
00:30:24,380 --> 00:30:29,060
Such potent symbols of modernity
and the fast life, that they

379
00:30:29,060 --> 00:30:32,420
gave their name to frothy comedies
of mores.

380
00:30:43,540 --> 00:30:46,820
Dishes such as sartu and sformato
and frico

381
00:30:46,820 --> 00:30:48,940
were made in Fascist Italy.

382
00:30:48,940 --> 00:30:50,860
Can rice be Fascist?

383
00:30:50,860 --> 00:30:52,780
Can bechamel?

384
00:30:52,780 --> 00:30:56,580
Mussolini himself gives us little
indication that these dishes

385
00:30:56,580 --> 00:31:01,460
did not form part of his diet.
He had worrying tastes.

386
00:31:01,460 --> 00:31:05,260
This was a man who necked up
to four litres of milk per day.

387
00:31:06,620 --> 00:31:11,380
Was there ever a greater sign
of anti-gastronomic depravity?

388
00:31:11,380 --> 00:31:13,580
We surely all know that milk
is poison

389
00:31:13,580 --> 00:31:15,460
unless it's turned into cheese.

390
00:31:17,500 --> 00:31:20,820
Fiats were manufactured
throughout the Fascist era,

391
00:31:20,820 --> 00:31:23,260
so were Olivettis.

392
00:31:23,260 --> 00:31:26,060
Can a car represent Fascism?

393
00:31:26,060 --> 00:31:28,700
Can a car BE Fascist?

394
00:31:28,700 --> 00:31:33,020
Fiats were manufactured
according to processes devised

395
00:31:33,020 --> 00:31:35,740
in the United States by Henry Ford,

396
00:31:35,740 --> 00:31:39,420
an anti-Semite and the author
of The International Jew.

397
00:31:39,420 --> 00:31:44,140
It's worth noting that Mussolini's
Fascism was not anti-Semitic

398
00:31:44,140 --> 00:31:47,980
until he came under the influence
of Hitler in the late 1930s.

399
00:31:47,980 --> 00:31:53,180
It was a form of hatred that had,
astonishingly, evaded him.

400
00:31:53,180 --> 00:31:56,820
Here are two cars from
the beginning of that decade.

401
00:31:56,820 --> 00:31:59,540
It's obvious which the Fascist
car is.

402
00:32:02,580 --> 00:32:04,820
Can a typewriter be Fascist?

403
00:32:04,820 --> 00:32:09,620
Can it be - and this is different -
emblematic of Fascism?

404
00:32:09,620 --> 00:32:14,020
A typewriter can of course produce
letters which add up to the words

405
00:32:14,020 --> 00:32:17,260
that form the slogans which were
Fascist diktats.

406
00:32:23,380 --> 00:32:25,140
RADIO CHANNELS CHANGE

407
00:32:30,860 --> 00:32:35,140
'With usura hath no man
a house of good stone

408
00:32:35,140 --> 00:32:38,580
'each block cut smooth and
well fitting

409
00:32:38,580 --> 00:32:41,660
'that design might cover their face.

410
00:32:41,660 --> 00:32:47,580
'With usura hath no man a painted
paradise on his church wall...'

411
00:32:47,580 --> 00:32:50,580
A radio can receive
a station broadcasting

412
00:32:50,580 --> 00:32:55,220
Ezra Pound's rants against
the Gombeen men of the usurocracy -

413
00:32:55,220 --> 00:32:57,540
but does that make it
a Fascist radio?

414
00:32:57,540 --> 00:33:00,300
Or simply a boringly tuned one?

415
00:33:01,420 --> 00:33:05,340
Is it just that these disparate
objects were manufactured

416
00:33:05,340 --> 00:33:09,700
during Mussolini's dictatorship
and are associable with Fascism

417
00:33:09,700 --> 00:33:13,100
simply by calendrical chance?

418
00:33:13,100 --> 00:33:15,780
I'm asking the question -
I don't know the answer.

419
00:33:16,820 --> 00:33:20,460
The two predominant schools or
idioms of architecture

420
00:33:20,460 --> 00:33:23,980
that infected Italy
during Mussolini's long tenure,

421
00:33:23,980 --> 00:33:27,140
exemplified by Redipuglia
and Montegrappa,

422
00:33:27,140 --> 00:33:31,140
the cautiously futuristic
and the revivalist,

423
00:33:31,140 --> 00:33:34,220
might both claim
to be truly Fascist.

424
00:33:34,220 --> 00:33:38,940
But that is a handle that can be
unthinkingly attached to any object.

425
00:33:41,420 --> 00:33:46,620
Buildings occupy a singular niche
in this conundrum of ascription,

426
00:33:46,620 --> 00:33:49,140
classification and significance.

427
00:33:51,980 --> 00:33:55,620
Unlike cars, typewriters,
cups and so on,

428
00:33:55,620 --> 00:33:58,540
they are potentially multipurpose.

429
00:33:58,540 --> 00:34:01,740
They're capable of possessing
a flexibility which their

430
00:34:01,740 --> 00:34:04,580
architect can hardly have foreseen.

431
00:34:04,580 --> 00:34:07,620
They can be made to serve
an endeavour unknown

432
00:34:07,620 --> 00:34:09,220
when they were constructed.

433
00:34:10,420 --> 00:34:13,780
A building can have serial lives,
so to speak.

434
00:34:13,780 --> 00:34:19,500
A fire station can be converted into
yet another exciting boutique hotel.

435
00:34:19,500 --> 00:34:22,900
A hospital can be made
over into apartments,

436
00:34:22,900 --> 00:34:25,460
luxury apartments, of course.

437
00:34:25,460 --> 00:34:28,340
A site of ritual can be
deconsecrated

438
00:34:28,340 --> 00:34:30,220
as a site of recreation.

439
00:34:31,780 --> 00:34:35,260
When the Reconquista brought
civilisation back to Spain,

440
00:34:35,260 --> 00:34:38,460
the Cordoba mosque became
a cathedral.

441
00:34:39,620 --> 00:34:42,380
The original purpose is
obliterated.

442
00:34:43,460 --> 00:34:45,100
In time, it'll be forgotten.

443
00:34:46,500 --> 00:34:50,140
In time, the buildings
made in Fascist Italy will be

444
00:34:50,140 --> 00:34:52,100
purged of their Fascist links.

445
00:35:14,420 --> 00:35:18,500
The awkward truth, habitually
ignored or denied by those

446
00:35:18,500 --> 00:35:21,860
who associate progressive
architecture with democratic

447
00:35:21,860 --> 00:35:26,780
governance, is that much that was
built in totalitarian Italy

448
00:35:26,780 --> 00:35:32,220
between 1922 and 1943 was at the
very forefront of modernism.

449
00:35:34,220 --> 00:35:37,980
Modernism is more closely linked
with totalitarianism

450
00:35:37,980 --> 00:35:40,500
than it is with democracy.

451
00:35:40,500 --> 00:35:44,780
Modernism in Italy was "Fascist",
in quotes.

452
00:35:44,780 --> 00:35:49,180
Modernism in France was
"republican", in quotes.

453
00:35:49,180 --> 00:35:53,220
Move a building across the border
from Menton to Ventimiglia

454
00:35:53,220 --> 00:35:55,660
and it ceases to be
a republican building

455
00:35:55,660 --> 00:35:57,700
and becomes a Fascist building...

456
00:35:57,700 --> 00:35:58,860
obviously(!)

457
00:36:07,500 --> 00:36:11,340
There was little in Italy that could
not have been found in France,

458
00:36:11,340 --> 00:36:16,020
or in Belgium, Sweden, Finland,
Holland, or in Russia,

459
00:36:16,020 --> 00:36:20,460
during the constructivist period
which ended in 1932.

460
00:36:32,500 --> 00:36:37,300
Mussolini enthusiastically
censored film-makers, writers,

461
00:36:37,300 --> 00:36:39,740
academics, journalists.

462
00:36:39,740 --> 00:36:43,660
The only journalists he approved
of were in what might be called

463
00:36:43,660 --> 00:36:47,380
the Alastair Campbell
tradition of toadying and bullying

464
00:36:47,380 --> 00:36:49,540
and spouting propaganda.

465
00:36:49,540 --> 00:36:53,660
However, unlike Stalin and Hitler,
he did not, up to the late '30s,

466
00:36:53,660 --> 00:36:56,500
exercise aesthetic control over
building.

467
00:36:58,260 --> 00:37:03,660
To adapt a Marxist term, there was
no attempted architectural hegemony,

468
00:37:03,660 --> 00:37:06,940
until he cravenly bowed
to pressure from Hitler,

469
00:37:06,940 --> 00:37:10,380
who declared that the Roman state
had been resurrected.

470
00:37:12,100 --> 00:37:16,140
Architecturally, there was little
accord between Italian Fascism

471
00:37:16,140 --> 00:37:18,740
and German national socialism.

