Victory March Movie Review

Victory March, filmed in Italy, is a savage examination of military life. Although there are no deaths until the final moment, it drew extended hissing at 1976's San Francisco International Film Festival, largely because director/screenwriter Marco Bellocchio also dabbles with another theme: the greatest enforcers of violence may be its greatest victims. He draws back from exploring this theme on any real depth, but one of the film's most revealing sequences occurs when a captain, played with feeling by Franco Nero, realizes that the tyranny he inflicted on his wife is exactly what drove her away. No one else in the movie emphasizes this as well, and 118 moments of brutality are in no way dismissed with this brief insight. This may be what Bellocchio intended, but by then he has spent a great deal of screen time preparing us for emotional connections between people that never pay off. Bellocchio later made The Eyes, The Mouth, Henry IV, and Devil in the Flesh. AKA: Marcia Trionfale.

1976 118m/C IT FR GE Franco Nero, Miou-Miou, Michele Placido, Patrick Dewaere; D: Marco Bellocchio; W: Marco Bellocchio, Sergio Bazzini; C: Franco Di Giacomo; M: Nicola Piovani.