Using the perspective of Prico throughout, we gain a sense of what it may have felt like to be an average, unsuspecting Italian at the time Fascism was truly causing friction with the rest of society. With nothing to hold his life together besides the love of his parents, his happiness becomes contingent on the success of their marriage, much in the same way Italy would have only its fascist values to cling to after World War II ended. Prico’s mother never comes across as mean spirited or cruel and this is because she is not that way in the slightest. When we see her interact with her lover, she isn’t doing so out of spite for her husband or out of sexual desires alone, she has genuine feelings for this new man of hers, feeling deserving of such affection from a man she holds in high regard. Though these are honest intentions at their core, the established institution of traditional marriage makes her affair morally wrong to everyone else. This film makes this statement in a historically accurate way in that it sets Prico and his family in that of an apartment complex full of middle class, highly conservative Italians. Considering that was who made up the overwhelming majority of the fascist movement, it is safe to say that Prico, his father and all the apartment tenants are meant to represent a Mussolini inspired culture. Prico’s father meeting his end as well as Prico refusing to face his mother in the conclusion symbolize the end result of the fascist
Using the perspective of Prico throughout, we gain a sense of what it may have felt like to be an average, unsuspecting Italian at the time Fascism was truly causing friction with the rest of society. With nothing to hold his life together besides the love of his parents, his happiness becomes contingent on the success of their marriage, much in the same way Italy would have only its fascist values to cling to after World War II ended. Prico’s mother never comes across as mean spirited or cruel and this is because she is not that way in the slightest. When we see her interact with her lover, she isn’t doing so out of spite for her husband or out of sexual desires alone, she has genuine feelings for this new man of hers, feeling deserving of such affection from a man she holds in high regard. Though these are honest intentions at their core, the established institution of traditional marriage makes her affair morally wrong to everyone else. This film makes this statement in a historically accurate way in that it sets Prico and his family in that of an apartment complex full of middle class, highly conservative Italians. Considering that was who made up the overwhelming majority of the fascist movement, it is safe to say that Prico, his father and all the apartment tenants are meant to represent a Mussolini inspired culture. Prico’s father meeting his end as well as Prico refusing to face his mother in the conclusion symbolize the end result of the fascist