472
00:37:18,740 --> 00:37:22,820
Nor, for that matter, between those
two and Soviet communism.

473
00:37:25,220 --> 00:37:28,180
The position held by, among others,

474
00:37:28,180 --> 00:37:32,780
the exiled Italian writer Bruno
Rizzi, that whatever ideologies

475
00:37:32,780 --> 00:37:36,820
they claimed to profess, they were
near identical in their bureaucratic

476
00:37:36,820 --> 00:37:41,540
collectivism, is given the lie
by their very different buildings -

477
00:37:41,540 --> 00:37:44,140
the buildings are the regime.

478
00:37:47,540 --> 00:37:50,740
Till that late Hitlerian
intervention,

479
00:37:50,740 --> 00:37:54,260
Mussolini had been indifferent
to architectural style.

480
00:37:54,260 --> 00:37:58,620
Maybe he considered it too trivial
a matter to concern himself with.

481
00:37:58,620 --> 00:38:02,820
It's more probable that he was
crippled by procrastination.

482
00:38:02,820 --> 00:38:06,980
He could discern virtues
in both modernism and revivalism.

483
00:38:08,380 --> 00:38:09,900
What is indisputable is

484
00:38:09,900 --> 00:38:12,700
that throughout his first decade
in power,

485
00:38:12,700 --> 00:38:16,100
he neglected to exploit
architecture's potential

486
00:38:16,100 --> 00:38:18,060
to affect his subjects,

487
00:38:18,060 --> 00:38:22,940
through expressive gestures,
through particular forms.

488
00:38:22,940 --> 00:38:26,580
He failed to harness its capacity
to suppress and control them,

489
00:38:26,580 --> 00:38:30,140
to exhilarate them,
to bend them to his will.

490
00:38:40,060 --> 00:38:44,380
Mussolini's architectural priorities
had been different.

491
00:38:44,380 --> 00:38:47,420
It was to direct what
types of building were made,

492
00:38:47,420 --> 00:38:48,940
irrespective of style.

493
00:38:53,820 --> 00:38:59,660
Prospective types, to signal
a novel society without precedent,

494
00:38:59,660 --> 00:39:04,580
that would create the future -
forge the future, in tyrant-speak.

495
00:39:06,620 --> 00:39:12,100
Retrospective types, for
a traditional society with roots

496
00:39:12,100 --> 00:39:15,980
that stretch deep down
into Italian soil.

497
00:39:15,980 --> 00:39:19,100
A dictator can have his cake
and eat it.

498
00:39:19,100 --> 00:39:22,060
Let's build. Let's build lots.

499
00:39:22,060 --> 00:39:24,500
Volume, quantity, bulk.

500
00:39:24,500 --> 00:39:28,060
Let's build -
think of the jobs created.

501
00:39:28,060 --> 00:39:32,100
Think of the infrastructure
that you can eat your lunch off.

502
00:39:32,100 --> 00:39:35,780
Think of the impression
on foreign visitors.

503
00:39:35,780 --> 00:39:37,140
Wow.

504
00:39:37,140 --> 00:39:39,940
Think of the showcase
of indigenous talent.

505
00:39:39,940 --> 00:39:44,020
Think of the boost
to the collective amour propre,

506
00:39:44,020 --> 00:39:47,100
think most of all
of the relieving massage

507
00:39:47,100 --> 00:39:50,260
that heightens
the leader's self-esteem.

508
00:39:52,060 --> 00:39:54,420
No, no, not him!

509
00:39:54,420 --> 00:39:56,540
Think New Labour.

510
00:39:56,540 --> 00:40:01,660
Think of the great harbinger of
peace, our former Duce Tonio Blair.

511
00:40:01,660 --> 00:40:05,900
And the blistering intensity
of the reflected glory which has

512
00:40:05,900 --> 00:40:07,060
turned him orange.

513
00:40:09,780 --> 00:40:14,540
So long as it was productive,
Mussolini was happy to preside over

514
00:40:14,540 --> 00:40:17,300
an architectural
and constructional establishment

515
00:40:17,300 --> 00:40:18,820
that was stylistically riven.

516
00:40:19,940 --> 00:40:23,580
He no more knew what the
architecture of Fascism should be

517
00:40:23,580 --> 00:40:25,460
than he knew what Fascism was.

518
00:40:25,460 --> 00:40:29,580
Every time he was asked to define
it, he gave a different reply.

519
00:40:29,580 --> 00:40:33,940
His inconsistency was a pathology.
Or maybe it was a strategy.

520
00:40:35,140 --> 00:40:37,980
Fascism is a super relativist
movement.

521
00:40:51,300 --> 00:40:54,300
In the years immediately
before the First World War,

522
00:40:54,300 --> 00:40:58,100
when the poisonous stew
of nationalist exclusivity

523
00:40:58,100 --> 00:41:02,380
and authoritarian dogmas, which
would eventually fuse as Fascism,

524
00:41:02,380 --> 00:41:05,660
were becoming current
among the revolutionary unwashed,

525
00:41:05,660 --> 00:41:08,020
Italy's high bourgeoisie,

526
00:41:08,020 --> 00:41:11,540
the unwashed's avowed enemy
and prime target,

527
00:41:11,540 --> 00:41:16,820
was indulging its taste for flashy
opulence by commissioning villas

528
00:41:16,820 --> 00:41:20,020
in a variant of the idiom known as
Stile Liberty.

529
00:41:21,460 --> 00:41:25,660
Wealthy northern Italians embraced
the fashion that had captured

530
00:41:25,660 --> 00:41:27,740
the rest of Europe,

531
00:41:27,740 --> 00:41:32,180
and they had as their designer
of choice the marvellous artificer

532
00:41:32,180 --> 00:41:38,060
Gino Coppede - Florentine by
birth, Genoese by adoption,

533
00:41:38,060 --> 00:41:43,380
riotously eclectic by temperament
and, for once it can be safely said,

534
00:41:43,380 --> 00:41:47,820
quite unlike any other
architect of his or any other time.

535
00:41:47,820 --> 00:41:51,900
He was the undisputed
master of "more is more".

536
00:41:51,900 --> 00:41:55,940
# Ma quella faccia un po' cosi
quell'espressione un po' cosi

537
00:41:55,940 --> 00:41:59,620
# Che abbiamo noi prima di andare
a Genova

538
00:41:59,620 --> 00:42:03,660
# E ogni volta ci chediamo si quel
posto dove andiamo

539
00:42:03,660 --> 00:42:06,980
# Non c'inghiotte e non torniamo
piu. #

540
00:42:06,980 --> 00:42:11,860
Genoa was at that point the most
thriving of Italian cities.

541
00:42:11,860 --> 00:42:16,300
It was here and along the Ligurian
littoral that he made his name

542
00:42:16,300 --> 00:42:19,940
with an astounding series
of picturesque villas,

543
00:42:19,940 --> 00:42:23,660
whose appropriateness
to their surrounds is total.

544
00:42:23,660 --> 00:42:25,820
# Genova per noi

545
00:42:25,820 --> 00:42:29,220
# Che stiamo in fondo alla
campagna... #

546
00:42:29,220 --> 00:42:32,060
Genoa is an exceptionally
hilly city,

547
00:42:32,060 --> 00:42:36,820
of buildings recklessly
piled on top of each other.

548
00:42:36,820 --> 00:42:40,900
The Castello Mackenzie,
the first of several such buildings

549
00:42:40,900 --> 00:42:43,340
that Coppede was to design
in the city,

550
00:42:43,340 --> 00:42:45,860
exploits the precipitous topography.

551
00:42:47,340 --> 00:42:52,100
The immensely tall perforated tower
looks frighteningly precarious.

552
00:42:52,100 --> 00:42:53,620
It may teeter and fall.

553
00:42:55,340 --> 00:42:59,300
It pretends to include
fragments of other buildings.

554
00:42:59,300 --> 00:43:03,420
It gives the impression of having
been built in different stages,

555
00:43:03,420 --> 00:43:07,180
in different eras,
in different styles.

556
00:43:07,180 --> 00:43:11,380
Like all great artists,
Coppede stole and transformed,

557
00:43:11,380 --> 00:43:14,220
and he seldom bothered
to cover his tracks.

558
00:43:19,620 --> 00:43:23,020
He looted the past
with rampant abandon.

559
00:43:23,020 --> 00:43:27,340
He certainly drew on the northern
Italian fortified tradition.

560
00:43:29,900 --> 00:43:34,100
The Palazzo Vecchio in Florence
is just one starting point.

561
00:43:34,100 --> 00:43:39,380
He uses it like an armature
on which to hang further thefts,

562
00:43:39,380 --> 00:43:45,660
from such wildly disparate sources
as Byzantium, Liberty, sure enough,

563
00:43:45,660 --> 00:43:48,380
Venetian Gothic, fairgrounds,

564
00:43:48,380 --> 00:43:52,260
Mughal and Moorish buildings
that had never existed,

565
00:43:52,260 --> 00:43:56,780
an invented Orient,
a skewed Renaissance.

