0:00:50 > 0:00:52God, Allah, Yahweh.
0:00:53 > 0:00:57These nightmarish psychopaths obtain immortality without having lived.
0:00:57 > 0:01:00No matter what you call them,
0:01:00 > 0:01:03they're wrathful, slow to bless and swift to chide.
0:01:03 > 0:01:07They're mass murderers, psychotic bullies.
0:01:07 > 0:01:12They exercise the right of life and death. They destroy on a whim.
0:01:13 > 0:01:16And they provide a wretched example to living gods -
0:01:16 > 0:01:21Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Khomeini, Mussolini,
0:01:21 > 0:01:24such truly grotesque pieces of work,
0:01:24 > 0:01:28but it's a matter of some wonder that millions were persuaded
0:01:28 > 0:01:31not just to believe in them, but to worship them.
0:01:34 > 0:01:35But they did.
0:01:35 > 0:01:38And off they went to meet their all-too-obedient death.
0:01:42 > 0:01:46There is apparently nobility in pillage and genocide.
0:01:46 > 0:01:51There is apparently glory to be had in being turned to vapour,
0:01:51 > 0:01:53in dying in mud.
0:01:53 > 0:01:58There is glory in gangrene, in quadriplegia, in being gassed.
0:02:07 > 0:02:11Hundreds of thousands of men died in the Alps around Redipuglia
0:02:11 > 0:02:14in the latter half of the First World War.
0:02:16 > 0:02:21Italy's battles on its north-eastern front achieved nothing
0:02:21 > 0:02:22save that the ethnic bodge
0:02:22 > 0:02:26called the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed,
0:02:26 > 0:02:31so rendering Europe fertile for the growth of yet another bout
0:02:31 > 0:02:35of tribalism, factionalism, sectarianism, nationalism
0:02:35 > 0:02:39and the new cult of Fascism.
0:02:46 > 0:02:52The vast sacrarium at Redipuglia is not a memorial to actual men,
0:02:52 > 0:02:56to flesh and blood, somebody's lover, somebody's son.
0:02:57 > 0:03:00It's an opportunistic celebration of mass sacrifice
0:03:00 > 0:03:03and exhortations to further sacrifice.
0:03:14 > 0:03:16It is grossly exploitative
0:03:16 > 0:03:19because the men who were reduced to bonemeal and body parts
0:03:19 > 0:03:22in the mountains were not Fascist.
0:03:22 > 0:03:25They had never heard of Fascism.
0:03:25 > 0:03:29It tells the lie that Fascists - ex post facto Fascists -
0:03:29 > 0:03:33will be united in death as they are in life.
0:03:35 > 0:03:41The word "fasces" signifies a bundle of branches tied together tightly.
0:03:41 > 0:03:44It is strong in a way that loosely tied branches,
0:03:44 > 0:03:47let alone single branches, cannot be.
0:03:47 > 0:03:50The individual, then, is subservient to the whole.
0:03:50 > 0:03:53Might is achieved by numbers.
0:03:56 > 0:03:59No doubt some of the men who lie here might have become Fascists
0:03:59 > 0:04:01had they lived.
0:04:01 > 0:04:05Bu they might equally, having experienced hell on earth,
0:04:05 > 0:04:09have dismissed Benito Mussolini's marshal ranting as that of a man
0:04:09 > 0:04:14who had been invalided out of the Army after less than 18 months.
0:04:18 > 0:04:22Nonetheless, their trashed corpses were posthumously recruited
0:04:22 > 0:04:24to the Fascist cause.
0:04:26 > 0:04:29The word "presente" means just that - present.
0:04:30 > 0:04:34But it also means that the glorious dead are always with us,
0:04:34 > 0:04:35always present.
0:04:35 > 0:04:39The glorious dead fulfilling their duty to their country.
0:04:39 > 0:04:42The glorious dead then are the living dead.
0:04:44 > 0:04:48Presente was an omnipresent word in Fascist Italy.
0:05:14 > 0:05:19The designers, the artifices, the architect Giovanni Greppi
0:05:19 > 0:05:22and the sculptor Giannino Castiglioni
0:05:22 > 0:05:25are virtuosi of visual illusions.
0:05:25 > 0:05:30They imply a two-dimensional device in three dimensions,
0:05:30 > 0:05:33thus the step, the stairs, the treads, the rises,
0:05:33 > 0:05:38the terraces, get marginally narrower as they ascend.
0:05:38 > 0:05:42Consequently the vanishing point appears further away than it would
0:05:42 > 0:05:45if the steps were of the same width,
0:05:45 > 0:05:48and the Calvary is out of scale.
0:05:48 > 0:05:51Diminutive in order to make it, too,
0:05:51 > 0:05:54appear more distant than it actually is.
0:05:56 > 0:05:59The place is an exercise in disorientation.
0:05:59 > 0:06:01What plane are we on?
0:06:01 > 0:06:06Vertical and horizontal become indistinguishable.
0:06:06 > 0:06:08Are we still on Earth?
0:06:08 > 0:06:11Life and afterlife allied.
0:06:23 > 0:06:26100 or so kilometres away from Redipuglia
0:06:26 > 0:06:29stands another massive sacrarium.
0:06:36 > 0:06:41Monte Grappa is a work of a few years earlier by the same designers,
0:06:41 > 0:06:44Greppi and Castiglioni.
0:06:44 > 0:06:48The contrast between the two could hardly be more marked.
0:06:56 > 0:07:01Monte Grappa is equally magnificent in another register.
0:07:02 > 0:07:06It is indebted to several disparate eras.
0:07:06 > 0:07:09It blends its thefts with sombre brillo.
0:07:21 > 0:07:26The very core of this structure is founded in anachronism.
0:07:26 > 0:07:30The repetitive niches are blind Diocletian windows.
0:07:30 > 0:07:32Atypically for a Roman emperor,
0:07:32 > 0:07:37Diocletian was lucky enough to die in his bed.
0:07:37 > 0:07:39Of the 20th-century's European tyrants,
0:07:39 > 0:07:42only Francisco Franco emulated him.
0:07:44 > 0:07:47Its concentric form is daylight robbery from a variety
0:07:47 > 0:07:51of historical and prehistorical eras.
0:07:52 > 0:07:56It is unambiguously architectural,
0:07:56 > 0:08:00and it alludes to forms of inhumation that belong to
0:08:00 > 0:08:05a variety of epoques, places, religions and cultures.
0:08:42 > 0:08:45Both Redipuglia and Monte Grappa
0:08:45 > 0:08:48are exhortations to patriotic death.
0:08:50 > 0:08:52They sussurate the desirability of death,
0:08:52 > 0:08:55which they tell you last forever...
0:08:56 > 0:08:59..which is more than can be said for life.
0:08:59 > 0:09:00Death is sustainable.
0:09:06 > 0:09:09Despite their being by the same pair of artists,
0:09:09 > 0:09:13these two remarkable structures are remarkably disparate.
0:09:14 > 0:09:15On the one clenched hand,
0:09:15 > 0:09:19Redipuglia, optimistically prospective,
0:09:19 > 0:09:23hymning the refulgent Modernist future to come.
0:09:23 > 0:09:26On the other gloved hand, Monte Grappa,
0:09:26 > 0:09:29boastfully retrospective,
0:09:29 > 0:09:33summoning some indefinable yet glorious past.
0:09:35 > 0:09:39They are, then, exemplars of the two contrary mainstreams
0:09:39 > 0:09:43of architecture and design that flowered in Italy under Fascism.
0:09:44 > 0:09:47They did not displace or succeed each other,
0:09:47 > 0:09:51they coexisted uncomfortably in a state of mutual mistrust.
0:09:53 > 0:09:56But they were indubitably both built in Italy
0:09:56 > 0:09:59in the Fascist era in the Fascist cause.
0:10:01 > 0:10:03- Vincere! - CHEERING
0:10:09 > 0:10:11What is Fascism?
0:10:12 > 0:10:15The response that it's a pathology of the extreme right
0:10:15 > 0:10:18is idle, thoughtless.
0:10:18 > 0:10:23Equally, the response that it's a cancer of the extreme left
0:10:23 > 0:10:25is idle, thoughtless.
0:10:25 > 0:10:27HE NEIGHS
0:10:29 > 0:10:32If the extreme right is a racehorse,
0:10:32 > 0:10:35and the extreme left is a carthorse,
0:10:35 > 0:10:38what sort of horse is Fascism?
0:10:38 > 0:10:42It's the sort of horse called a combine harvester.
0:10:42 > 0:10:45Which is, of course, not a horse.
0:10:45 > 0:10:47It's not even an animal.
0:10:47 > 0:10:50It is a category error to invoke
0:10:50 > 0:10:54right and left in an explanation of this phenomenon.
0:10:54 > 0:10:59Fascism exists in a world parallel to that of democracy.
0:11:03 > 0:11:06It does not belong to the same moral system,
0:11:06 > 0:11:08the same thought system.
0:11:08 > 0:11:11It does not exist without a hold on power.
0:11:11 > 0:11:16It does not function as a form of legitimate opposition.
0:11:16 > 0:11:20It is not part of a mocking, childish adversarial system.
0:11:20 > 0:11:25It is not tolerant of dissent. It is not considerate.
0:11:25 > 0:11:29It does not spare the rod, the noose, the axe, the firing squad.
0:11:29 > 0:11:31It does not balk at genocide.
0:11:31 > 0:11:33Not, not, not.
0:11:33 > 0:11:37Its attributes are all too obviously not positive.
0:11:43 > 0:11:47But then the same could be said of other forms of tyranny.
0:11:47 > 0:11:50Absolute monarchy, theocratic dictatorship,
0:11:50 > 0:11:54the police state, the communist imperium -
0:11:54 > 0:11:57much older forms which have been around for millennia,
0:11:57 > 0:12:01for much longer than democracy, which as the 20th century
0:12:01 > 0:12:04emphatically showed us, is easily dismantled.
0:12:07 > 0:12:10Sure, democracy may be elective dictatorship,
0:12:10 > 0:12:13but it is at least elective.
0:12:13 > 0:12:16We take it for granted at our peril,
0:12:16 > 0:12:19given that all politicians yearn to be dictators.
0:12:22 > 0:12:24Is Vlaams Belang fascist?
