Il Federale’s Apolitical Commitment

Abstract

Surname: Arcovazzi. First name: Primo (First), thus named after 1 February 1923, date of the institutionalisation of the Blackshirts under the Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale (Voluntary Militia for National Security, MVSN). Arcovazzi has taken part in the Dux Fascist camps of 1931, 1932 and 1933. In 1934 he walked from Cremona to Roma (526 kms) seeking an audience with the Duce. He was not received. In 1937 he won the Lictorial Physical Education Games. In 1939 he undertook Arcangelo Bardacci’s courses of Fascist mysticism, coming first in his class; on 25 July 1943, after Mussolini’s arrest, he was admitted to San Giacomo’s hospital in Rome on account of his refusal to remove his black shirt.

Thus might read the imaginary staff file of Primo Arcovazzi, the protagonist, in some ways the hero, of Luciano Salce’s Il Federale, the 1961 comedy that more than any other embodies the contradictions of representations of Fascism in the early 1960s and of Italian responses to them: shallow yet deep; commercially successful yet also overwhelmingly dismissed. Satirical at times, but tinged with sadness in the vein of Italian-style comedy, Il Federale follows Arcovazzi, a zealous Fascist recruit who lives to become Federale (provincial Fascist party secretary).