566
00:43:56,780 --> 00:44:02,100
This is architecture as
entertainment - art without angst.

567
00:44:02,100 --> 00:44:06,380
With happiness and geniality.
Such a thing does exist.

568
00:44:09,500 --> 00:44:12,660
It must be a matter of wonder
to those not familiar with

569
00:44:12,660 --> 00:44:16,020
the caprices of architectural
history that this great

570
00:44:16,020 --> 00:44:19,100
and singular artist is not
widely celebrated.

571
00:44:20,140 --> 00:44:22,100
But then architectural history

572
00:44:22,100 --> 00:44:24,500
is no different
from any other history.

573
00:44:24,500 --> 00:44:26,740
It is written by the victors,

574
00:44:26,740 --> 00:44:31,100
and the eventual victors in the 20th
century were the modernists.

575
00:44:31,100 --> 00:44:34,980
The history they wrote was
retrospective propaganda.

576
00:44:34,980 --> 00:44:39,100
MUSIC: Geno
by Dexys Midnight Runners

577
00:44:40,740 --> 00:44:43,860
You never know when it'll happen,
and it happens rarely,

578
00:44:43,860 --> 00:44:45,900
once or twice in a lifetime.

579
00:44:45,900 --> 00:44:49,460
A coup de foudre -
love at first sight.

580
00:44:49,460 --> 00:44:52,540
Fright at first sight, too.

581
00:44:52,540 --> 00:44:56,820
I was in a street market in Genoa
in 1982.

582
00:44:56,820 --> 00:45:01,060
Every store was blasting out that
summer's hit, Geno by Dexys,

583
00:45:01,060 --> 00:45:03,540
their tribute to Signor Coppede.

584
00:45:03,540 --> 00:45:08,260
# That man took the stage,
his towel was swinging high... #

585
00:45:08,260 --> 00:45:12,020
My eye was drawn to some plates,
cheap, plastic.

586
00:45:12,020 --> 00:45:16,220
Representations of animals.
So far, so banal.

587
00:45:16,220 --> 00:45:20,060
But with in-built crackalure -
they had been aged.

588
00:45:21,380 --> 00:45:24,460
The corniness was epic
and hilarious.

589
00:45:27,500 --> 00:45:29,380
I brought half a dozen,

590
00:45:29,380 --> 00:45:33,180
then turned round to a sight that
first astonished me,

591
00:45:33,180 --> 00:45:36,660
then sent some freezing
pulse to the base of my spine.

592
00:45:38,620 --> 00:45:42,940
The building I was facing was
fantastical. A hothouse.

593
00:45:44,180 --> 00:45:49,300
Victor Hugo wrote of the
Renaissance's magnificent decadence.

594
00:45:49,300 --> 00:45:51,820
This went further.

595
00:45:51,820 --> 00:45:55,500
It was as voluptuous
as a flesh-eating orchid,

596
00:45:55,500 --> 00:45:57,060
and frightening, sinister.

597
00:46:05,660 --> 00:46:09,780
Classical symmetry,
high relief rustication,

598
00:46:09,780 --> 00:46:13,340
stones seething
like a Gorgon's hair,

599
00:46:13,340 --> 00:46:18,860
facades entrusted with distended
motifs, with frozen menageries

600
00:46:18,860 --> 00:46:22,740
of malevolent animals which belong
to no known bestiary.

601
00:46:24,580 --> 00:46:26,300
There is corruption in the air.

602
00:46:29,380 --> 00:46:33,260
The aggression of these buildings is
quite at odds with the picturesque

603
00:46:33,260 --> 00:46:36,460
felicities of the Castello
and its offspring,

604
00:46:36,460 --> 00:46:39,900
save that, as ever, more is more.

605
00:46:45,500 --> 00:46:48,340
In his last work,
unfinished at the time of his death

606
00:46:48,340 --> 00:46:51,180
five years after Mussolini
came to power,

607
00:46:51,180 --> 00:46:57,260
Coppede combined these two,
apparently irreconcilable, styles.

608
00:46:57,260 --> 00:47:00,860
They don't fuse, they collide.

609
00:47:00,860 --> 00:47:03,580
The Quartiere Coppede,
as it came to be known,

610
00:47:03,580 --> 00:47:05,980
is the wholly astonishing aftermath

611
00:47:05,980 --> 00:47:08,420
of an apparently beneficent
accident.

612
00:47:10,580 --> 00:47:12,900
What on earth is that?

613
00:47:12,900 --> 00:47:15,140
How in heaven's name
did that get up there?

614
00:47:15,140 --> 00:47:18,100
What's that doing? What's it for?

615
00:47:18,100 --> 00:47:19,780
Why? And so on.

616
00:47:28,140 --> 00:47:33,100
This near-psychotropic confection
to the north of central Rome

617
00:47:33,100 --> 00:47:36,660
was his only work in a city
which was rapidly expanding.

618
00:47:37,700 --> 00:47:42,340
The country was being rebalanced,
demographically, topographically.

619
00:47:47,820 --> 00:47:49,860
Mussolini, the master builder,

620
00:47:49,860 --> 00:47:54,580
was creating not merely a national
capital, but an imperial one.

621
00:47:56,620 --> 00:48:00,620
His megalomania was limitless
but then, well, that's pleonastic -

622
00:48:00,620 --> 00:48:03,300
megalomania always is limitless.

623
00:48:05,100 --> 00:48:08,980
The city was no longer a backwater
of clerical superstition.

624
00:48:08,980 --> 00:48:12,620
It was no longer a museum of itself.

625
00:48:12,620 --> 00:48:16,180
It was thriving,
it was an economic magnet.

626
00:48:16,180 --> 00:48:20,300
It was an opportunity opportunity,
it was dynamically dynamic.

627
00:48:20,300 --> 00:48:23,580
That, anyway, was
Mussolini's take on it.

628
00:48:23,580 --> 00:48:27,420
And he had the power to make that
delusion a reality,

629
00:48:27,420 --> 00:48:29,260
through building.

630
00:48:29,260 --> 00:48:31,980
Come on, let's send out for some
infrastructure!

631
00:48:37,180 --> 00:48:39,220
That's what autocrats do.

632
00:48:39,220 --> 00:48:42,260
So for that matter do the
presidents, chancellors

633
00:48:42,260 --> 00:48:46,940
and prime ministers of elective
dictatorships.

634
00:48:46,940 --> 00:48:49,260
How they'd love to be
real dictators.

635
00:48:49,260 --> 00:48:50,660
Look busy!

636
00:48:52,020 --> 00:48:56,220
Coppede is as close as you can get
to inimitable,

637
00:48:56,220 --> 00:48:58,060
but that never deterred anyone.

638
00:49:10,500 --> 00:49:12,260
Garbatella was the development

639
00:49:12,260 --> 00:49:14,580
about five kilometres south
of the Quartiere Coppede.

640
00:49:15,980 --> 00:49:18,700
It was described as a garden city,

641
00:49:18,700 --> 00:49:21,460
but then there were few
urbanistic projects

642
00:49:21,460 --> 00:49:24,460
of the 20th century
which weren't so described.

643
00:49:24,460 --> 00:49:28,180
Garbatella's architects did not
attempt to match Coppede,

644
00:49:28,180 --> 00:49:32,140
but they took their cue from him,
they doffed their caps,

645
00:49:32,140 --> 00:49:35,060
and the area owes everything to him,

646
00:49:35,060 --> 00:49:36,700
or it owes nothing,

647
00:49:36,700 --> 00:49:40,300
for it's watered wine -
dilute, pared down.

648
00:49:44,860 --> 00:49:49,540
Though it was mostly associated with
subsidised social housing projects,

649
00:49:49,540 --> 00:49:54,180
the frugality of ornament was not
economically determined.

650
00:49:54,180 --> 00:49:57,740
It was the stylistic choice
of architects trying to create

651
00:49:57,740 --> 00:50:02,260
a form of 20th century architecture
which dissociated itself

652
00:50:02,260 --> 00:50:04,700
from both 19th-century revivalism

653
00:50:04,700 --> 00:50:08,380
and rectilinear modernism's
radical abstraction.

654
00:50:09,620 --> 00:50:12,980
Unified Italy had only a short past.

655
00:50:12,980 --> 00:50:17,100
This was an attempt to define
a national architecture,

656
00:50:17,100 --> 00:50:19,780
a romantic peasant-unifying glue.

657
00:50:21,900 --> 00:50:25,420
It had much in common with what was
going on in Scotland

658
00:50:25,420 --> 00:50:29,580
and northern Germany, Finland,
Belgium, Holland -

659
00:50:29,580 --> 00:50:32,540
countries where an effort was
made to challenge

660
00:50:32,540 --> 00:50:36,140
the blancoed uniformity
of the international style,

661
00:50:36,140 --> 00:50:40,300
whose proponents
thought of it as the one true way.