0:12:24 > 0:12:26Is the BNP fascist?
0:12:26 > 0:12:29Is Le Front National fascist?
0:12:29 > 0:12:31Is La Lega Nord fascist?
0:12:32 > 0:12:35The zealots of anti-fascism would have no hesitation
0:12:35 > 0:12:38in describing these paltry parties as fascist.
0:12:39 > 0:12:42But anti-fascism mirrors fascism,
0:12:42 > 0:12:44equally intolerant,
0:12:44 > 0:12:49equally minoritarian, equally impotent, equally anti-Semitic.
0:12:49 > 0:12:53This is what they do to protect the Nazis. Shame on you, BBC!
0:12:53 > 0:12:54Shame on you!
0:12:56 > 0:13:01Fascism is broadly a label to be attached to whatever
0:13:01 > 0:13:04anti-Fascism disproves of.
0:13:04 > 0:13:05- Fascist...- Fascist...
0:13:05 > 0:13:09- Fascist...- Fascist scum. - Fascist...- Crypto fascist...
0:13:09 > 0:13:12- The fascist Daily Mail. - Racist, fascist.
0:13:12 > 0:13:13Fascist, racist.
0:13:13 > 0:13:16- Fascistic.- Fascists.- Fascists.
0:13:16 > 0:13:18What's so wrong with being a fascist?
0:13:20 > 0:13:22Fascism ought to alarm us,
0:13:22 > 0:13:27but the word's appropriation by the mob devalues it.
0:13:27 > 0:13:29Atrocity is diluted, normalised.
0:13:29 > 0:13:33Further, fascists, both noun and adjective,
0:13:33 > 0:13:36have been shorn of meaning by their ubiquity.
0:13:38 > 0:13:41Body fascist, kitchen fascist,
0:13:41 > 0:13:44green fascist, mamil fascist... BELL RINGS
0:13:44 > 0:13:49..fascist referee... All referees, it goes without saying, are fascist. WHISTLE BLOWS
0:13:49 > 0:13:52Fascist jobsworth, fascist troll,
0:13:52 > 0:13:54fascist MFH... HORN BLARES
0:13:54 > 0:13:57..fascist banker, fascist pig.
0:13:57 > 0:13:59PIG OINKS
0:13:59 > 0:14:02And, of course, Fascist dictator.
0:14:03 > 0:14:06An occupation fraught with risks,
0:14:06 > 0:14:08not least from other Fascist dictators.
0:14:09 > 0:14:11Live dangerously.
0:14:14 > 0:14:18Engelbert Dollfuss, 39, shot,
0:14:18 > 0:14:22Vienna, 25th July 1934.
0:14:23 > 0:14:27Corneliu Codreanu, 39, garrotted,
0:14:27 > 0:14:31Tancabesti, 29th November 1938.
0:14:32 > 0:14:36Vidkun Quisling, 58, shot,
0:14:36 > 0:14:40Oslo, 24th October 1945.
0:14:41 > 0:14:44Jozef Tiso, 59, hanged,
0:14:44 > 0:14:48Bratislava, 18th April 1947.
0:14:49 > 0:14:53Adolf Hitler, 56, suicide,
0:14:53 > 0:14:56Berlin, 30th April 1945.
0:14:57 > 0:15:00Ferenc Szalasi, 49, hanged,
0:15:00 > 0:15:04Budapest, 12th March 1946.
0:15:05 > 0:15:08Ante Pavelic, 60, shot,
0:15:08 > 0:15:11Madrid, 28th December 1959.
0:15:13 > 0:15:17Benito Mussolini, 62, shot,
0:15:17 > 0:15:21Giulino di Mezzegra, 28th April 1945.
0:15:26 > 0:15:27Il Duce.
0:15:27 > 0:15:32The organ grinder himself, the combine harvester's mouth -
0:15:32 > 0:15:36the very embodiment of Fascism, the founder.
0:15:38 > 0:15:42The man who, for those of you with archaic spelling,
0:15:42 > 0:15:47put the "schism" into Fascism, who, all-knowing claimed to understand
0:15:47 > 0:15:51the nuances of Fascism's vibrant diversity.
0:15:52 > 0:15:56Was there any bond, save that of expediency,
0:15:56 > 0:16:00between Italian Fascism and German National Socialism?
0:16:00 > 0:16:04German National Socialism may not even have been Fascist at all.
0:16:08 > 0:16:11Mussolini was initially contemptuous of its mythologies,
0:16:11 > 0:16:16its homoeopathic pest control, its obsessive racism,
0:16:16 > 0:16:21its blinding greenness, its folkish preoccupations,
0:16:21 > 0:16:25its Aryan Atlantis, its clairvoyant pseudoscientists.
0:16:27 > 0:16:32And yet, when after his arrest in 1943 the Nazi high command
0:16:32 > 0:16:34was trying to find where he was imprisoned
0:16:34 > 0:16:36so that he might be rescued,
0:16:36 > 0:16:40it turned to a group of clairvoyant pseudoscientists.
0:16:43 > 0:16:45Among them, Wilhelm Gutberlet.
0:16:47 > 0:16:52Astonishingly, Gutberlet read in the entrails that Il Duce was being held
0:16:52 > 0:16:56on the island of Ponza, which was indeed where
0:16:56 > 0:16:59he had been held till just a few days previously.
0:17:01 > 0:17:05When we look back to the enormities they occasioned, do the labels
0:17:05 > 0:17:09that we attach to these immane regimes really matter?
0:17:09 > 0:17:10Yes, they do,
0:17:10 > 0:17:14for taxonomy is founded in detail,
0:17:14 > 0:17:17and the devil is in the detail -
0:17:17 > 0:17:19all too literally.
0:17:19 > 0:17:22Il Duce is surely the one man who can tell us
0:17:22 > 0:17:25what Fascism really signifies,
0:17:25 > 0:17:28and what distinguishes it from national socialism,
0:17:28 > 0:17:35the Arrow Cross, the Cross of Fire, the Blackshirts, the Iron Guard.
0:17:35 > 0:17:40But it's too late, too late. 70 years too late to ask him.
0:17:46 > 0:17:49GUNFIRE
0:18:08 > 0:18:12It might all have turned out so differently for the lovers Benito
0:18:12 > 0:18:15and Clara had they made it from Lake Garda to Spain,
0:18:15 > 0:18:19which was the destination they had set their heart on.
0:18:24 > 0:18:28They'd have whiled away their dotage in some grace and favour home
0:18:28 > 0:18:31grudgingly granted them by Francisco Franco,
0:18:31 > 0:18:37a sometime chum of sorts - a fair-weather ally, if truth be told.
0:18:37 > 0:18:41Benito would have fulminated at the ingratitude of the Italian people,
0:18:41 > 0:18:44concocted plots, dreamt of a comeback.
0:18:52 > 0:18:55Escape to Spain was their last hope.
0:18:55 > 0:18:58But they didn't even get as far as Switzerland.
0:18:58 > 0:19:02They ended up near Lake Como in a farmyard that became an abattoir.
0:19:02 > 0:19:03GUNSHOTS
0:19:03 > 0:19:05PIG SQUEALS
0:19:05 > 0:19:07So maybe some other time, Benito, old son.
0:19:22 > 0:19:25Witnesses remarked on the petrol in puddles,
0:19:25 > 0:19:29nacreous puddles, petrol that was spent,
0:19:29 > 0:19:33like the lives of the beings suspended above the puddles.
0:19:55 > 0:19:57Throughout the Spanish Civil War,
0:19:57 > 0:20:00Franco's ultimately victorious nationalists
0:20:00 > 0:20:05relied on the Nazi Condor Legion, non-Nazi airpower,
0:20:05 > 0:20:07most notoriously at Guernica.
0:20:08 > 0:20:12The dependence on Italian aid was even greater.
0:20:12 > 0:20:16Air power again, light arms and heavy artillery,
0:20:16 > 0:20:21ships, submarines and troops - armies of them.
0:20:21 > 0:20:25Mussolini dispatched 70,000 men to Spain -
0:20:25 > 0:20:2810,000 of them died there.
0:20:41 > 0:20:46El Caudillo did not repay his debt to the axis.
0:20:46 > 0:20:50There was to be no "do ut des".
0:20:50 > 0:20:55His was the longest reign of all the West's 20th century tyrants.
0:20:55 > 0:20:58He kept his country out of the war on "the Continent",
0:20:58 > 0:21:02as Spain calls Europe beyond the Pyrenees.
0:21:02 > 0:21:06He had the guile to dupe both Mussolini and Hitler.
0:21:06 > 0:21:11He made entry to the war conditional upon demands
0:21:11 > 0:21:13which he knew they could not meet.
0:21:13 > 0:21:17He made promises which he had no intention of keeping.
0:21:17 > 0:21:22That is how you stay in power for almost 40 years.
0:21:22 > 0:21:25The lad was a great role model for young aspirant tyrants.
0:21:29 > 0:21:32Franco was that rare creature -
0:21:32 > 0:21:35a Fascist dictator who did not want to go to war.
0:21:38 > 0:21:43For Mussolini, such a position was unthinkable, inconceivable,
0:21:43 > 0:21:46maybe even incomprehensible.
0:21:46 > 0:21:50Empathy was not one of his characteristics.
0:21:52 > 0:21:56Mussolinian Fascism was a precursor of Islamofascism.
0:21:58 > 0:22:02Italy went to war in the name of a dictator who believed himself
0:22:02 > 0:22:05to be a God, but wasn't...
0:22:06 > 0:22:10..whilst Islamofascism goes to war in the name of God who
0:22:10 > 0:22:14cannot believe in himself because he is fictional.
0:22:14 > 0:22:17There is, in neither instance, gain -
0:22:17 > 0:22:20they share a taste for gratuitous statused violence as a norm.
0:22:22 > 0:22:26National honour, national expansion.
0:22:29 > 0:22:32Outbreaks of peace were, according to Mussolini,
0:22:32 > 0:22:36mere undesirable anomalies that occur between wars -
0:22:36 > 0:22:43lacunae of wasted time to be filled belligerently by wars.
0:22:43 > 0:22:48War should be perpetual, war should be never-ending.
0:22:51 > 0:22:57No justification is needed. War requires no cause.
