A new documentary about Benito Mussolini examines the near cult-like fascination that many Italians had with the fascist dictator — and how his body became a focus for the fixation. “Il Corpo Del Duce,” (“The Duce's Corpse”), contains some gruesome, never-before-seen images of Mussolini's decayed corpse hanging upside down in a Milan square on April 29, 1945 after he was shot by anti-fascist partisans. The film, directed by Fabrizio Laurenti, literally follows the path of Mussolini's corpse from a gas station on the square to an anonymous grave and eventually a tomb in Predappio, his birthplace in northern Italy, where thousands of supporters pay homage every year. “The images I have in my documentary are pretty, pretty strong,” Laurenti said in a recent interview. “They're not for everybody.” Some of the shots show the dictator's face grotesquely swollen, unrecognizable after being hung upside down, beaten and stoned. Others being revealed for the first time show his bullet-ridden body, curled up in a near-fetal position, looking mummified after a decade in a crate in a police warehouse. Police confiscated the corpse after diehard fascists dug up Mussolini's remains from his anonymous Milan grave soon after he was killed. The government eventually gave in to rightwing pressure and turned the body over to the family for burial in his hometown. Some of the footage from Piazza Loreto, where he was hanged, was shot by US Army film crews documenting the American liberation of Italy. __
