Fascists on Mars

1939. Italy is on the edge of war and the regime is looking for a new victory. A group of Blackshirts is sent to conquer Mars in a rocket called the Repentaglia IV, under Gaetano Maria Barbagli. There is no air on the planet, no water and no information; the hierarchy goes on working regardless. The party plants a flag, then starts starving, and issues bulletins of victory until the last moment. Corrado Guzzanti and Igor Skofic direct. Guzzanti plays Barbagli. It runs a hundred minutes and opened on 27 October 2006. The form is a fake newsreel. The image is black and white, damaged and scratched; the narration and music imitate the Istituto Luce newsreels of the period exactly. The space scenes refer to the early films of Méliès. The source is a television programme. Guzzanti made these sketches in 2002 on Il caso Scafroglia; they became a medium length film shown at the Venice festival and were then turned into a feature presented at the Rome film festival. The target of the satire is ideological language itself. The dialogue is written entirely in the language of fascist propaganda and stays close to real texts; what is funny is not the situation but the sentences. Its limit is language. Most of the jokes depend on how Italian is spoken and are largely lost in subtitles. Who it is for: viewers who like Italian satire and the mock documentary form. Who it is not for: the humour repeats, one idea is carried a long way, and it is closed without a knowledge of the period's language.