The Berlusconi Show
by Michael Joshua Rowin
Directed by Erik Gandini
Silvio Berlusconi possesses a resume that would make Rupert Murdoch envious: owner of three television channels, a publishing company, and an advertising and publicity firm, the Italian media mogul has built an empire almost entirely upon vacuous entertainment and information control. He's also Prime Minister. In Videocracy, Erik Gandini traces the right-wing Berlusconi's financial and political ascendance to a late-70s call-in quiz show on a local channel owned by the then up-and-coming entrepreneur, in which a masked woman removed an article of clothing for every correct answer. The popularity of this soft-porn strip show apparently initiated a bread-and-circus broadcast culture that has, by distracting a celebrity-obsessed citizenry, helped sustain Berlusconi's career through controversy and scandal.
But if viewers want a penetrating look into the unholy collusion of government and the image industry they're going to have to do the work themselves. Gandini's documentary is as superficial as his smarmy target, wallowing in montage after montage of young women gyrating in public auditions to become variety show veline models, Billionaire Club patrons and jet-setters vying for a piece of Berlusconi's action (talent agent/unabashed fascist sympathizer Lele Mora and extortion-paparazzo Fabrizio Corona get considerable screen time), and the odyssey of a Van Damme wannabe whose dream of achieving TV fame vaguely exemplifies the delusions of an entire populace. Gandini's investigation remains much too narrow, and he never connects the dots—not only does he take half the film to first mention the major conflict of interest in the Prime Minister's command of the garbage-saturated airwaves, but Gandini fails to even address the direct assaults on free press and speech that have inevitably resulted from it. A wasted opportunity.
Opens February 12