0:22:57 > 0:23:03If a cause can be found to attach to it, well, so much the better.
0:23:04 > 0:23:06At various times,
0:23:06 > 0:23:11he considered attacking newly Nazi Germany in order to protect
0:23:11 > 0:23:16Dollfuss' regime in Austria and to demonstrate Italy's superiority.
0:23:23 > 0:23:24France was a possible target,
0:23:24 > 0:23:28because it would not cede Corsica and Nice to him.
0:23:28 > 0:23:32And an attack would demonstrate Italy's superiority.
0:23:40 > 0:23:44War with Britain was briefly considered because it opposed
0:23:44 > 0:23:49his colonial ambitions and his desire to rule the Mediterranean -
0:23:49 > 0:23:51"our sea".
0:23:51 > 0:23:52And because an attack on Britain
0:23:52 > 0:23:54would demonstrate Italy's superiority.
0:23:54 > 0:23:57# Run, rabbit, run, rabbit
0:23:57 > 0:24:00# Run, run, run... #
0:24:08 > 0:24:12This was a demagogue who could pick a fight with his own shadow.
0:24:12 > 0:24:15He fulfilled those colonial ambitions
0:24:15 > 0:24:18in Libya, Greece and Ethiopia,
0:24:18 > 0:24:21but at a huge economic and strategic cost.
0:24:22 > 0:24:28He prosecuted war, it might be said he frivolously prosecuted war,
0:24:28 > 0:24:32in order to show off that capacity - the ability to prosecute war.
0:24:33 > 0:24:38For Mussolini, war was nothing more or less than
0:24:38 > 0:24:41the expression of ostentatious bellicosity
0:24:41 > 0:24:45and martial can-do - it was an end in itself.
0:24:45 > 0:24:48That was the nearest thing he had to an ideology.
0:25:02 > 0:25:05In Mussolini's worldview, power and stability
0:25:05 > 0:25:08could be maintained only by brute force.
0:25:10 > 0:25:14This coarse, dog-eat-dog perception was founded early on
0:25:14 > 0:25:17in the playground, where from the age of six years old -
0:25:17 > 0:25:22six! - he routinely attacked his fellow pupils, stabbing them
0:25:22 > 0:25:26with compasses and dividers, stealing from them
0:25:26 > 0:25:29and threatening them should they grass him up.
0:26:02 > 0:26:05- NEWSREEL:- Fascism has been Mussolini's dream for seven years.
0:26:05 > 0:26:07Now the march on Rome.
0:26:07 > 0:26:10His movement numbers a million members,
0:26:10 > 0:26:14including uniformed Blackshirts and Mussolini successfully forces
0:26:14 > 0:26:17his leadership on the Italian King and people.
0:26:17 > 0:26:20He boasted of having seized power by force at the end
0:26:20 > 0:26:24of the much-vaunted march on Rome in 1922.
0:26:25 > 0:26:29In fact, power was yielded to him without a struggle
0:26:29 > 0:26:32and he had joined the march only intermittently for what were
0:26:32 > 0:26:35not yet called photo opportunities -
0:26:35 > 0:26:39exercises in self aggrandisement and myth-making.
0:26:39 > 0:26:42How is a man to become a God
0:26:42 > 0:26:44if he does not proclaim himself to be a God?
0:26:47 > 0:26:52Other required qualities - an utter absence of irony is of course
0:26:52 > 0:26:54essential to the apprentice God.
0:26:55 > 0:26:59So too is the conviction, held without any corroboration
0:26:59 > 0:27:03save that of crawling yes-men, that one is always right.
0:27:08 > 0:27:11Polyglot vanity is also obligatory.
0:27:11 > 0:27:15Overconfident visibility to speak French and German -
0:27:15 > 0:27:19Mussolini refused to have interpreters in attendance
0:27:19 > 0:27:23at his meetings with Hitler, Laval, Goring and so on.
0:27:23 > 0:27:27Consequently, he failed to understand much of the small print.
0:27:31 > 0:27:34Then there is the laughably pompous practice of referring to
0:27:34 > 0:27:36oneself in the third person.
0:27:37 > 0:27:40That anyway is what Jonathan Mears has concluded.
0:27:44 > 0:27:48Above all, the tyro God must cultivate the willingness to treat
0:27:48 > 0:27:52humans, who are of course non-Gods, with contempt...
0:27:53 > 0:27:55..as assets, disposable as disposable tissues,
0:27:55 > 0:28:00to be used as cannon fodder and guinea pigs, to sate vanity,
0:28:00 > 0:28:05as expendable entities of negative value, who deserve only extinction.
0:28:08 > 0:28:10Or treat them as reproductive machines.
0:28:11 > 0:28:15It was Il Duce's conviction that a high birth rate was an essential
0:28:15 > 0:28:20condition of a vigorous, healthy, morally sound society.
0:28:21 > 0:28:27Accordingly, women were exhorted to bear as many as 20 children.
0:28:27 > 0:28:31The fastest breeders, biped broodmares,
0:28:31 > 0:28:34were rewarded with cash prizes.
0:28:34 > 0:28:39Most of all, a high birth rate provides minds to be indoctrinated.
0:28:39 > 0:28:43The child has no choice, it can be brainwashed.
0:28:43 > 0:28:48The child can look forward to the prospect of dying for Fascist Italy,
0:28:48 > 0:28:52a destiny exclusive to children made in Fascist Italy.
0:28:54 > 0:28:58Inanimate objects might be made in Fascist Italy,
0:28:58 > 0:29:00but they can't be brainwashed.
0:29:01 > 0:29:06Unless we're fool enough to believe in amulets, charms,
0:29:06 > 0:29:10religious relics, Veronica's handkerchief and so on,
0:29:10 > 0:29:14inanimate objects do not contain the spirit of the doctrines or
0:29:14 > 0:29:17gods or saints they are associated with.
0:29:17 > 0:29:21There is no such thing as spirit, save in the mind of the deluded.
0:29:23 > 0:29:26And the attribution to inanimate objects
0:29:26 > 0:29:30of humours or moral qualities is half-witted,
0:29:30 > 0:29:34yet it is apparently an irresistible human urge.
0:29:34 > 0:29:37It's an urge I don't share,
0:29:37 > 0:29:41but that's no doubt due to my finely-honed insensitivity.
0:29:44 > 0:29:48If all the pieces of wood from the cross on which the probably
0:29:48 > 0:29:51fictional character called Jesus is said to have died
0:29:51 > 0:29:54were collected together,
0:29:54 > 0:29:57they would form a structure higher than any in the world today.
0:29:59 > 0:30:01Made in Fascist Italy.
0:30:02 > 0:30:06Epochal considerations apart, what does that mean?
0:30:06 > 0:30:09What are the implications of the label?
0:30:09 > 0:30:12Many sorts of intimate objects were manufactured
0:30:12 > 0:30:14during the Fascist era -
0:30:14 > 0:30:18frying pans, chairs, coffee kit,
0:30:18 > 0:30:21inventive fishing equipment and white telephones.
0:30:23 > 0:30:28Such potent symbols of modernity and the fast life, that they
0:30:28 > 0:30:31gave their name to frothy comedies of mores.
0:30:42 > 0:30:46Dishes such as sartu and sformato and frico
0:30:46 > 0:30:48were made in Fascist Italy.
0:30:48 > 0:30:50Can rice be Fascist?
0:30:50 > 0:30:52Can bechamel?
0:30:52 > 0:30:55Mussolini himself gives us little indication that these dishes
0:30:55 > 0:31:00did not form part of his diet. He had worrying tastes.
0:31:00 > 0:31:04This was a man who necked up to four litres of milk per day.
0:31:05 > 0:31:10Was there ever a greater sign of anti-gastronomic depravity?
0:31:10 > 0:31:12We surely all know that milk is poison
0:31:12 > 0:31:14unless it's turned into cheese.
0:31:16 > 0:31:20Fiats were manufactured throughout the Fascist era,
0:31:20 > 0:31:22so were Olivettis.
0:31:22 > 0:31:25Can a car represent Fascism?
0:31:25 > 0:31:28Can a car BE Fascist?
0:31:28 > 0:31:32Fiats were manufactured according to processes devised
0:31:32 > 0:31:35in the United States by Henry Ford,
0:31:35 > 0:31:38an anti-Semite and the author of The International Jew.
0:31:38 > 0:31:43It's worth noting that Mussolini's Fascism was not anti-Semitic
0:31:43 > 0:31:47until he came under the influence of Hitler in the late 1930s.
0:31:47 > 0:31:52It was a form of hatred that had, astonishingly, evaded him.
0:31:52 > 0:31:56Here are two cars from the beginning of that decade.
0:31:56 > 0:31:58It's obvious which the Fascist car is.
0:32:01 > 0:32:04Can a typewriter be Fascist?
0:32:04 > 0:32:08Can it be - and this is different - emblematic of Fascism?
0:32:08 > 0:32:13A typewriter can of course produce letters which add up to the words
0:32:13 > 0:32:16that form the slogans which were Fascist diktats.
0:32:22 > 0:32:24RADIO CHANNELS CHANGE
0:32:30 > 0:32:34'With usura hath no man a house of good stone
0:32:34 > 0:32:37'each block cut smooth and well fitting
0:32:37 > 0:32:41'that design might cover their face.
0:32:41 > 0:32:46'With usura hath no man a painted paradise on his church wall...'
0:32:46 > 0:32:49A radio can receive a station broadcasting
0:32:49 > 0:32:54Ezra Pound's rants against the Gombeen men of the usurocracy -
0:32:54 > 0:32:56but does that make it a Fascist radio?
0:32:56 > 0:32:59Or simply a boringly tuned one?
0:33:00 > 0:33:04Is it just that these disparate objects were manufactured
0:33:04 > 0:33:09during Mussolini's dictatorship and are associable with Fascism
0:33:09 > 0:33:12simply by calendrical chance?
0:33:12 > 0:33:15I'm asking the question - I don't know the answer.
0:33:16 > 0:33:19The two predominant schools or idioms of architecture
0:33:19 > 0:33:23that infected Italy during Mussolini's long tenure,
0:33:23 > 0:33:26exemplified by Redipuglia and Montegrappa,
0:33:26 > 0:33:30the cautiously futuristic and the revivalist,
0:33:30 > 0:33:33might both claim to be truly Fascist.
