A Special Day (EOTWS)

End Of The Week Shorts #48 extract: A Special Day (1977)

A Special Day is a fascinating Italian film that looks back upon Mussolini's fascist reign, focusing on a gay man and a housewife who stay home on the day in which Hitler visits his ally country. 

So much of A Special Day is centred on the idea of family that Mussolini enforced with both his bachelor tax and large family bonus, which discouraged men from remaining single and encouraged women to have at least 7 children. This was meant to strengthen the country - but it seems Mussolini only wanted a greater population to build an empire and so that he could throw bodies at the front lines during potential wars of the coming decades. (This - the bachelor tax in particular - is a historically common phenomena). Reflecting upon what the consequences of enforcing these hyper masculine and feminine roles are, A Special Day is a confined story about discovering ones own, and another's, humanity quite brilliantly. Highly recommended.