662
00:50:40,300 --> 00:50:45,100
A moral necessity, which of course
is how it has been represented.

663
00:50:47,020 --> 00:50:51,420
The Whig interpretation
of architectural history.

664
00:50:51,420 --> 00:50:55,140
The silly architectural historian
Siegfried Giedion,

665
00:50:55,140 --> 00:51:00,300
said of the 1920s,
"One had to start from scratch."

666
00:51:00,300 --> 00:51:02,300
Had to? Really?

667
00:51:05,260 --> 00:51:08,500
The architect of this building,
Paolo Mezzanotte,

668
00:51:08,500 --> 00:51:10,980
evidently thought otherwise.

669
00:51:20,940 --> 00:51:23,540
Mussolini talked of a second
Renaissance.

670
00:51:23,540 --> 00:51:25,900
He talked of a new Augustan age.

671
00:51:31,300 --> 00:51:34,100
Paolo Mezzanotte's Milan
stock exchange

672
00:51:34,100 --> 00:51:38,180
is as bloated a lump of baroque
as San Giovanni in Laterano,

673
00:51:38,180 --> 00:51:42,020
a Roman basilica
which was probably its inspiration.

674
00:51:45,980 --> 00:51:49,940
The Paris exhibition of modern,
decorative and industrial art

675
00:51:49,940 --> 00:51:54,660
in 1925 gives us the term Art Deco -

676
00:51:54,660 --> 00:51:57,180
a sort of mass-market modernism.

677
00:51:59,420 --> 00:52:02,860
The architect of the Italian
pavilion was chosen after

678
00:52:02,860 --> 00:52:06,820
the usual petulant squabbling
and tribal spats.

679
00:52:06,820 --> 00:52:09,780
The commission was won
by Armando Brasini,

680
00:52:09,780 --> 00:52:13,220
who had form as a pathological
fulminator

681
00:52:13,220 --> 00:52:16,260
against all strains of modernism.

682
00:52:16,260 --> 00:52:18,700
He was among the most striking of
all baroque,

683
00:52:18,700 --> 00:52:21,220
rather than barochetto architects.

684
00:52:27,500 --> 00:52:32,540
His evocation of Imperial Rome was
not a copy of a particular building,

685
00:52:32,540 --> 00:52:36,700
but something which might have come
from the imagination

686
00:52:36,700 --> 00:52:40,860
of an imagined designer of the
baroque, evoking Imperial Rome.

687
00:52:42,980 --> 00:52:46,740
The more he built,
the more ambitious Brasini became.

688
00:52:59,660 --> 00:53:02,300
Mussolini was no fan of the baroque.

689
00:53:02,300 --> 00:53:05,580
He believed that it
belonged to the atomised

690
00:53:05,580 --> 00:53:09,180
and decadent Italy
of pre-unification -

691
00:53:09,180 --> 00:53:12,540
the Italy of the two Sicilies,
the kingdom of Sardinia,

692
00:53:12,540 --> 00:53:14,260
the Papal States, etc.

693
00:53:15,700 --> 00:53:20,140
He was tolerant of it as he was
of any form of architecture -

694
00:53:20,140 --> 00:53:22,900
the tyrant who neglected
to tyrannise.

695
00:53:26,220 --> 00:53:30,860
And style notwithstanding,
he must have perceived in Brasini

696
00:53:30,860 --> 00:53:34,420
an artist whose megalomania
matched his own.

697
00:53:46,580 --> 00:53:52,260
This mind-boggling group of
buildings was initially intended

698
00:53:52,260 --> 00:53:55,260
as an orphanage for small girls -

699
00:53:55,260 --> 00:53:59,220
a use which Robert Venturi,
with admirable understatement,

700
00:53:59,220 --> 00:54:04,460
described as "questionable".
Today it houses various schools.

701
00:54:04,460 --> 00:54:08,620
The place's startling grandeur
remains undiminished,

702
00:54:08,620 --> 00:54:12,100
even though its numerous spires
were reckoned unsafe

703
00:54:12,100 --> 00:54:15,540
and taken down in the early 1970s.

704
00:54:15,540 --> 00:54:18,460
Its being slightly ruinous
increases its appeal,

705
00:54:18,460 --> 00:54:20,020
at least it does to my eye.

706
00:54:21,460 --> 00:54:25,540
It takes quite a feat of temporal
concentration to accept

707
00:54:25,540 --> 00:54:28,060
that those spires were only
30 years old

708
00:54:28,060 --> 00:54:31,620
and that the building wasn't
finished till 1943,

709
00:54:31,620 --> 00:54:36,060
the year of Mussolini's downfall.
Not quite credible.

710
00:54:36,060 --> 00:54:39,540
The sheer size is
difficult to take in.

711
00:54:39,540 --> 00:54:44,740
And combined with the labyrinthine
plan, all 45 degree angles

712
00:54:44,740 --> 00:54:50,180
and repetitive diagonals, it's all
but incomprehensible, illegible.

713
00:54:52,940 --> 00:54:56,780
Even though it's symmetrical,
its unpredictability is total.

714
00:54:56,780 --> 00:54:58,660
It might have been improvised.

715
00:55:12,940 --> 00:55:16,700
You are setting out to change
the course of human existence,

716
00:55:16,700 --> 00:55:19,860
to remake man as a fearless,
obedient,

717
00:55:19,860 --> 00:55:23,260
rock-hard knot of musculature,
so rock-hard

718
00:55:23,260 --> 00:55:27,260
he can shatter rock-hard rocks with
a flick of a rock-hard pectoral.

719
00:55:30,540 --> 00:55:35,220
You are creating a society unlike
any society that has ever been.

720
00:55:38,300 --> 00:55:42,260
You have within your steel heart
the satanic absence of mercy

721
00:55:42,260 --> 00:55:46,180
that is the sine qua non of
an omnipotent, omniscient leader.

722
00:55:49,260 --> 00:55:52,580
You will dispense with everything
that stands in your way.

723
00:55:53,980 --> 00:55:55,980
You're ruthless.

724
00:55:55,980 --> 00:56:01,860
You gaze purposefully into a future
that you alone can see.

725
00:56:01,860 --> 00:56:06,180
It is your lathe, your chisel,
that will shape the nation

726
00:56:06,180 --> 00:56:07,700
then shape the world.

727
00:56:09,180 --> 00:56:12,540
But what of the shavings,
the sawdust, the shards?

728
00:56:16,260 --> 00:56:20,100
Ooh! You have such a lovely uniform!

729
00:56:20,100 --> 00:56:24,220
From the Scala wardrobe, is it?
So dinky! So Offenbach!

730
00:56:24,220 --> 00:56:28,220
So modern, so dernier cri.
Ooh, those tassels!

731
00:56:33,540 --> 00:56:34,940
JONATHAN SPEAKS ITALIAN:

732
00:56:46,700 --> 00:56:51,580
Why, then, do you and your fellow
dictators cling in varying degrees

733
00:56:51,580 --> 00:56:53,980
to myths and emblems of the past,

734
00:56:53,980 --> 00:56:58,180
when tearing up the past is a very
condition of founding the future?

735
00:57:02,300 --> 00:57:06,020
This is an instance of pragmatism
suppressing ideology.

736
00:57:07,540 --> 00:57:10,260
All this spirituality -
whatever spirituality is -

737
00:57:10,260 --> 00:57:13,740
all this revitalisation and renewal,

738
00:57:13,740 --> 00:57:17,940
seem to demand some
sort of grounding in the archaic.

739
00:57:20,420 --> 00:57:22,500
A violent break with the past

740
00:57:22,500 --> 00:57:25,420
is liable to shock
your slower subjects,

741
00:57:25,420 --> 00:57:29,700
so you have to take them with you,
franchise or no franchise.

742
00:57:31,620 --> 00:57:33,260
Easy does it.

743
00:57:37,700 --> 00:57:41,540
Technological means are neutral,
inanimate.

744
00:57:41,540 --> 00:57:47,060
They do not determine the uses
they are put to - man does.

745
00:57:47,060 --> 00:57:50,620
Even artificial intelligences have
to be prepped by man.

746
00:57:52,060 --> 00:57:55,380
And artificial intelligences are not
necessarily high IQ.

747
00:57:56,740 --> 00:58:01,460
They can't answer back when
commanded to perform morally dubious

748
00:58:01,460 --> 00:58:04,860
or even unquestionably wicked tasks.

749
00:58:06,500 --> 00:58:09,180
These abuses are secret, hidden.

750
00:58:09,180 --> 00:58:12,380
The perpetrator does not
advertise his enormities.

751
00:58:14,140 --> 00:58:16,500
The populace is kept in the dark.

752
00:58:16,500 --> 00:58:19,980
The mendacious banality
of propaganda sees to that.