0:33:33 > 0:33:38But that is a handle that can be unthinkingly attached to any object.
0:33:40 > 0:33:45Buildings occupy a singular niche in this conundrum of ascription,
0:33:45 > 0:33:48classification and significance.
0:33:51 > 0:33:54Unlike cars, typewriters, cups and so on,
0:33:54 > 0:33:57they are potentially multipurpose.
0:33:57 > 0:34:01They're capable of possessing a flexibility which their
0:34:01 > 0:34:03architect can hardly have foreseen.
0:34:03 > 0:34:07They can be made to serve an endeavour unknown
0:34:07 > 0:34:08when they were constructed.
0:34:09 > 0:34:13A building can have serial lives, so to speak.
0:34:13 > 0:34:18A fire station can be converted into yet another exciting boutique hotel.
0:34:18 > 0:34:22A hospital can be made over into apartments,
0:34:22 > 0:34:24luxury apartments, of course.
0:34:24 > 0:34:27A site of ritual can be deconsecrated
0:34:27 > 0:34:29as a site of recreation.
0:34:31 > 0:34:34When the Reconquista brought civilisation back to Spain,
0:34:34 > 0:34:37the Cordoba mosque became a cathedral.
0:34:38 > 0:34:41The original purpose is obliterated.
0:34:42 > 0:34:44In time, it'll be forgotten.
0:34:45 > 0:34:49In time, the buildings made in Fascist Italy will be
0:34:49 > 0:34:51purged of their Fascist links.
0:35:13 > 0:35:17The awkward truth, habitually ignored or denied by those
0:35:17 > 0:35:21who associate progressive architecture with democratic
0:35:21 > 0:35:26governance, is that much that was built in totalitarian Italy
0:35:26 > 0:35:31between 1922 and 1943 was at the very forefront of modernism.
0:35:33 > 0:35:37Modernism is more closely linked with totalitarianism
0:35:37 > 0:35:39than it is with democracy.
0:35:39 > 0:35:44Modernism in Italy was "Fascist", in quotes.
0:35:44 > 0:35:48Modernism in France was "republican", in quotes.
0:35:48 > 0:35:52Move a building across the border from Menton to Ventimiglia
0:35:52 > 0:35:55and it ceases to be a republican building
0:35:55 > 0:35:57and becomes a Fascist building...
0:35:57 > 0:35:58obviously(!)
0:36:06 > 0:36:10There was little in Italy that could not have been found in France,
0:36:10 > 0:36:15or in Belgium, Sweden, Finland, Holland, or in Russia,
0:36:15 > 0:36:19during the constructivist period which ended in 1932.
0:36:31 > 0:36:36Mussolini enthusiastically censored film-makers, writers,
0:36:36 > 0:36:39academics, journalists.
0:36:39 > 0:36:43The only journalists he approved of were in what might be called
0:36:43 > 0:36:46the Alastair Campbell tradition of toadying and bullying
0:36:46 > 0:36:48and spouting propaganda.
0:36:48 > 0:36:53However, unlike Stalin and Hitler, he did not, up to the late '30s,
0:36:53 > 0:36:55exercise aesthetic control over building.
0:36:57 > 0:37:02To adapt a Marxist term, there was no attempted architectural hegemony,
0:37:02 > 0:37:06until he cravenly bowed to pressure from Hitler,
0:37:06 > 0:37:09who declared that the Roman state had been resurrected.
0:37:11 > 0:37:15Architecturally, there was little accord between Italian Fascism
0:37:15 > 0:37:18and German national socialism.
0:37:18 > 0:37:22Nor, for that matter, between those two and Soviet communism.
0:37:24 > 0:37:27The position held by, among others,
0:37:27 > 0:37:32the exiled Italian writer Bruno Rizzi, that whatever ideologies
0:37:32 > 0:37:36they claimed to profess, they were near identical in their bureaucratic
0:37:36 > 0:37:40collectivism, is given the lie by their very different buildings -
0:37:40 > 0:37:43the buildings are the regime.
0:37:46 > 0:37:50Till that late Hitlerian intervention,
0:37:50 > 0:37:53Mussolini had been indifferent to architectural style.
0:37:53 > 0:37:57Maybe he considered it too trivial a matter to concern himself with.
0:37:57 > 0:38:02It's more probable that he was crippled by procrastination.
0:38:02 > 0:38:06He could discern virtues in both modernism and revivalism.
0:38:07 > 0:38:09What is indisputable is
0:38:09 > 0:38:12that throughout his first decade in power,
0:38:12 > 0:38:15he neglected to exploit architecture's potential
0:38:15 > 0:38:17to affect his subjects,
0:38:17 > 0:38:22through expressive gestures, through particular forms.
0:38:22 > 0:38:25He failed to harness its capacity to suppress and control them,
0:38:25 > 0:38:29to exhilarate them, to bend them to his will.
0:38:39 > 0:38:43Mussolini's architectural priorities had been different.
0:38:43 > 0:38:46It was to direct what types of building were made,
0:38:46 > 0:38:48irrespective of style.
0:38:53 > 0:38:58Prospective types, to signal a novel society without precedent,
0:38:58 > 0:39:04that would create the future - forge the future, in tyrant-speak.
0:39:05 > 0:39:11Retrospective types, for a traditional society with roots
0:39:11 > 0:39:15that stretch deep down into Italian soil.
0:39:15 > 0:39:18A dictator can have his cake and eat it.
0:39:18 > 0:39:21Let's build. Let's build lots.
0:39:21 > 0:39:23Volume, quantity, bulk.
0:39:23 > 0:39:27Let's build - think of the jobs created.
0:39:27 > 0:39:31Think of the infrastructure that you can eat your lunch off.
0:39:31 > 0:39:35Think of the impression on foreign visitors.
0:39:35 > 0:39:36Wow.
0:39:36 > 0:39:39Think of the showcase of indigenous talent.
0:39:39 > 0:39:43Think of the boost to the collective amour propre,
0:39:43 > 0:39:46think most of all of the relieving massage
0:39:46 > 0:39:49that heightens the leader's self-esteem.
0:39:51 > 0:39:53No, no, not him!
0:39:53 > 0:39:55Think New Labour.
0:39:55 > 0:40:01Think of the great harbinger of peace, our former Duce Tonio Blair.
0:40:01 > 0:40:05And the blistering intensity of the reflected glory which has
0:40:05 > 0:40:06turned him orange.
0:40:09 > 0:40:13So long as it was productive, Mussolini was happy to preside over
0:40:13 > 0:40:16an architectural and constructional establishment
0:40:16 > 0:40:18that was stylistically riven.
0:40:19 > 0:40:22He no more knew what the architecture of Fascism should be
0:40:22 > 0:40:24than he knew what Fascism was.
0:40:24 > 0:40:28Every time he was asked to define it, he gave a different reply.
0:40:28 > 0:40:33His inconsistency was a pathology. Or maybe it was a strategy.
0:40:34 > 0:40:37Fascism is a super relativist movement.
0:40:50 > 0:40:53In the years immediately before the First World War,
0:40:53 > 0:40:57when the poisonous stew of nationalist exclusivity
0:40:57 > 0:41:01and authoritarian dogmas, which would eventually fuse as Fascism,
0:41:01 > 0:41:05were becoming current among the revolutionary unwashed,
0:41:05 > 0:41:07Italy's high bourgeoisie,
0:41:07 > 0:41:10the unwashed's avowed enemy and prime target,
0:41:10 > 0:41:16was indulging its taste for flashy opulence by commissioning villas
0:41:16 > 0:41:19in a variant of the idiom known as Stile Liberty.
0:41:20 > 0:41:25Wealthy northern Italians embraced the fashion that had captured
0:41:25 > 0:41:27the rest of Europe,
0:41:27 > 0:41:31and they had as their designer of choice the marvellous artificer
0:41:31 > 0:41:37Gino Coppede - Florentine by birth, Genoese by adoption,
0:41:37 > 0:41:42riotously eclectic by temperament and, for once it can be safely said,
0:41:42 > 0:41:47quite unlike any other architect of his or any other time.
0:41:47 > 0:41:51He was the undisputed master of "more is more".
0:41:51 > 0:41:55# Ma quella faccia un po' cosi quell'espressione un po' cosi
0:41:55 > 0:41:58# Che abbiamo noi prima di andare a Genova
0:41:58 > 0:42:02# E ogni volta ci chediamo si quel posto dove andiamo
0:42:02 > 0:42:06# Non c'inghiotte e non torniamo piu. #
0:42:06 > 0:42:11Genoa was at that point the most thriving of Italian cities.
0:42:11 > 0:42:15It was here and along the Ligurian littoral that he made his name
0:42:15 > 0:42:19with an astounding series of picturesque villas,
0:42:19 > 0:42:23whose appropriateness to their surrounds is total.
0:42:23 > 0:42:25# Genova per noi
0:42:25 > 0:42:28# Che stiamo in fondo alla campagna... #
0:42:28 > 0:42:31Genoa is an exceptionally hilly city,
0:42:31 > 0:42:36of buildings recklessly piled on top of each other.
0:42:36 > 0:42:40The Castello Mackenzie, the first of several such buildings
0:42:40 > 0:42:42that Coppede was to design in the city,
0:42:42 > 0:42:45exploits the precipitous topography.
0:42:46 > 0:42:51The immensely tall perforated tower looks frighteningly precarious.
0:42:51 > 0:42:53It may teeter and fall.
0:42:54 > 0:42:58It pretends to include fragments of other buildings.
0:42:58 > 0:43:02It gives the impression of having been built in different stages,
0:43:02 > 0:43:06in different eras, in different styles.
0:43:06 > 0:43:10Like all great artists, Coppede stole and transformed,
0:43:10 > 0:43:13and he seldom bothered to cover his tracks.
0:43:18 > 0:43:22He looted the past with rampant abandon.
0:43:22 > 0:43:26He certainly drew on the northern Italian fortified tradition.
0:43:29 > 0:43:33The Palazzo Vecchio in Florence is just one starting point.
