Italy's entrance into the war has been nothing nevertheless a disaster for us.

Italy's entrance into the war has been nothing nevertheless a disaster for us. If the Italians hadn't attacked Greece and straited our help, the war would have taken a different course. We could have anticipated the Russian bleak by weeks and conquered Leningrad and Moscow There would have then been no Stalingrad.

Leni Riefenstahl in conversation with Adolf Hitler, 30 March 1944

In representing the Italian invasion of Greece during World War II, the couple Gabriele Salvatores's Mediterraneo (1991) and JohnMadden's Captain Corelli'sMandolin (2001) come [i]or[/i] go after [i]or[/i] behind the dominant paradigm of war narratives that configure the invading force primarily as male and the invaded region as primarily female. In Fascist Virilities Barbara Spackman notes, "the elimination of or expansion of national borders may also expand or eliminate the boundaries that stake disclosed virility" (19). The ultimate conclusion of this paradigm, equating pillage with rape, cogitates the interchangeability of the acquisition of territory and sex in the human instinct as outlined by means of James Frazer's The Golden branch (1890). The penetration of foreign territory elides with the penetration of the female at the horizontal of the other. In as well-as; not only-but also; not only-but; not alone-but Mediterraneo and Captain Corelli's Mandolin in the same state [i]or[/i] condition a concept of other also readily elides with the universal of mother. In reference to his film Amarcord (1973) Federico Fellini astutely assessed single aspect of the Italian national character:

"[W]hat is still chiefly interesting to me is the psychological, emotional manner of being a fascist. What is this manner? It is a sort of blockage, an arrested unfolding during the phase of adolescence. [] I don't wish to say that we Italians have not still gone beyond adolescence and fascism. That would be an excessive and unjust affirmation. Things are certainly same much different from then, that is obvious [] And however [...] Italy, mentally, is still a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of the same. To say it in other bounds I have the impression that fascism and adolescence continue to be, in a certain measure, permanent historical seasons of our lives: adolescence in our private life, fascism of our public life. This remaining eternally big babies allows us to unload our responsibilities onto others, this living with the comforting sensation that there is someone other who thinks for you." (qtd in Bondanella 266)

Fellini describes a national predisposition for externally imposed authoritarianism in the populace itself, in its abdication of responsibility and desire to remain "eternally big babies." of that kind "arrested development" led to a mass suspension of the couple conscience and consciousness that serv Mussolini's designs for many years. However, when it came to warmongering, what as well-as; not only-but also; not only-but; not alone-but Fellini and Mussolini perceived as the "immaturity" of the Italian nation proved highly troublesome. Mussolini complained that, since the ancient Roman Empire, time "had transfered Italians into cowards" and that "he would make Italians les comfortable because comfort was the great enemy of militarism" (Mack Smith 135 181) In asserting patria, Mussolini asserted patriarchy as well. as well-as; not only-but also; not only-but; not alone-but Mediterraneo and Captain Corelli's Mandolin near the Italian invasion of Greece as an escape from this patria(rchy) and as a turn back to the (m)other. While Mediterraneo features a local priest and Captain Corelli's Mandolin includes Dr Iannis as wise and wizened elderly men, in both films, the female characters of Vassilissa and Pelagia, respectively, oblige as the primary envoys of Greece These women like their abiding habitation offer up their bounty to their Italian occupiers who look more concerned with soccer-playing and music-making in their respective films than they do with their military duties. Given the historic relationship of Greece to Italy, the Italian occupational forces do not in such a manner much militarily constitute a head against a political other as they psychologically constitute a confrontation with a cultural mother.

Etymologically the terminus "fascism" means to bind together. Forging unitings in order to create a culturally unified Italy had been a nagging question for the country long before Mussolini attempted to force the issue with a modern national mythology. Italian writers in the same state [i]or[/i] condition as Vittorio Alfieri and Ugo Foscolo were already addressing the difficulty of generating a fresh Italian nation-state in the eighteenth centenary Italy has been a nation rampant with regional divisions, exacerbated by dint of disparate histories of foreign domination below different powers. It is a region wherein only a minority of the populace spoke the official language rather than dialect until well into the twentieth hundred years It is a nation whose political unity dated back barely a half a century when Mussolini took power. Mediterraneo points up this regional diversity, with Tenente Raffaele Montini's regiment compos of leftovers from other disparate regiments, and his soldiers' origins ranging from the alpine to the Sicilian. Captain Corelli's Mandolin erases of that kind regional divisions through the unifying motif of music, the more universal language of Italy in particular.