753
00:58:23,620 --> 00:58:27,060
Ernst Schertel, the author of
a study of flagellation -

754
00:58:27,060 --> 00:58:28,460
a mere 12 volumes -

755
00:58:28,460 --> 00:58:32,820
an occultist and an early enthusiast
for Hitler wrote,

756
00:58:32,820 --> 00:58:36,740
"He who does not carry
demonic seeds within him

757
00:58:36,740 --> 00:58:39,660
"will never give birth
to a new world."

758
00:58:42,620 --> 00:58:49,100
Again, the much-needed demonic
seeds are secret, hidden.

759
00:58:49,100 --> 00:58:53,260
It is the overt, supposedly
progressive, perhaps genuinely

760
00:58:53,260 --> 00:58:58,380
progressive results of technology,
which are made ostentatiously public

761
00:58:58,380 --> 00:59:02,900
and which the public is invited
to believe it has a share in -

762
00:59:02,900 --> 00:59:05,380
the circuses, the airfields,

763
00:59:05,380 --> 00:59:08,820
the gravity-defying
feats of infrastructure.

764
00:59:08,820 --> 00:59:13,500
the kilometre upon kilometre
of autostrada,

765
00:59:13,500 --> 00:59:15,980
in a nation in which only 2%

766
00:59:15,980 --> 00:59:20,020
of the population owned a car
in the mid-'30s.

767
00:59:22,100 --> 00:59:23,980
They're not secret, not hidden,

768
00:59:23,980 --> 00:59:28,460
but broadcast as evidence
of the remade world's emergence.

769
00:59:28,460 --> 00:59:30,020
They are new.

770
00:59:36,940 --> 00:59:42,220
Mussolini's Italy
occasioned consumer Fascism.

771
00:59:42,220 --> 00:59:45,860
It was the most technophiliac
of the major dictatorships.

772
00:59:45,860 --> 00:59:48,260
It was the most materially advanced,

773
00:59:48,260 --> 00:59:53,180
the most artistically sophisticated,
because the least proscribed

774
00:59:53,180 --> 00:59:56,940
and the least preoccupied
with religious matters.

775
00:59:56,940 --> 00:59:59,460
On the one hand,
Mussolini talked endless waffle

776
00:59:59,460 --> 01:00:01,180
about spiritual renewal,

777
01:00:01,180 --> 01:00:04,860
on the other,
he called priests "black germs".

778
01:00:08,100 --> 01:00:12,020
He knew very well that the presence
of the greedy Vatican had

779
01:00:12,020 --> 01:00:15,740
long promoted a healthy
anticlericism in a large section

780
01:00:15,740 --> 01:00:18,620
of the sceptical,
mocking Roman populace,

781
01:00:18,620 --> 01:00:22,820
whose voice was the gleefully
blasphemous dialect poet,

782
01:00:22,820 --> 01:00:24,860
Giuseppe Gioachino Belli.

783
01:00:35,020 --> 01:00:39,100
Mary, eating soup for lunch,
was still a virgin, just.

784
01:00:39,100 --> 01:00:43,620
Gabriel, an angel,
hurled by God like a bolt,

785
01:00:43,620 --> 01:00:47,820
broke through a window. These are
the words he spoke to her.

786
01:00:47,820 --> 01:00:50,500
"You are up the duff,
you're in the club.

787
01:00:50,500 --> 01:00:53,980
"You really must believe me.
I'm here on God's say-so.

788
01:00:53,980 --> 01:00:55,940
"He's the dad."

789
01:00:55,940 --> 01:00:58,860
# Ave Maria! #

790
01:00:58,860 --> 01:01:01,460
It's the first time she'd
heard that song.

791
01:01:01,460 --> 01:01:03,740
"Get on! I'm not some scrubber!

792
01:01:03,740 --> 01:01:06,100
"I never touched a dong!"

793
01:01:06,100 --> 01:01:10,620
"Love, you're chosen.
This is just the start.

794
01:01:10,620 --> 01:01:13,900
"The launchpad to planetary acclaim.

795
01:01:13,900 --> 01:01:18,740
"It was at Pentecost. The old sod
was disguised as a dove.

796
01:01:18,740 --> 01:01:21,740
"Recall the bird that nestled in
your lap.

797
01:01:21,740 --> 01:01:26,620
"He's crafty. He knew the way
to your womb door."

798
01:01:26,620 --> 01:01:28,180
"The swine!

799
01:01:28,180 --> 01:01:31,340
"You'll see. My choice is to abort
the son of God!"

800
01:01:37,820 --> 01:01:41,420
Mussolini had the desire
but not the aptitude,

801
01:01:41,420 --> 01:01:45,860
the thankfully rare aptitude, for
turning himself into a living God

802
01:01:45,860 --> 01:01:49,380
to the extent that Hitler and Stalin
did in nations

803
01:01:49,380 --> 01:01:53,620
whose people were more credulous
and more pathetically susceptible

804
01:01:53,620 --> 01:01:57,900
to the idea of the great man,
the strong leader.

805
01:01:57,900 --> 01:02:02,300
It was a question of degree
rather than of kind.

806
01:02:02,300 --> 01:02:07,380
As a living God, he was stalled
on the lower slopes of Olympus.

807
01:02:09,580 --> 01:02:10,940
He never was best in show.

808
01:02:12,220 --> 01:02:15,580
Not that this lack of aptitude
prevented him trying.

809
01:02:15,580 --> 01:02:18,100
The extraordinary Lady Houston,

810
01:02:18,100 --> 01:02:22,220
a tireless horizontal who became
one of the richest women in Britain,

811
01:02:22,220 --> 01:02:26,980
and an avid funder of anti-Communist
causes, owned a Belgian griffon,

812
01:02:26,980 --> 01:02:29,740
which she called Benito,
in honour of her hero.

813
01:02:33,020 --> 01:02:36,140
Within less than three years
of his attaining power,

814
01:02:36,140 --> 01:02:38,740
his childhood home in Predappio

815
01:02:38,740 --> 01:02:42,060
had been turned into
a place of pilgrimage.

816
01:02:42,060 --> 01:02:46,500
The two big dates in the calendar
commemorated the day of his birth,

817
01:02:46,500 --> 01:02:51,780
on July 29th, 1883,
and his so-called "March on Rome",

818
01:02:51,780 --> 01:02:55,820
which brought him
to power in October 1922.

819
01:02:57,740 --> 01:03:02,140
Despite the adulation, Mussolini
couldn't scramble up Olympus.

820
01:03:02,140 --> 01:03:06,780
He remained resolutely human,
ridiculously human.

821
01:03:06,780 --> 01:03:11,460
A thuggish, strutting cockerel,
a blustering Ruritanian

822
01:03:11,460 --> 01:03:15,860
with a taste for the most
preposterous opera bouffe uniforms,

823
01:03:15,860 --> 01:03:17,940
posing as a dictator.

824
01:03:17,940 --> 01:03:23,020
It prompts the question, were his
demonic seeds insufficiently demonic

825
01:03:23,020 --> 01:03:26,060
for a real dictator?
Was there a crucial lack?

826
01:03:27,460 --> 01:03:31,220
Was he a demonic seed
short of the full satanic sac?

827
01:03:33,140 --> 01:03:35,820
Is that why he was a dictator
who failed to dictate?

828
01:03:38,300 --> 01:03:42,940
One of the unintended consequences
of his torpid laissez faire

829
01:03:42,940 --> 01:03:47,860
was an architecture of exceptional
plurality, of many materials,

830
01:03:47,860 --> 01:03:49,260
of many forms.

831
01:03:58,780 --> 01:04:02,420
The result is that Italy lacks
the standardised oddities

832
01:04:02,420 --> 01:04:05,260
of mid-century Soviet Union.

833
01:04:05,260 --> 01:04:08,860
There is nothing as boorishly
eye-catching as the despot's baroque

834
01:04:08,860 --> 01:04:13,820
of Stalin's blingscapes,
nor is there anything as creepy

835
01:04:13,820 --> 01:04:16,460
as Nazism's folkish siedlungs,

836
01:04:16,460 --> 01:04:19,700
built expressions of the doctrine
of blood and soil.

837
01:04:21,540 --> 01:04:25,180
Under those regimes,
modernism was largely suppressed.

838
01:04:25,180 --> 01:04:28,300
Insufficiently populist in the USSR,

839
01:04:28,300 --> 01:04:32,300
condemned as Jewish
and/or international in Germany.

840
01:04:37,380 --> 01:04:40,820
The situation in Italy could not
have been less kindred.

841
01:04:51,180 --> 01:04:54,420
Italian Fascism
and Italian modernism,

842
01:04:54,420 --> 01:04:58,620
in the sometimes conflicting,
sometimes congruent forms

843
01:04:58,620 --> 01:05:04,180
of futurism and rationalism, were
bound together from the very start.

