Cesare Mori (; 22 December 1871 – 5 July 1942) was a prefect (prefetto) before and during the Italian fascism period. He is known in Italy as the "Iron Prefect" (Prefetto di Ferro) because of his iron-fisted campaigns against Sicilian Mafia in the second half of the 1920s. Mori described himself as a fascist, and wrote strongly of his admiration of the effectiveness of both the National Fascist Party and Benito Mussolini several times in his self authored accounts in Sicily, "What caused the undoubted efforts made in the past to peter out was a feeling of listlessness, in the minds of the people which seemed refractory even to unusual stimulants. It was not a reality, it was not a fact, but a feeling; yet the past was infected and dominated by it until the day when, on the coming of Fascism, the Duce in person broke the evil spell." Mori is also known for being the first to ever destroy the influence of the Mafia within Italy. The 1977 film Il prefetto di ferro, directed by Pasquale Squitieri, is about his fight against the Mafia when he was prefect in Sicily. Early years Mori was born in Pavia in Lombardy and grew up in an orphanage and was only recognised by his natural parents in October 1879 at the age of seven. He studied at the Turin Military Academy. However, he married a girl, Angelina Salvi, who did not have the dowry stipulated by military regulations of the time, and had to resign. He joined the police, serving first in Ravenna, then Castelvetrano in the province of Trapani (Sicily) – where he made his name capturing the bandit Paolo Grisalfi – before moving to Florence in 1915 as vice-quaestor. At the end of the First World War, the situation of Sicilian criminality got worse when war veterans joined gangs of bandits. In 1919 Mori was sent back to Sicily as the head of special forces against brigandage. In his roundups, Mori distinguished himself for his energetic and radical methods. At Caltabellotta he arrested more than 300 people in one night. The press wrote of a "lethal blow to the Mafia", but Mori said to a member of his staff : These people haven't understood yet that brigands and the Mafia are two different things. We have hit the first, who are undoubtedly the most visible aspect of Sicilian criminality,