0:43:33 > 0:43:38He uses it like an armature on which to hang further thefts,
0:43:38 > 0:43:44from such wildly disparate sources as Byzantium, Liberty, sure enough,
0:43:44 > 0:43:47Venetian Gothic, fairgrounds,
0:43:47 > 0:43:51Mughal and Moorish buildings that had never existed,
0:43:51 > 0:43:56an invented Orient, a skewed Renaissance.
0:43:56 > 0:44:01This is architecture as entertainment - art without angst.
0:44:01 > 0:44:05With happiness and geniality. Such a thing does exist.
0:44:08 > 0:44:11It must be a matter of wonder to those not familiar with
0:44:11 > 0:44:15the caprices of architectural history that this great
0:44:15 > 0:44:18and singular artist is not widely celebrated.
0:44:19 > 0:44:21But then architectural history
0:44:21 > 0:44:23is no different from any other history.
0:44:23 > 0:44:26It is written by the victors,
0:44:26 > 0:44:30and the eventual victors in the 20th century were the modernists.
0:44:30 > 0:44:34The history they wrote was retrospective propaganda.
0:44:34 > 0:44:38MUSIC: Geno by Dexys Midnight Runners
0:44:40 > 0:44:43You never know when it'll happen, and it happens rarely,
0:44:43 > 0:44:45once or twice in a lifetime.
0:44:45 > 0:44:48A coup de foudre - love at first sight.
0:44:48 > 0:44:51Fright at first sight, too.
0:44:51 > 0:44:56I was in a street market in Genoa in 1982.
0:44:56 > 0:45:00Every store was blasting out that summer's hit, Geno by Dexys,
0:45:00 > 0:45:02their tribute to Signor Coppede.
0:45:02 > 0:45:07# That man took the stage, his towel was swinging high... #
0:45:07 > 0:45:11My eye was drawn to some plates, cheap, plastic.
0:45:11 > 0:45:15Representations of animals. So far, so banal.
0:45:15 > 0:45:19But with in-built crackalure - they had been aged.
0:45:20 > 0:45:23The corniness was epic and hilarious.
0:45:26 > 0:45:28I brought half a dozen,
0:45:28 > 0:45:32then turned round to a sight that first astonished me,
0:45:32 > 0:45:36then sent some freezing pulse to the base of my spine.
0:45:37 > 0:45:42The building I was facing was fantastical. A hothouse.
0:45:43 > 0:45:48Victor Hugo wrote of the Renaissance's magnificent decadence.
0:45:48 > 0:45:51This went further.
0:45:51 > 0:45:54It was as voluptuous as a flesh-eating orchid,
0:45:54 > 0:45:56and frightening, sinister.
0:46:05 > 0:46:09Classical symmetry, high relief rustication,
0:46:09 > 0:46:12stones seething like a Gorgon's hair,
0:46:12 > 0:46:18facades entrusted with distended motifs, with frozen menageries
0:46:18 > 0:46:22of malevolent animals which belong to no known bestiary.
0:46:23 > 0:46:25There is corruption in the air.
0:46:28 > 0:46:32The aggression of these buildings is quite at odds with the picturesque
0:46:32 > 0:46:35felicities of the Castello and its offspring,
0:46:35 > 0:46:39save that, as ever, more is more.
0:46:44 > 0:46:47In his last work, unfinished at the time of his death
0:46:47 > 0:46:50five years after Mussolini came to power,
0:46:50 > 0:46:56Coppede combined these two, apparently irreconcilable, styles.
0:46:56 > 0:47:00They don't fuse, they collide.
0:47:00 > 0:47:02The Quartiere Coppede, as it came to be known,
0:47:02 > 0:47:05is the wholly astonishing aftermath
0:47:05 > 0:47:07of an apparently beneficent accident.
0:47:09 > 0:47:12What on earth is that?
0:47:12 > 0:47:14How in heaven's name did that get up there?
0:47:14 > 0:47:17What's that doing? What's it for?
0:47:17 > 0:47:19Why? And so on.
0:47:27 > 0:47:32This near-psychotropic confection to the north of central Rome
0:47:32 > 0:47:36was his only work in a city which was rapidly expanding.
0:47:37 > 0:47:41The country was being rebalanced, demographically, topographically.
0:47:47 > 0:47:49Mussolini, the master builder,
0:47:49 > 0:47:54was creating not merely a national capital, but an imperial one.
0:47:55 > 0:48:00His megalomania was limitless but then, well, that's pleonastic -
0:48:00 > 0:48:02megalomania always is limitless.
0:48:04 > 0:48:08The city was no longer a backwater of clerical superstition.
0:48:08 > 0:48:11It was no longer a museum of itself.
0:48:11 > 0:48:15It was thriving, it was an economic magnet.
0:48:15 > 0:48:19It was an opportunity opportunity, it was dynamically dynamic.
0:48:19 > 0:48:22That, anyway, was Mussolini's take on it.
0:48:22 > 0:48:26And he had the power to make that delusion a reality,
0:48:26 > 0:48:28through building.
0:48:28 > 0:48:31Come on, let's send out for some infrastructure!
0:48:36 > 0:48:38That's what autocrats do.
0:48:38 > 0:48:41So for that matter do the presidents, chancellors
0:48:41 > 0:48:46and prime ministers of elective dictatorships.
0:48:46 > 0:48:48How they'd love to be real dictators.
0:48:48 > 0:48:50Look busy!
0:48:51 > 0:48:55Coppede is as close as you can get to inimitable,
0:48:55 > 0:48:57but that never deterred anyone.
0:49:09 > 0:49:11Garbatella was the development
0:49:11 > 0:49:14about five kilometres south of the Quartiere Coppede.
0:49:15 > 0:49:18It was described as a garden city,
0:49:18 > 0:49:20but then there were few urbanistic projects
0:49:20 > 0:49:23of the 20th century which weren't so described.
0:49:23 > 0:49:27Garbatella's architects did not attempt to match Coppede,
0:49:27 > 0:49:31but they took their cue from him, they doffed their caps,
0:49:31 > 0:49:34and the area owes everything to him,
0:49:34 > 0:49:36or it owes nothing,
0:49:36 > 0:49:39for it's watered wine - dilute, pared down.
0:49:44 > 0:49:48Though it was mostly associated with subsidised social housing projects,
0:49:48 > 0:49:53the frugality of ornament was not economically determined.
0:49:53 > 0:49:57It was the stylistic choice of architects trying to create
0:49:57 > 0:50:01a form of 20th century architecture which dissociated itself
0:50:01 > 0:50:04from both 19th-century revivalism
0:50:04 > 0:50:07and rectilinear modernism's radical abstraction.
0:50:08 > 0:50:12Unified Italy had only a short past.
0:50:12 > 0:50:16This was an attempt to define a national architecture,
0:50:16 > 0:50:19a romantic peasant-unifying glue.
0:50:21 > 0:50:24It had much in common with what was going on in Scotland
0:50:24 > 0:50:28and northern Germany, Finland, Belgium, Holland -
0:50:28 > 0:50:31countries where an effort was made to challenge
0:50:31 > 0:50:35the blancoed uniformity of the international style,
0:50:35 > 0:50:39whose proponents thought of it as the one true way.
0:50:39 > 0:50:44A moral necessity, which of course is how it has been represented.
0:50:46 > 0:50:50The Whig interpretation of architectural history.
0:50:50 > 0:50:54The silly architectural historian Siegfried Giedion,
0:50:54 > 0:50:59said of the 1920s, "One had to start from scratch."
0:50:59 > 0:51:01Had to? Really?
0:51:04 > 0:51:07The architect of this building, Paolo Mezzanotte,
0:51:07 > 0:51:10evidently thought otherwise.
0:51:20 > 0:51:22Mussolini talked of a second Renaissance.
0:51:22 > 0:51:25He talked of a new Augustan age.
0:51:30 > 0:51:33Paolo Mezzanotte's Milan stock exchange
0:51:33 > 0:51:37is as bloated a lump of baroque as San Giovanni in Laterano,
0:51:37 > 0:51:41a Roman basilica which was probably its inspiration.
0:51:45 > 0:51:49The Paris exhibition of modern, decorative and industrial art
0:51:49 > 0:51:54in 1925 gives us the term Art Deco -
0:51:54 > 0:51:56a sort of mass-market modernism.
0:51:58 > 0:52:02The architect of the Italian pavilion was chosen after
0:52:02 > 0:52:06the usual petulant squabbling and tribal spats.
0:52:06 > 0:52:09The commission was won by Armando Brasini,
0:52:09 > 0:52:12who had form as a pathological fulminator
0:52:12 > 0:52:15against all strains of modernism.
0:52:15 > 0:52:18He was among the most striking of all baroque,
0:52:18 > 0:52:20rather than barochetto architects.
0:52:26 > 0:52:31His evocation of Imperial Rome was not a copy of a particular building,
0:52:31 > 0:52:36but something which might have come from the imagination
0:52:36 > 0:52:40of an imagined designer of the baroque, evoking Imperial Rome.
0:52:42 > 0:52:46The more he built, the more ambitious Brasini became.
0:52:59 > 0:53:01Mussolini was no fan of the baroque.
0:53:01 > 0:53:04He believed that it belonged to the atomised
0:53:04 > 0:53:08and decadent Italy of pre-unification -
0:53:08 > 0:53:11the Italy of the two Sicilies, the kingdom of Sardinia,
0:53:11 > 0:53:13the Papal States, etc.
0:53:15 > 0:53:19He was tolerant of it as he was of any form of architecture -
0:53:19 > 0:53:22the tyrant who neglected to tyrannise.
0:53:25 > 0:53:30And style notwithstanding, he must have perceived in Brasini
0:53:30 > 0:53:33an artist whose megalomania matched his own.
0:53:45 > 0:53:51This mind-boggling group of buildings was initially intended
0:53:51 > 0:53:54as an orphanage for small girls -
0:53:54 > 0:53:58a use which Robert Venturi, with admirable understatement,
0:53:58 > 0:54:03described as "questionable". Today it houses various schools.
0:54:03 > 0:54:07The place's startling grandeur remains undiminished,
0:54:07 > 0:54:11even though its numerous spires were reckoned unsafe
0:54:11 > 0:54:14and taken down in the early 1970s.
0:54:14 > 0:54:17Its being slightly ruinous increases its appeal,
0:54:17 > 0:54:19at least it does to my eye.