844
01:05:04,180 --> 01:05:07,860
From before the very start,
they were intertwined in utero.

845
01:05:23,500 --> 01:05:26,620
The Futurists were
a belligerent crew.

846
01:05:26,620 --> 01:05:30,060
They comprised one of those things
called a "movement".

847
01:05:30,060 --> 01:05:31,220
An art movement,

848
01:05:31,220 --> 01:05:34,860
which happens at the far end
of the intestinal tract.

849
01:05:36,460 --> 01:05:39,020
And like the proto-Fascists
they were,

850
01:05:39,020 --> 01:05:42,980
they understood that there
was strength in numbers.

851
01:05:42,980 --> 01:05:45,820
Numbers disguise mediocrity.

852
01:05:45,820 --> 01:05:49,260
Numbers cover up the underachievers.

853
01:05:50,900 --> 01:05:53,740
They had rules.
They had manifestoes.

854
01:05:55,380 --> 01:05:57,180
Of course they had manifestoes.

855
01:05:57,180 --> 01:06:00,580
Manifestoes and more manifestoes.

856
01:06:00,580 --> 01:06:05,540
The manifesto compensates
for the paucity of the visual art.

857
01:06:06,820 --> 01:06:08,980
It gradually becomes the art itself.

858
01:06:10,220 --> 01:06:13,020
The longer the manifesto,
the more dismal the work.

859
01:06:14,060 --> 01:06:16,900
The artless drivel called
conceptualism

860
01:06:16,900 --> 01:06:19,540
ultimately derives
from the manifesto.

861
01:06:20,780 --> 01:06:23,460
Manifesto turns out to be
an anagram of

862
01:06:23,460 --> 01:06:27,180
"I am a no-hoper dork
who knows a curator or two

863
01:06:27,180 --> 01:06:31,100
"and prays not to get found out,
but can't write and can't paint".

864
01:06:46,180 --> 01:06:51,860
The Futurists had credos. They had
a cookbook full of silly ideas.

865
01:06:51,860 --> 01:06:54,380
Food sculpture, originality -

866
01:06:54,380 --> 01:06:59,180
which of course has no place in the
kitchen - trout wrapped in liver.

867
01:06:59,180 --> 01:07:02,020
Lamb with lion sauce.

868
01:07:02,020 --> 01:07:06,060
Such silly ideas that they have
of course all been adopted.

869
01:07:13,780 --> 01:07:16,060
The Futurists swiftly became
formulaic.

870
01:07:17,740 --> 01:07:20,500
Futurism was a fashion item,
which ought to have

871
01:07:20,500 --> 01:07:24,180
been as ephemeral as the
Dartford Two were predicted to be.

872
01:07:29,260 --> 01:07:31,580
But ephemera has a habit of
outliving

873
01:07:31,580 --> 01:07:34,700
what was confidently intended to
be permanent.

874
01:07:41,100 --> 01:07:42,500
But which just vanished.

875
01:07:44,820 --> 01:07:50,140
The poet agitator and author
of the cookbook, Filippo Marinetti,

876
01:07:50,140 --> 01:07:52,460
was a 34-year-old adolescent

877
01:07:52,460 --> 01:07:55,900
when he described
Rome as a pustulating sore.

878
01:08:07,220 --> 01:08:12,060
He led his troops in clamorously
demanding the city's modernisation.

879
01:08:13,500 --> 01:08:17,380
The renewal he sought - ordered,
rational, technocratic -

880
01:08:17,380 --> 01:08:21,740
could not have been more at odds
with that of Coppede and barochetto.

881
01:08:25,100 --> 01:08:28,780
Futurism attempted
with varying degrees of success

882
01:08:28,780 --> 01:08:30,620
to represent movement -

883
01:08:30,620 --> 01:08:34,660
the arrogant assumption being that
no previous painting had done so.

884
01:08:36,900 --> 01:08:40,220
Just look at The Murder by Cezanne.
Before he was Cezanne.

885
01:08:42,580 --> 01:08:48,500
But a painting, unlike prose or film
or music, is a static medium,

886
01:08:48,500 --> 01:08:52,820
no matter how frantically
restless its subject.

887
01:08:52,820 --> 01:08:58,980
Movement in a work in two dimensions
is bound to be figurative,

888
01:08:58,980 --> 01:09:03,860
illusory, a frozen moment - the
same goes for movement in buildings.

889
01:09:10,980 --> 01:09:14,060
Marinetti was pathologically
nationalist,

890
01:09:14,060 --> 01:09:18,300
yet his exultational rants
were those of Walt Whitman -

891
01:09:18,300 --> 01:09:20,820
a barely sane Walt Whitman.

892
01:09:20,820 --> 01:09:22,380
And not all that Italian.

893
01:09:25,900 --> 01:09:29,860
"We will sing of great mobs
eager for work, eager for joy,

894
01:09:29,860 --> 01:09:32,100
"eager for riots.

895
01:09:33,180 --> 01:09:37,500
"We will sing of the nightly
clamour of arsenals,

896
01:09:37,500 --> 01:09:43,180
"of teeming shipyards ablaze with
the electric moon's blinding light.

897
01:09:44,500 --> 01:09:50,580
"We will sing of bridges that
bestride rivers like giant athletes,

898
01:09:50,580 --> 01:09:53,780
"knives glistening in the sun.

899
01:09:53,780 --> 01:10:00,180
"We, the Futurists, are scorned
by the crippled and paralysed.

900
01:10:00,180 --> 01:10:04,780
"We, the Futurists, glory in danger
and revel in violence.

901
01:10:05,740 --> 01:10:08,860
"We revere patriotism. We exult war.

902
01:10:10,100 --> 01:10:15,140
"War is the hygiene of the world.

903
01:10:15,140 --> 01:10:16,780
"The sole hygiene."

904
01:10:33,060 --> 01:10:35,740
The world was to be cleansed.

905
01:10:35,740 --> 01:10:38,500
We have heard that one before
and since.

906
01:10:44,940 --> 01:10:48,060
The First World War
made an actuality

907
01:10:48,060 --> 01:10:50,780
of Marinetti's teenage dream
of glorious mass death

908
01:10:50,780 --> 01:10:53,860
and nationalistic sacrifice.

909
01:10:53,860 --> 01:10:55,980
Over half a million Italian
combatants

910
01:10:55,980 --> 01:10:59,260
and over half a million
Italian civilians died.

911
01:11:00,620 --> 01:11:02,500
Umberto Boccione,

912
01:11:02,500 --> 01:11:05,860
the most inventive of the Futurist
painters, was killed.

913
01:11:07,260 --> 01:11:10,420
So too was Antonia Sant'Elia.

914
01:11:14,260 --> 01:11:16,660
There are a number
of paper architects,

915
01:11:16,660 --> 01:11:21,500
dreamers of the never-to-be-built,
whose influence was boundless

916
01:11:21,500 --> 01:11:23,820
because their works never
got off the page.

917
01:11:25,340 --> 01:11:28,460
It remained an immaculate ideal.

918
01:11:28,460 --> 01:11:31,620
Piranesi, Bouille, Le Coeur,

919
01:11:31,620 --> 01:11:36,620
Ludwig Hilberseimer, Hugh Ferriss,
Frank Hampson

920
01:11:36,620 --> 01:11:39,460
and the Futurist Antonio Sant'Elia,

921
01:11:39,460 --> 01:11:42,500
the holy Sant'Elia,

922
01:11:42,500 --> 01:11:45,500
whose Citta Nuova was predictive of

923
01:11:45,500 --> 01:11:49,700
so many of the 20th century's
utopias and dystopias.

924
01:11:49,700 --> 01:11:52,460
Hardly surprising,
for it was so gleefully copied.

925
01:11:54,780 --> 01:11:59,100
We can admire the drawings of
Sant'Elia and these other artists,

926
01:11:59,100 --> 01:12:03,380
but we have to acknowledge that
what they do is not architecture.

927
01:12:03,380 --> 01:12:06,340
This stuff is the mere
germ of architecture.

928
01:12:06,340 --> 01:12:10,580
It is unconcerned with stresses,
services and soil pipes.

929
01:12:12,100 --> 01:12:16,460
Sant'Elia's collaborator and peer,
Mario Chiatonne,

930
01:12:16,460 --> 01:12:18,260
is today forgotten.

931
01:12:18,260 --> 01:12:22,180
He made the terrible career move
of not dying young.

932
01:12:25,900 --> 01:12:29,020
Throughout the early years
of Mussolini's two decades,

933
01:12:29,020 --> 01:12:30,780
there occurred something akin to the

934
01:12:30,780 --> 01:12:33,980
Battle of Styles
in Victorian England.

935
01:12:33,980 --> 01:12:35,780
There were several factions,

936
01:12:35,780 --> 01:12:39,820
each of them special pleading
that it was their architecture

937
01:12:39,820 --> 01:12:45,420
which best represented nationalism,
sacrifice, belligerence,

938
01:12:45,420 --> 01:12:49,860
Fascism's moral fervour
and a true devotion to Il Duce.

