Before directing the Italian epics, Pietro Francisci began his career with a series of documentary shorts, including this lively little film about the production and distribution of Italian newspaper "Il Popolo d'Italia." After a busy opening montage sequence following the paper's journey by van, train, aeroplane, bicycle and paperboy, we then go back to the start of the daily cycle. Reporters, editors, typesetters and typists join forces in what can only be described as frenzied activity to meet the strictly observed deadline. Finally, the presses roll, and every stage of production is accompanied by a masterful and haunting score from top Italian composer Enzo Masetti. Unfortunately, in spite of these superior production qualities, the film suffers from one overwhelming blemish. The SPECIAL EDITION of the title is being published to inform an attentive and apparently loyal population that Italy has entered the war. It is 1940, and all Italian newspapers are obliged to pay homage to Benito Mussilini. Not
only that, "Il Popolo d'Italia" was actually founded by Mussolini himself and is the official newspaper of the Italian Fascist Party. Even worse, not only is "Il Duce always right," but so are his new friends in Germany. The ending of the film is a total jaw-dropper: Masetti provides one of his heavenly choruses to sing a joyful finale, whilst on the screen we see Italian flags and swastikas billowing together against the sky, with a few words of wisdom from Il Comandante Supremo. In later years, when war documentaries were forgotten, Francisci and Masetti would team up again on hit peplums HERCULES (1957) and HERCULES UNCHAINED (1959). However, one can only wonder if they lived in some slight dread that one day skeleton-in-the-vaults SPECIAL EDITION would come back to haunt them.