0:54:20 > 0:54:24It takes quite a feat of temporal concentration to accept
0:54:24 > 0:54:27that those spires were only 30 years old
0:54:27 > 0:54:30and that the building wasn't finished till 1943,
0:54:30 > 0:54:35the year of Mussolini's downfall. Not quite credible.
0:54:35 > 0:54:38The sheer size is difficult to take in.
0:54:38 > 0:54:44And combined with the labyrinthine plan, all 45 degree angles
0:54:44 > 0:54:49and repetitive diagonals, it's all but incomprehensible, illegible.
0:54:52 > 0:54:56Even though it's symmetrical, its unpredictability is total.
0:54:56 > 0:54:58It might have been improvised.
0:55:12 > 0:55:16You are setting out to change the course of human existence,
0:55:16 > 0:55:19to remake man as a fearless, obedient,
0:55:19 > 0:55:22rock-hard knot of musculature, so rock-hard
0:55:22 > 0:55:26he can shatter rock-hard rocks with a flick of a rock-hard pectoral.
0:55:29 > 0:55:34You are creating a society unlike any society that has ever been.
0:55:37 > 0:55:41You have within your steel heart the satanic absence of mercy
0:55:41 > 0:55:45that is the sine qua non of an omnipotent, omniscient leader.
0:55:48 > 0:55:52You will dispense with everything that stands in your way.
0:55:53 > 0:55:55You're ruthless.
0:55:55 > 0:56:01You gaze purposefully into a future that you alone can see.
0:56:01 > 0:56:05It is your lathe, your chisel, that will shape the nation
0:56:05 > 0:56:07then shape the world.
0:56:08 > 0:56:11But what of the shavings, the sawdust, the shards?
0:56:15 > 0:56:19Ooh! You have such a lovely uniform!
0:56:19 > 0:56:23From the Scala wardrobe, is it? So dinky! So Offenbach!
0:56:23 > 0:56:27So modern, so dernier cri. Ooh, those tassels!
0:56:32 > 0:56:34JONATHAN SPEAKS ITALIAN:
0:56:46 > 0:56:50Why, then, do you and your fellow dictators cling in varying degrees
0:56:50 > 0:56:53to myths and emblems of the past,
0:56:53 > 0:56:57when tearing up the past is a very condition of founding the future?
0:57:01 > 0:57:05This is an instance of pragmatism suppressing ideology.
0:57:06 > 0:57:09All this spirituality - whatever spirituality is -
0:57:09 > 0:57:13all this revitalisation and renewal,
0:57:13 > 0:57:17seem to demand some sort of grounding in the archaic.
0:57:19 > 0:57:21A violent break with the past
0:57:21 > 0:57:24is liable to shock your slower subjects,
0:57:24 > 0:57:29so you have to take them with you, franchise or no franchise.
0:57:30 > 0:57:32Easy does it.
0:57:37 > 0:57:40Technological means are neutral, inanimate.
0:57:40 > 0:57:46They do not determine the uses they are put to - man does.
0:57:46 > 0:57:50Even artificial intelligences have to be prepped by man.
0:57:51 > 0:57:54And artificial intelligences are not necessarily high IQ.
0:57:56 > 0:58:00They can't answer back when commanded to perform morally dubious
0:58:00 > 0:58:04or even unquestionably wicked tasks.
0:58:05 > 0:58:08These abuses are secret, hidden.
0:58:08 > 0:58:11The perpetrator does not advertise his enormities.
0:58:13 > 0:58:15The populace is kept in the dark.
0:58:15 > 0:58:19The mendacious banality of propaganda sees to that.
0:58:22 > 0:58:26Ernst Schertel, the author of a study of flagellation -
0:58:26 > 0:58:27a mere 12 volumes -
0:58:27 > 0:58:32an occultist and an early enthusiast for Hitler wrote,
0:58:32 > 0:58:36"He who does not carry demonic seeds within him
0:58:36 > 0:58:39"will never give birth to a new world."
0:58:41 > 0:58:48Again, the much-needed demonic seeds are secret, hidden.
0:58:48 > 0:58:52It is the overt, supposedly progressive, perhaps genuinely
0:58:52 > 0:58:57progressive results of technology, which are made ostentatiously public
0:58:57 > 0:59:02and which the public is invited to believe it has a share in -
0:59:02 > 0:59:04the circuses, the airfields,
0:59:04 > 0:59:08the gravity-defying feats of infrastructure.
0:59:08 > 0:59:12the kilometre upon kilometre of autostrada,
0:59:12 > 0:59:15in a nation in which only 2%
0:59:15 > 0:59:19of the population owned a car in the mid-'30s.
0:59:21 > 0:59:23They're not secret, not hidden,
0:59:23 > 0:59:27but broadcast as evidence of the remade world's emergence.
0:59:27 > 0:59:29They are new.
0:59:36 > 0:59:41Mussolini's Italy occasioned consumer Fascism.
0:59:41 > 0:59:45It was the most technophiliac of the major dictatorships.
0:59:45 > 0:59:47It was the most materially advanced,
0:59:47 > 0:59:52the most artistically sophisticated, because the least proscribed
0:59:52 > 0:59:56and the least preoccupied with religious matters.
0:59:56 > 0:59:58On the one hand, Mussolini talked endless waffle
0:59:58 > 1:00:00about spiritual renewal,
1:00:00 > 1:00:04on the other, he called priests "black germs".
1:00:07 > 1:00:11He knew very well that the presence of the greedy Vatican had
1:00:11 > 1:00:15long promoted a healthy anticlericism in a large section
1:00:15 > 1:00:17of the sceptical, mocking Roman populace,
1:00:17 > 1:00:22whose voice was the gleefully blasphemous dialect poet,
1:00:22 > 1:00:24Giuseppe Gioachino Belli.
1:00:34 > 1:00:38Mary, eating soup for lunch, was still a virgin, just.
1:00:38 > 1:00:43Gabriel, an angel, hurled by God like a bolt,
1:00:43 > 1:00:47broke through a window. These are the words he spoke to her.
1:00:47 > 1:00:49"You are up the duff, you're in the club.
1:00:49 > 1:00:53"You really must believe me. I'm here on God's say-so.
1:00:53 > 1:00:55"He's the dad."
1:00:55 > 1:00:58# Ave Maria! #
1:00:58 > 1:01:00It's the first time she'd heard that song.
1:01:00 > 1:01:03"Get on! I'm not some scrubber!
1:01:03 > 1:01:05"I never touched a dong!"
1:01:05 > 1:01:09"Love, you're chosen. This is just the start.
1:01:09 > 1:01:13"The launchpad to planetary acclaim.
1:01:13 > 1:01:18"It was at Pentecost. The old sod was disguised as a dove.
1:01:18 > 1:01:21"Recall the bird that nestled in your lap.
1:01:21 > 1:01:25"He's crafty. He knew the way to your womb door."
1:01:25 > 1:01:27"The swine!
1:01:27 > 1:01:30"You'll see. My choice is to abort the son of God!"
1:01:37 > 1:01:40Mussolini had the desire but not the aptitude,
1:01:40 > 1:01:45the thankfully rare aptitude, for turning himself into a living God
1:01:45 > 1:01:48to the extent that Hitler and Stalin did in nations
1:01:48 > 1:01:52whose people were more credulous and more pathetically susceptible
1:01:52 > 1:01:57to the idea of the great man, the strong leader.
1:01:57 > 1:02:01It was a question of degree rather than of kind.
1:02:01 > 1:02:06As a living God, he was stalled on the lower slopes of Olympus.
1:02:08 > 1:02:10He never was best in show.
1:02:11 > 1:02:14Not that this lack of aptitude prevented him trying.
1:02:14 > 1:02:17The extraordinary Lady Houston,
1:02:17 > 1:02:21a tireless horizontal who became one of the richest women in Britain,
1:02:21 > 1:02:26and an avid funder of anti-Communist causes, owned a Belgian griffon,
1:02:26 > 1:02:29which she called Benito, in honour of her hero.
1:02:32 > 1:02:35Within less than three years of his attaining power,
1:02:35 > 1:02:38his childhood home in Predappio
1:02:38 > 1:02:41had been turned into a place of pilgrimage.
1:02:41 > 1:02:45The two big dates in the calendar commemorated the day of his birth,
1:02:45 > 1:02:51on July 29th, 1883, and his so-called "March on Rome",
1:02:51 > 1:02:55which brought him to power in October 1922.
1:02:57 > 1:03:01Despite the adulation, Mussolini couldn't scramble up Olympus.
1:03:01 > 1:03:06He remained resolutely human, ridiculously human.
1:03:06 > 1:03:10A thuggish, strutting cockerel, a blustering Ruritanian
1:03:10 > 1:03:15with a taste for the most preposterous opera bouffe uniforms,
1:03:15 > 1:03:17posing as a dictator.
1:03:17 > 1:03:22It prompts the question, were his demonic seeds insufficiently demonic
1:03:22 > 1:03:25for a real dictator? Was there a crucial lack?
1:03:26 > 1:03:30Was he a demonic seed short of the full satanic sac?
1:03:32 > 1:03:35Is that why he was a dictator who failed to dictate?
1:03:37 > 1:03:42One of the unintended consequences of his torpid laissez faire
1:03:42 > 1:03:47was an architecture of exceptional plurality, of many materials,
1:03:47 > 1:03:48of many forms.
1:03:58 > 1:04:01The result is that Italy lacks the standardised oddities
1:04:01 > 1:04:04of mid-century Soviet Union.
1:04:04 > 1:04:08There is nothing as boorishly eye-catching as the despot's baroque
1:04:08 > 1:04:13of Stalin's blingscapes, nor is there anything as creepy
1:04:13 > 1:04:15as Nazism's folkish siedlungs,
1:04:15 > 1:04:19built expressions of the doctrine of blood and soil.
1:04:20 > 1:04:24Under those regimes, modernism was largely suppressed.
1:04:24 > 1:04:27Insufficiently populist in the USSR,
1:04:27 > 1:04:31condemned as Jewish and/or international in Germany.
1:04:36 > 1:04:40The situation in Italy could not have been less kindred.