939
01:12:51,620 --> 01:12:55,420
They vied for an imprimatur
he was unwilling to bestow.

940
01:12:57,260 --> 01:13:01,220
The architecture that
the Futurists foresaw

941
01:13:01,220 --> 01:13:05,260
and promoted was based on
Chiatonne's drawings and Sant'Elia's

942
01:13:05,260 --> 01:13:07,420
plans for La Citta Nuova.

943
01:13:09,500 --> 01:13:12,500
It had no sort of architectural
precedent.

944
01:13:14,220 --> 01:13:16,860
It would have been
a disavowal of faith not to have

945
01:13:16,860 --> 01:13:18,820
started from scratch.

946
01:13:18,820 --> 01:13:22,460
This was not architecture, it was
a vision of architecture which

947
01:13:22,460 --> 01:13:25,580
had no existence other
than on the page.

948
01:13:27,980 --> 01:13:32,140
It might be socially deleterious,
but it was the future,

949
01:13:32,140 --> 01:13:36,380
because the Futurists, with
their exclusive claim on the future,

950
01:13:36,380 --> 01:13:37,700
said it to be so.

951
01:13:41,700 --> 01:13:45,300
It stood for, or was at least
intellectually linked,

952
01:13:45,300 --> 01:13:49,060
to the machine,
to man as a machine cog,

953
01:13:49,060 --> 01:13:53,140
to the suppression
of the individual, to collectivity,

954
01:13:53,140 --> 01:13:54,260
discipline,

955
01:13:54,260 --> 01:13:57,940
submission to the state
and the doctrines of Taylorism

956
01:13:57,940 --> 01:14:02,060
and Fordism, which had
started in the United States

957
01:14:02,060 --> 01:14:05,300
but which flourished
in anti-democratic countries

958
01:14:05,300 --> 01:14:08,140
whose workers had only frail rights.

959
01:14:08,140 --> 01:14:10,820
This was a fact that was picked
up by Giovanni Agnelli,

960
01:14:10,820 --> 01:14:14,020
the founder of Fiat,

961
01:14:14,020 --> 01:14:18,740
whose Futurism was hardly
ideological and aesthetic,

962
01:14:18,740 --> 01:14:22,180
rather technophiliac
and utilitarian.

963
01:14:24,780 --> 01:14:30,380
The factory he built at Lingotto
in Turin was Futurism made concrete,

964
01:14:30,380 --> 01:14:34,340
500 metres long,
emphatically horizontal

965
01:14:34,340 --> 01:14:36,700
and functional
to the point of frugality.

966
01:14:38,420 --> 01:14:43,300
Manufacturer proceeded from street
level and spiralled upwards.

967
01:14:43,300 --> 01:14:47,620
The final stages of assembly were
carried out on the fifth floor.

968
01:14:47,620 --> 01:14:51,580
The banked test track on its roof
was, then, practical

969
01:14:51,580 --> 01:14:53,260
as well as unique.

970
01:14:58,500 --> 01:15:02,460
It was internationally famous
within months of its opening.

971
01:15:02,460 --> 01:15:05,740
It showed how far ahead
of the game Italy was.

972
01:15:05,740 --> 01:15:08,980
This was the most advanced
factory in Europe.

973
01:15:08,980 --> 01:15:10,300
Advanced?

974
01:15:11,340 --> 01:15:15,300
Its owner founded a dynasty -
ill-starred, as they so often are.

975
01:15:15,300 --> 01:15:19,700
His grandson deservedly became world
famous for wearing his watch

976
01:15:19,700 --> 01:15:20,860
over his shirt cuff.

977
01:15:23,220 --> 01:15:28,220
Agnelli also gained control of
La Stampa, the formerly liberal

978
01:15:28,220 --> 01:15:31,660
Torinese newspaper which had been
closed down for suggesting

979
01:15:31,660 --> 01:15:36,740
Mussolini had been complicit in
the murder of the Socialist deputy

980
01:15:36,740 --> 01:15:39,740
and writer Giacomo Matteotti.

981
01:15:41,820 --> 01:15:45,460
Such acts of sycophancy
were commonplace.

982
01:15:45,460 --> 01:15:50,100
Commercial destinies
and careers depended on patronage

983
01:15:50,100 --> 01:15:54,620
and favouritism
and also on a certain flexibility.

984
01:15:54,620 --> 01:15:59,660
Angiolo Mazzoni joined
the Fascist Party early on, which

985
01:15:59,660 --> 01:16:05,180
eased his way to becoming the main
architect of the state railways,

986
01:16:05,180 --> 01:16:08,220
which, in turn, earned him
many further commissions.

987
01:16:20,300 --> 01:16:24,140
He also had connections
to the second wave of Futurism,

988
01:16:24,140 --> 01:16:27,660
but was willing to work in whatever
style his patrons demanded.

989
01:16:29,340 --> 01:16:33,140
Such a catholic approach to design
is habitually scorned.

990
01:16:35,020 --> 01:16:38,780
Architecture is the only creative
endeavour where commitment

991
01:16:38,780 --> 01:16:45,140
to a single style is reckoned to be
a demonstration of moral probity.

992
01:16:52,380 --> 01:16:56,140
The second wave of Futurism
produced a sort of painting

993
01:16:56,140 --> 01:16:58,860
and photography preoccupied
with flight.

994
01:17:07,900 --> 01:17:11,620
Now and again,
it possesses vertiginous potency.

995
01:17:11,620 --> 01:17:14,540
Tullio Crali's Diving Over The City

996
01:17:14,540 --> 01:17:18,500
and Before The Parachute Opens
are among the rare instances.

997
01:17:21,020 --> 01:17:25,780
At its more typical, it is
all patternmaking and poster art.

998
01:17:25,780 --> 01:17:28,980
Nonetheless, the idea of
the all-seeing pilot,

999
01:17:28,980 --> 01:17:33,660
with the world beneath him
as a target at his mercy,

1000
01:17:33,660 --> 01:17:36,140
overcomes the hackneyed depiction.

1001
01:17:36,140 --> 01:17:38,460
Indeed, it feeds off it.

1002
01:17:38,460 --> 01:17:44,140
This literal vision of the city
from above, revealing its shape,

1003
01:17:44,140 --> 01:17:50,100
symmetries, intricacies
and secrets, belongs to Mussolini.

1004
01:17:50,100 --> 01:17:53,660
He is the pilot. He is the leader.

1005
01:17:59,900 --> 01:18:03,620
Again, it was a spur
to architectural creation,

1006
01:18:03,620 --> 01:18:07,540
an encouragement to architectural
impersonality and grandiosity.

1007
01:18:09,780 --> 01:18:12,940
Seeing the Earth from thousands
of metres above

1008
01:18:12,940 --> 01:18:15,980
is a lesson in its puniness.

1009
01:18:15,980 --> 01:18:19,420
There is so much space to fill
with buildings of the new age,

1010
01:18:19,420 --> 01:18:24,500
with grand boulevards and square
squares and half-moon crescents.

1011
01:18:26,300 --> 01:18:29,420
What ought those squares
to look like at ground level?

1012
01:18:30,940 --> 01:18:35,020
That, after all, is where the little
people will get to see them.

1013
01:18:54,100 --> 01:18:57,740
The Enigma of Arrival is
VS Naipaul's meditation

1014
01:18:57,740 --> 01:19:01,060
on his discovery of the valley
north of Salisbury

1015
01:19:01,060 --> 01:19:03,220
which would become his home.

1016
01:19:03,220 --> 01:19:06,220
The title was stolen from a painting
by the peripatetic

1017
01:19:06,220 --> 01:19:08,180
Giorgio de Chiricho.

1018
01:19:08,180 --> 01:19:12,420
There are congruences of mood
between book and painting.

1019
01:19:12,420 --> 01:19:15,220
Isolation, ambiguity.

1020
01:19:15,220 --> 01:19:19,220
Above all, the presentiment
that once you have arrived,

1021
01:19:19,220 --> 01:19:21,900
all that awaits you is death.

1022
01:19:26,820 --> 01:19:31,940
It was to Turin that de Chiricho
ascribed his architectural lexicon.

1023
01:19:31,940 --> 01:19:36,420
He visited that city for two or
three days in 1911. That was enough.

1024
01:19:38,460 --> 01:19:41,820
Turin implanted
itself in his memory.

1025
01:19:41,820 --> 01:19:48,140
We don't choose places, they choose
us. Turin chose de Chiricho.

1026
01:19:49,180 --> 01:19:53,220
TRANSLATION: Turin, as nature saw it
and described it, revealed to me

1027
01:19:53,220 --> 01:19:57,380
a spiritual power
I haven't been aware of before.

