Television: The Celluloid Sleuths

A young, hot-eyed Benito Mussolini stared out of U.S. TV screens this week and spoke in accented English: "I salute the great American people." CBS conjured up the Duce's shade in Mussolini, a fast-moving half hour on Twentieth Century galvanized by rare images of the living past. Viewers caught glimpses they had half forgotten or never seen before: newborn Fascist babies squirming wholesale on a nursery table; the bare-chested dictator on a ski slope; his mistress, Claretta Petacci, in a silken boudoir; an anonymous GI mugging in victory from the famous balcony of...

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