Tragic story of Mussolini's wife made into film

A film is to be made about a woman whom Italy's fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, tried to airbrush out of history.

Ida Dalser and her son by Mussolini both died in mental institutions after she tried unsuccessfully to force the dictator to recognise their marriage and his son, also named Benito. "Not Even Nero or Caligula would have done what you have done," she once wrote to him.

The story has considerable current relevance because of efforts by the Italian right to rehabilitate the dictator and portray him as a good family man and an essentially harmless, if occasionally misguided, authoritarian. His political heirs are to be found in the "post-fascist" National Alliance, the second biggest party in the coalition led by Silvio Berlusconi that governed Italy until last year.

Although it was known Mussolini had had a relationship with Ida Dalser before the first world war, the evidence for a marriage and the existence of their son was only brought to light in 2001 by a local historian in northern Italy. Ms Dalser pawned her jewellery and sold her beauty salon at Sopramonte near Trento to help Mussolini, who was then a leftwing journalist, establish his own newspaper. She never saw him after he left for the war. When he gained power and needed an accommodation with the Vatican, his liaison and its offspring became an embarrassment.

Fascist officials destroyed much of the documentary evidence. But a certificate survived showing that Mussolini was ordered to pay maintenance to "his wife Ida Dalser and their child".

In 1926, she was arrested and committed to a mental hospital. The rest of her life was a nightmare of escapes, re-arrests and attempts to trace her son, who had been adopted by the former Fascist police chief of Sopramonte. Ida Dalser died of a "brain haemorrhage" in 1937 at a Venetian institution. Her son died five years later, also in an institution, near Milan.

The film is to be directed by Marco Bellocchio, who made Good Morning, Night, about the 1978 murder of Italy's prime minister, Aldo Moro.

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