1:04:50 > 1:04:53Italian Fascism and Italian modernism,
1:04:53 > 1:04:57in the sometimes conflicting, sometimes congruent forms
1:04:57 > 1:05:03of futurism and rationalism, were bound together from the very start.
1:05:03 > 1:05:07From before the very start, they were intertwined in utero.
1:05:22 > 1:05:25The Futurists were a belligerent crew.
1:05:25 > 1:05:29They comprised one of those things called a "movement".
1:05:29 > 1:05:30An art movement,
1:05:30 > 1:05:34which happens at the far end of the intestinal tract.
1:05:35 > 1:05:38And like the proto-Fascists they were,
1:05:38 > 1:05:42they understood that there was strength in numbers.
1:05:42 > 1:05:45Numbers disguise mediocrity.
1:05:45 > 1:05:48Numbers cover up the underachievers.
1:05:50 > 1:05:53They had rules. They had manifestoes.
1:05:54 > 1:05:56Of course they had manifestoes.
1:05:56 > 1:05:59Manifestoes and more manifestoes.
1:05:59 > 1:06:04The manifesto compensates for the paucity of the visual art.
1:06:06 > 1:06:08It gradually becomes the art itself.
1:06:09 > 1:06:12The longer the manifesto, the more dismal the work.
1:06:13 > 1:06:16The artless drivel called conceptualism
1:06:16 > 1:06:19ultimately derives from the manifesto.
1:06:20 > 1:06:22Manifesto turns out to be an anagram of
1:06:22 > 1:06:26"I am a no-hoper dork who knows a curator or two
1:06:26 > 1:06:30"and prays not to get found out, but can't write and can't paint".
1:06:45 > 1:06:51The Futurists had credos. They had a cookbook full of silly ideas.
1:06:51 > 1:06:53Food sculpture, originality -
1:06:53 > 1:06:58which of course has no place in the kitchen - trout wrapped in liver.
1:06:58 > 1:07:01Lamb with lion sauce.
1:07:01 > 1:07:05Such silly ideas that they have of course all been adopted.
1:07:13 > 1:07:15The Futurists swiftly became formulaic.
1:07:17 > 1:07:19Futurism was a fashion item, which ought to have
1:07:19 > 1:07:23been as ephemeral as the Dartford Two were predicted to be.
1:07:28 > 1:07:30But ephemera has a habit of outliving
1:07:30 > 1:07:34what was confidently intended to be permanent.
1:07:40 > 1:07:41But which just vanished.
1:07:44 > 1:07:49The poet agitator and author of the cookbook, Filippo Marinetti,
1:07:49 > 1:07:51was a 34-year-old adolescent
1:07:51 > 1:07:55when he described Rome as a pustulating sore.
1:08:06 > 1:08:11He led his troops in clamorously demanding the city's modernisation.
1:08:12 > 1:08:16The renewal he sought - ordered, rational, technocratic -
1:08:16 > 1:08:21could not have been more at odds with that of Coppede and barochetto.
1:08:24 > 1:08:28Futurism attempted with varying degrees of success
1:08:28 > 1:08:30to represent movement -
1:08:30 > 1:08:34the arrogant assumption being that no previous painting had done so.
1:08:36 > 1:08:39Just look at The Murder by Cezanne. Before he was Cezanne.
1:08:41 > 1:08:47But a painting, unlike prose or film or music, is a static medium,
1:08:47 > 1:08:52no matter how frantically restless its subject.
1:08:52 > 1:08:58Movement in a work in two dimensions is bound to be figurative,
1:08:58 > 1:09:03illusory, a frozen moment - the same goes for movement in buildings.
1:09:10 > 1:09:13Marinetti was pathologically nationalist,
1:09:13 > 1:09:17yet his exultational rants were those of Walt Whitman -
1:09:17 > 1:09:20a barely sane Walt Whitman.
1:09:20 > 1:09:21And not all that Italian.
1:09:25 > 1:09:29"We will sing of great mobs eager for work, eager for joy,
1:09:29 > 1:09:31"eager for riots.
1:09:32 > 1:09:36"We will sing of the nightly clamour of arsenals,
1:09:36 > 1:09:42"of teeming shipyards ablaze with the electric moon's blinding light.
1:09:43 > 1:09:49"We will sing of bridges that bestride rivers like giant athletes,
1:09:49 > 1:09:53"knives glistening in the sun.
1:09:53 > 1:09:59"We, the Futurists, are scorned by the crippled and paralysed.
1:09:59 > 1:10:04"We, the Futurists, glory in danger and revel in violence.
1:10:05 > 1:10:08"We revere patriotism. We exult war.
1:10:09 > 1:10:14"War is the hygiene of the world.
1:10:14 > 1:10:16"The sole hygiene."
1:10:32 > 1:10:35The world was to be cleansed.
1:10:35 > 1:10:37We have heard that one before and since.
1:10:44 > 1:10:47The First World War made an actuality
1:10:47 > 1:10:50of Marinetti's teenage dream of glorious mass death
1:10:50 > 1:10:53and nationalistic sacrifice.
1:10:53 > 1:10:55Over half a million Italian combatants
1:10:55 > 1:10:58and over half a million Italian civilians died.
1:11:00 > 1:11:01Umberto Boccione,
1:11:01 > 1:11:05the most inventive of the Futurist painters, was killed.
1:11:06 > 1:11:09So too was Antonia Sant'Elia.
1:11:13 > 1:11:16There are a number of paper architects,
1:11:16 > 1:11:20dreamers of the never-to-be-built, whose influence was boundless
1:11:20 > 1:11:23because their works never got off the page.
1:11:24 > 1:11:27It remained an immaculate ideal.
1:11:27 > 1:11:31Piranesi, Bouille, Le Coeur,
1:11:31 > 1:11:35Ludwig Hilberseimer, Hugh Ferriss, Frank Hampson
1:11:35 > 1:11:38and the Futurist Antonio Sant'Elia,
1:11:38 > 1:11:41the holy Sant'Elia,
1:11:41 > 1:11:44whose Citta Nuova was predictive of
1:11:44 > 1:11:49so many of the 20th century's utopias and dystopias.
1:11:49 > 1:11:51Hardly surprising, for it was so gleefully copied.
1:11:54 > 1:11:58We can admire the drawings of Sant'Elia and these other artists,
1:11:58 > 1:12:02but we have to acknowledge that what they do is not architecture.
1:12:02 > 1:12:05This stuff is the mere germ of architecture.
1:12:05 > 1:12:10It is unconcerned with stresses, services and soil pipes.
1:12:11 > 1:12:15Sant'Elia's collaborator and peer, Mario Chiatonne,
1:12:15 > 1:12:17is today forgotten.
1:12:17 > 1:12:21He made the terrible career move of not dying young.
1:12:25 > 1:12:28Throughout the early years of Mussolini's two decades,
1:12:28 > 1:12:30there occurred something akin to the
1:12:30 > 1:12:33Battle of Styles in Victorian England.
1:12:33 > 1:12:35There were several factions,
1:12:35 > 1:12:39each of them special pleading that it was their architecture
1:12:39 > 1:12:44which best represented nationalism, sacrifice, belligerence,
1:12:44 > 1:12:49Fascism's moral fervour and a true devotion to Il Duce.
1:12:50 > 1:12:54They vied for an imprimatur he was unwilling to bestow.
1:12:56 > 1:13:00The architecture that the Futurists foresaw
1:13:00 > 1:13:04and promoted was based on Chiatonne's drawings and Sant'Elia's
1:13:04 > 1:13:06plans for La Citta Nuova.
1:13:08 > 1:13:11It had no sort of architectural precedent.
1:13:13 > 1:13:16It would have been a disavowal of faith not to have
1:13:16 > 1:13:18started from scratch.
1:13:18 > 1:13:21This was not architecture, it was a vision of architecture which
1:13:21 > 1:13:25had no existence other than on the page.
1:13:27 > 1:13:31It might be socially deleterious, but it was the future,
1:13:31 > 1:13:35because the Futurists, with their exclusive claim on the future,
1:13:35 > 1:13:37said it to be so.
1:13:41 > 1:13:44It stood for, or was at least intellectually linked,
1:13:44 > 1:13:48to the machine, to man as a machine cog,
1:13:48 > 1:13:52to the suppression of the individual, to collectivity,
1:13:52 > 1:13:53discipline,
1:13:53 > 1:13:57submission to the state and the doctrines of Taylorism
1:13:57 > 1:14:01and Fordism, which had started in the United States
1:14:01 > 1:14:04but which flourished in anti-democratic countries
1:14:04 > 1:14:07whose workers had only frail rights.
1:14:07 > 1:14:10This was a fact that was picked up by Giovanni Agnelli,
1:14:10 > 1:14:13the founder of Fiat,
1:14:13 > 1:14:18whose Futurism was hardly ideological and aesthetic,
1:14:18 > 1:14:21rather technophiliac and utilitarian.
1:14:24 > 1:14:29The factory he built at Lingotto in Turin was Futurism made concrete,
1:14:29 > 1:14:33500 metres long, emphatically horizontal
1:14:33 > 1:14:36and functional to the point of frugality.
1:14:37 > 1:14:42Manufacturer proceeded from street level and spiralled upwards.
1:14:42 > 1:14:47The final stages of assembly were carried out on the fifth floor.
1:14:47 > 1:14:50The banked test track on its roof was, then, practical
1:14:50 > 1:14:52as well as unique.
1:14:57 > 1:15:01It was internationally famous within months of its opening.
1:15:01 > 1:15:05It showed how far ahead of the game Italy was.
1:15:05 > 1:15:08This was the most advanced factory in Europe.
1:15:08 > 1:15:09Advanced?
1:15:10 > 1:15:14Its owner founded a dynasty - ill-starred, as they so often are.
1:15:14 > 1:15:19His grandson deservedly became world famous for wearing his watch
1:15:19 > 1:15:20over his shirt cuff.
1:15:22 > 1:15:27Agnelli also gained control of La Stampa, the formerly liberal
1:15:27 > 1:15:31Torinese newspaper which had been closed down for suggesting
1:15:31 > 1:15:36Mussolini had been complicit in the murder of the Socialist deputy
1:15:36 > 1:15:39and writer Giacomo Matteotti.
1:15:41 > 1:15:44Such acts of sycophancy were commonplace.