1028
01:19:57,380 --> 01:20:01,180
I understood what he saw in it,
especially in the piazzas,

1029
01:20:01,180 --> 01:20:04,220
those Turin piazzas,
surrounded by porticos.

1030
01:20:04,220 --> 01:20:08,100
It was something very poetic,
very profound.

1031
01:20:17,740 --> 01:20:21,940
His lexicon is severely
straightened - blank walls,

1032
01:20:21,940 --> 01:20:27,180
mute apertures, round-arched
arcades, classical motifs,

1033
01:20:27,180 --> 01:20:33,460
ruined statuary, obelisks. It is all
elemental, pared down, primitive.

1034
01:20:34,900 --> 01:20:38,860
Interior and exterior allied.

1035
01:20:38,860 --> 01:20:43,100
Indeed, the very notion of separate
spaces dissolves.

1036
01:20:43,100 --> 01:20:47,060
Nothing seems complete.
Scale is mocked.

1037
01:20:47,060 --> 01:20:52,820
Shadows tell different times
in a realm where there is no time,

1038
01:20:52,820 --> 01:20:55,420
where the source of light
is a mystery,

1039
01:20:55,420 --> 01:20:58,860
where the sun appears to shine
from opposing directions.

1040
01:21:01,020 --> 01:21:05,180
De Chiricho's desolate urban
fragments are places

1041
01:21:05,180 --> 01:21:07,100
from which there is no escape.

1042
01:21:07,100 --> 01:21:11,500
The rare figures are frozen or
mutilated or faceless.

1043
01:21:11,500 --> 01:21:13,660
They were shrouds
from the sepulchre.

1044
01:21:15,100 --> 01:21:20,180
What he paints is a dream of death,
a dream of the city of the dead.

1045
01:21:31,020 --> 01:21:34,260
The classicism,
the modern classicism, that derived

1046
01:21:34,260 --> 01:21:37,460
from de Chiricho was a compromise,

1047
01:21:37,460 --> 01:21:40,100
a grudgingly conciliatory
handshake

1048
01:21:40,100 --> 01:21:43,540
between the two main antagonists
in the Battle of the Styles.

1049
01:21:46,020 --> 01:21:48,780
The notion that the architects
were consciously

1050
01:21:48,780 --> 01:21:52,620
searching for an architecture
of death assumes that architects

1051
01:21:52,620 --> 01:21:55,900
understand the meaning
of their buildings. They don't.

1052
01:21:55,900 --> 01:22:01,900
And they shouldn't. Interpretation
is not the maker's task.

1053
01:22:01,900 --> 01:22:06,940
But Thanatopolis is what they
created, over and again.

1054
01:22:26,500 --> 01:22:30,660
EUR is the set piece
of Mussolini's reign -

1055
01:22:30,660 --> 01:22:34,220
the site of an international
exhibition that was never to be.

1056
01:22:34,220 --> 01:22:37,660
It was scheduled for 1942,

1057
01:22:37,660 --> 01:22:41,660
the 20th anniversary of Italian
Fascist Government.

1058
01:22:43,460 --> 01:22:45,460
Events intervened.

1059
01:22:45,460 --> 01:22:49,380
Within a year of its completion,
Fascism was defeated

1060
01:22:49,380 --> 01:22:53,420
and Mussolini was
a near-powerless Nazi puppet.

1061
01:22:59,380 --> 01:23:01,780
What does this place tell us
about Fascism?

1062
01:23:02,860 --> 01:23:07,460
That Fascism builds monuments
to its great leader,

1063
01:23:07,460 --> 01:23:11,140
that sport is essentially
a Fascist activity.

1064
01:23:11,140 --> 01:23:14,340
That Fascism is conditional
upon xenophobia.

1065
01:23:14,340 --> 01:23:19,100
That Fascism builds infrastructure
in the national interest,

1066
01:23:19,100 --> 01:23:21,820
or as a diversion.

1067
01:23:21,820 --> 01:23:25,780
Fascism, in common with all
totalitarian faiths,

1068
01:23:25,780 --> 01:23:31,980
demands scapegoats. The kulaks, the
bourgeoisie, the myopic, the Jews.

1069
01:23:31,980 --> 01:23:33,900
Always the Jews.

1070
01:23:33,900 --> 01:23:39,660
Fascism employs technology brutally
to affect mass deaths.

1071
01:23:39,660 --> 01:23:43,860
Fascism is oxymoron,
a secular theology.

1072
01:23:45,500 --> 01:23:51,740
Fascism is greedy for sacrifice.
Fascism just loves dressing up.

1073
01:23:51,740 --> 01:23:54,260
There's something
about a corpse in uniform.

1074
01:23:59,500 --> 01:24:03,740
That Fascism is a death wish.
Kill and be killed.

1075
01:24:03,740 --> 01:24:07,860
That Fascism is a belief system
whose paramount creed

1076
01:24:07,860 --> 01:24:11,740
is that the most important event
in your life is your death.

1077
01:24:14,300 --> 01:24:18,580
So it's apt that the most striking
building of the era,

1078
01:24:18,580 --> 01:24:21,180
intended as an exhibition space,

1079
01:24:21,180 --> 01:24:26,260
should appear to be a mausoleum or
an ossuary, the house of the dead.

1080
01:24:26,260 --> 01:24:29,100
De Chirico suffered precognition.

1081
01:24:55,820 --> 01:24:59,260
Post-1945, both parts of Germany
abandoned the architecture

1082
01:24:59,260 --> 01:25:01,300
associated with Nazism.

1083
01:25:04,260 --> 01:25:08,340
Post-1953, the USSR abandoned
the architecture

1084
01:25:08,340 --> 01:25:10,780
associated with Stalinism.

1085
01:25:13,180 --> 01:25:15,380
Italy's reaction to the architecture

1086
01:25:15,380 --> 01:25:19,260
made during the two decades
of Fascism was different.

1087
01:25:19,260 --> 01:25:20,500
There was no reaction.

1088
01:25:21,580 --> 01:25:26,940
Italy had turned against Mussolini
and his alliance with Nazi Germany.

1089
01:25:26,940 --> 01:25:31,100
It thus had judged itself to have
enjoyed an expiation.

1090
01:25:31,100 --> 01:25:33,300
So it had few qualms
about proceeding

1091
01:25:33,300 --> 01:25:37,780
architecturally as it had
before that alliance was struck.

1092
01:25:38,820 --> 01:25:43,100
Every school and style was equally
blessed, equally damned

1093
01:25:43,100 --> 01:25:46,460
by the dead dictators'
eclectic pluralism.

1094
01:25:46,460 --> 01:25:51,620
Architects who served the Fascist
state were not regarded as pariahs.

1095
01:25:51,620 --> 01:25:55,500
Had they been, there would have been
no architects to rebuild

1096
01:25:55,500 --> 01:25:59,940
Italy - for the entire trade,
with less than a dozen exceptions,

1097
01:25:59,940 --> 01:26:03,060
had sworn a vow of loyalty to
Mussolini.

1098
01:26:05,220 --> 01:26:08,420
As a result, there was a continuum.

1099
01:26:08,420 --> 01:26:13,100
The fallen of all wars were
commemorated in 1951 at Medea,

1100
01:26:13,100 --> 01:26:17,220
in an idiom which, whilst it may be
associable with Fascism,

1101
01:26:17,220 --> 01:26:21,540
is even more associable with
the unknowable state

1102
01:26:21,540 --> 01:26:24,060
that is at the very core
of Fascism...

1103
01:26:25,300 --> 01:26:26,340
..death.

1104
01:26:34,700 --> 01:26:36,460
Things come around.

1105
01:26:36,460 --> 01:26:38,980
Aldo Rossi, Fernand Pouillon,

1106
01:26:38,980 --> 01:26:42,460
Ricardo Bofill,
David Chipperfield.

1107
01:26:42,460 --> 01:26:46,420
They are not Fascists, but each has
had an inkling of mortality.

1108
01:26:50,940 --> 01:26:56,260
Rossi's actual ossuary at Modena
was built 35 years after

1109
01:26:56,260 --> 01:26:57,540
the defeat of Fascism.

1110
01:26:59,420 --> 01:27:02,580
But Fascism never dies.
Nor does death.

1111
01:27:07,660 --> 01:27:12,020
Both are perpetual.
Fascism and death fuse.

1112
01:27:13,620 --> 01:27:15,980
Here is the temple
of the rapture cult.

1113
01:27:15,980 --> 01:27:21,300
The myriad raiments of Thanatos,
whose truth and reconciliation,

1114
01:27:21,300 --> 01:27:25,660
ethically-sourced spa rub and
enforcement-grade nuclear butter,

1115
01:27:25,660 --> 01:27:29,260
pamper the sure, calm ride
to the other side.

1116
01:27:32,740 --> 01:27:33,860
Good night.

1117
01:27:33,860 --> 01:27:37,300
No, best night...of your life.