De Roberto and Faenza: Ideological shifts in I Vicere

This article examines the relationship between De Roberto?s I Vicere and Faenza?s film adaptation focusing on the two texts? different ideological positions and narrative strategies. Both texts depict the mechanisms employed by a ruling caste to remain in power through a period of acute social change. The novel, through a multifocal narration, gives agency to individuals for shaping their environment and presents them in their alienating subjective deformation of reality, casting the historymaking process and any interpretation of it in an ambivalent light. The film focuses on the family saga and on the ongoing trasformismo of the Italian political system bringing to the fore its resonance with the present. The characters, particularly Consalvo as the principal voice, are represented as victims of a larger socio-political mechanism.