1:15:44 > 1:15:49Commercial destinies and careers depended on patronage
1:15:49 > 1:15:53and favouritism and also on a certain flexibility.
1:15:53 > 1:15:59Angiolo Mazzoni joined the Fascist Party early on, which
1:15:59 > 1:16:04eased his way to becoming the main architect of the state railways,
1:16:04 > 1:16:07which, in turn, earned him many further commissions.
1:16:19 > 1:16:23He also had connections to the second wave of Futurism,
1:16:23 > 1:16:27but was willing to work in whatever style his patrons demanded.
1:16:28 > 1:16:32Such a catholic approach to design is habitually scorned.
1:16:34 > 1:16:38Architecture is the only creative endeavour where commitment
1:16:38 > 1:16:44to a single style is reckoned to be a demonstration of moral probity.
1:16:51 > 1:16:55The second wave of Futurism produced a sort of painting
1:16:55 > 1:16:58and photography preoccupied with flight.
1:17:07 > 1:17:11Now and again, it possesses vertiginous potency.
1:17:11 > 1:17:13Tullio Crali's Diving Over The City
1:17:13 > 1:17:17and Before The Parachute Opens are among the rare instances.
1:17:20 > 1:17:25At its more typical, it is all patternmaking and poster art.
1:17:25 > 1:17:28Nonetheless, the idea of the all-seeing pilot,
1:17:28 > 1:17:33with the world beneath him as a target at his mercy,
1:17:33 > 1:17:35overcomes the hackneyed depiction.
1:17:35 > 1:17:37Indeed, it feeds off it.
1:17:37 > 1:17:43This literal vision of the city from above, revealing its shape,
1:17:43 > 1:17:49symmetries, intricacies and secrets, belongs to Mussolini.
1:17:49 > 1:17:53He is the pilot. He is the leader.
1:17:59 > 1:18:02Again, it was a spur to architectural creation,
1:18:02 > 1:18:06an encouragement to architectural impersonality and grandiosity.
1:18:09 > 1:18:12Seeing the Earth from thousands of metres above
1:18:12 > 1:18:15is a lesson in its puniness.
1:18:15 > 1:18:18There is so much space to fill with buildings of the new age,
1:18:18 > 1:18:23with grand boulevards and square squares and half-moon crescents.
1:18:25 > 1:18:28What ought those squares to look like at ground level?
1:18:30 > 1:18:34That, after all, is where the little people will get to see them.
1:18:53 > 1:18:57The Enigma of Arrival is VS Naipaul's meditation
1:18:57 > 1:19:00on his discovery of the valley north of Salisbury
1:19:00 > 1:19:02which would become his home.
1:19:02 > 1:19:05The title was stolen from a painting by the peripatetic
1:19:05 > 1:19:07Giorgio de Chiricho.
1:19:07 > 1:19:11There are congruences of mood between book and painting.
1:19:11 > 1:19:14Isolation, ambiguity.
1:19:14 > 1:19:18Above all, the presentiment that once you have arrived,
1:19:18 > 1:19:21all that awaits you is death.
1:19:26 > 1:19:31It was to Turin that de Chiricho ascribed his architectural lexicon.
1:19:31 > 1:19:35He visited that city for two or three days in 1911. That was enough.
1:19:37 > 1:19:41Turin implanted itself in his memory.
1:19:41 > 1:19:47We don't choose places, they choose us. Turin chose de Chiricho.
1:19:48 > 1:19:52- TRANSLATION:- Turin, as nature saw it and described it, revealed to me
1:19:52 > 1:19:56a spiritual power I haven't been aware of before.
1:19:56 > 1:20:00I understood what he saw in it, especially in the piazzas,
1:20:00 > 1:20:03those Turin piazzas, surrounded by porticos.
1:20:03 > 1:20:07It was something very poetic, very profound.
1:20:17 > 1:20:21His lexicon is severely straightened - blank walls,
1:20:21 > 1:20:26mute apertures, round-arched arcades, classical motifs,
1:20:26 > 1:20:32ruined statuary, obelisks. It is all elemental, pared down, primitive.
1:20:34 > 1:20:38Interior and exterior allied.
1:20:38 > 1:20:42Indeed, the very notion of separate spaces dissolves.
1:20:42 > 1:20:46Nothing seems complete. Scale is mocked.
1:20:46 > 1:20:52Shadows tell different times in a realm where there is no time,
1:20:52 > 1:20:54where the source of light is a mystery,
1:20:54 > 1:20:58where the sun appears to shine from opposing directions.
1:21:00 > 1:21:04De Chiricho's desolate urban fragments are places
1:21:04 > 1:21:06from which there is no escape.
1:21:06 > 1:21:10The rare figures are frozen or mutilated or faceless.
1:21:10 > 1:21:13They were shrouds from the sepulchre.
1:21:14 > 1:21:19What he paints is a dream of death, a dream of the city of the dead.
1:21:30 > 1:21:33The classicism, the modern classicism, that derived
1:21:33 > 1:21:36from de Chiricho was a compromise,
1:21:36 > 1:21:39a grudgingly conciliatory handshake
1:21:39 > 1:21:42between the two main antagonists in the Battle of the Styles.
1:21:45 > 1:21:48The notion that the architects were consciously
1:21:48 > 1:21:51searching for an architecture of death assumes that architects
1:21:51 > 1:21:55understand the meaning of their buildings. They don't.
1:21:55 > 1:22:01And they shouldn't. Interpretation is not the maker's task.
1:22:01 > 1:22:06But Thanatopolis is what they created, over and again.
1:22:25 > 1:22:30EUR is the set piece of Mussolini's reign -
1:22:30 > 1:22:33the site of an international exhibition that was never to be.
1:22:33 > 1:22:36It was scheduled for 1942,
1:22:36 > 1:22:41the 20th anniversary of Italian Fascist Government.
1:22:42 > 1:22:44Events intervened.
1:22:44 > 1:22:48Within a year of its completion, Fascism was defeated
1:22:48 > 1:22:52and Mussolini was a near-powerless Nazi puppet.
1:22:58 > 1:23:01What does this place tell us about Fascism?
1:23:02 > 1:23:06That Fascism builds monuments to its great leader,
1:23:06 > 1:23:10that sport is essentially a Fascist activity.
1:23:10 > 1:23:13That Fascism is conditional upon xenophobia.
1:23:13 > 1:23:18That Fascism builds infrastructure in the national interest,
1:23:18 > 1:23:21or as a diversion.
1:23:21 > 1:23:25Fascism, in common with all totalitarian faiths,
1:23:25 > 1:23:31demands scapegoats. The kulaks, the bourgeoisie, the myopic, the Jews.
1:23:31 > 1:23:33Always the Jews.
1:23:33 > 1:23:39Fascism employs technology brutally to affect mass deaths.
1:23:39 > 1:23:43Fascism is oxymoron, a secular theology.
1:23:44 > 1:23:51Fascism is greedy for sacrifice. Fascism just loves dressing up.
1:23:51 > 1:23:53There's something about a corpse in uniform.
1:23:58 > 1:24:03That Fascism is a death wish. Kill and be killed.
1:24:03 > 1:24:07That Fascism is a belief system whose paramount creed
1:24:07 > 1:24:11is that the most important event in your life is your death.
1:24:13 > 1:24:18So it's apt that the most striking building of the era,
1:24:18 > 1:24:20intended as an exhibition space,
1:24:20 > 1:24:25should appear to be a mausoleum or an ossuary, the house of the dead.
1:24:25 > 1:24:28De Chirico suffered precognition.
1:24:55 > 1:24:58Post-1945, both parts of Germany abandoned the architecture
1:24:58 > 1:25:00associated with Nazism.
1:25:03 > 1:25:07Post-1953, the USSR abandoned the architecture
1:25:07 > 1:25:10associated with Stalinism.
1:25:12 > 1:25:14Italy's reaction to the architecture
1:25:14 > 1:25:18made during the two decades of Fascism was different.
1:25:18 > 1:25:19There was no reaction.
1:25:20 > 1:25:26Italy had turned against Mussolini and his alliance with Nazi Germany.
1:25:26 > 1:25:30It thus had judged itself to have enjoyed an expiation.
1:25:30 > 1:25:32So it had few qualms about proceeding
1:25:32 > 1:25:37architecturally as it had before that alliance was struck.
1:25:38 > 1:25:42Every school and style was equally blessed, equally damned
1:25:42 > 1:25:45by the dead dictators' eclectic pluralism.
1:25:45 > 1:25:51Architects who served the Fascist state were not regarded as pariahs.
1:25:51 > 1:25:54Had they been, there would have been no architects to rebuild
1:25:54 > 1:25:59Italy - for the entire trade, with less than a dozen exceptions,
1:25:59 > 1:26:02had sworn a vow of loyalty to Mussolini.
1:26:04 > 1:26:07As a result, there was a continuum.
1:26:07 > 1:26:12The fallen of all wars were commemorated in 1951 at Medea,
1:26:12 > 1:26:16in an idiom which, whilst it may be associable with Fascism,
1:26:16 > 1:26:20is even more associable with the unknowable state
1:26:20 > 1:26:23that is at the very core of Fascism...
1:26:24 > 1:26:25..death.
1:26:34 > 1:26:35Things come around.
1:26:35 > 1:26:38Aldo Rossi, Fernand Pouillon,
1:26:38 > 1:26:41Ricardo Bofill, David Chipperfield.
1:26:41 > 1:26:45They are not Fascists, but each has had an inkling of mortality.
1:26:50 > 1:26:55Rossi's actual ossuary at Modena was built 35 years after
1:26:55 > 1:26:56the defeat of Fascism.
1:26:58 > 1:27:02But Fascism never dies. Nor does death.
1:27:07 > 1:27:11Both are perpetual. Fascism and death fuse.
1:27:12 > 1:27:15Here is the temple of the rapture cult.
1:27:15 > 1:27:20The myriad raiments of Thanatos, whose truth and reconciliation,
1:27:20 > 1:27:25ethically-sourced spa rub and enforcement-grade nuclear butter,
1:27:25 > 1:27:28pamper the sure, calm ride to the other side.
1:27:32 > 1:27:33Good night.
1:27:33 > 1:27:36No, best night...of your life.