Customer Reviews

Ayn Rand - WE THE LIVING [VHS]

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

An exquisite, passionate, indelible portrait of powerful individuals trapped in the selfless tomb of collectivism. The humanity of the film is made all the more heartbreaking because of its backdrop of menace and hopelessness. A treasure. No wonder Mussolini banned it.

This movie was originally released in Italy in two parts. "Noi Vivi" ("We're Alive") and "Adio Kira" ("Farewell Kira"). Set in post-revolutionary Russia, this film was originally encouraged for production by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini because he thought it was of an anti-communist nature.

Mussolini later banned it because of the film's anti-totalitarian/pro-individual rights message. I would like to think that this movie helped plant the seeds that lead to Mussolini's downfall and I believe Ayn Rand saw "We The Living" too before she died and she loved it.

My family on my dad's side lived in Italy when Mussolini was dictator and I am involved in the libertarian and Objectivist movements so I appreciate this movie from three perspectives.

While I wish the movie wasn't so long and expensive to purchase, I think, all-in-all, it is the best foreign film ever made!

Everything else about this film is wonderful and belongs in any serious movie goer's collection. I hope at some point a DVD version of this movie can be done too. If more of films like this interest you, in addition to "The Fountainhead", I also recommend "Herod's Law", "Bitter Sugar", "Guantanamera", "The Official Story", "Farewell My Concubine" and last (but certainly not least) "Life Is Beautiful".

To the cast and crew of this film: "Bravo dove mai lei sono!"

Hollywood has never done Rand justice. Gary Cooper was a wooden Howard Roark in King Vidor's "The Fountainhead", and Rand's own adapted screenplay left viewers scratching their heads about her "message". The recent "Passion of Ayn Rand" is just a cheap ad hominum attack. This film breathes life into her work. The actors are physically perfect, passionate instead of talky. Alida Valli is gorgeous in the lead role. The smokey black and white is perfect for 1917 Russia, and the production quality rivals Hollywood's best for that era. It's hard to believe this film was essentially a bootleg, made witout the authorization or cooperation of the book's author. When Rand saw the "discovered" print in the early 1980's, she loved it.

Goffredo Alessandrini's unauthorized 1942 version of Ayn Rand's novel "We the Living" appeared in Fascist Italy in two separate parts: NOI VIVI and ADDIO, KIRA. They are essentially one film. It was the grim story of post-revolutionary Russia, the forced collectivization of the economy and the brutal suppression of human rights, all told from the viewpoint of one woman, Kira. Ayn Rand's novel was autobiographical and was essentially a diatribe against the loss of individuality in totalitarian societies.

The film attracted a sizable audience in Italy. The Fascist government saw the film(s) as a condemnation of Soviet misery but when it became aware that the movie(s) implied a condemnation of all totalitarian states, left and right, it withdrew them from distribution.

They were not seen again and were thought lost until the early 1960s when Ayn Rand's attorneys located prints in Rome. Ayn Rand liked the movie(s) a great deal, while having reservations about certain liberties that had been taken with dialog and situations. She died in 1982 and did not live to see the re-issue of the film, which was brought about under the auspices of the Ayn Rand estate. The original two-part 4-hour version was edited down to a 170-minute one-film version. One major speech (of Fosco Giachetti) was redubbed to assert Randian philosophy, and the ending (with the death of Kira in the snow as she is shot trying to escape from Russian) was eliminated, rendering the film more optimistic.

We are glad that the film was made available in some form after having been lost for decades. After all, how many films from Fascist Italy get picked up for commercial distribution in America these days? But we also regret that Alessandrini's complete artistic achievement was truncated and tampered with. Wasn't creative integrity the theme of Rand's novel "The Fountainhead"?

Having had the good fortune of seeing the uncut integral two films on video in Italy, I can vouch for them as being more satisfying, less disjointed in that format. Let's be clear. This new version is NOT a "restoration" as some are calling it. It is, rather, an "adaptation." We are ambivalent about it but pleased to have it. And the 35mm print material is first rate.

As much as anything else, WE THE LIVING is a whopping good love story, of "Camille"-like intensity and "Anna Karenina"-like grandeur. The stunning Alida Valli as Kira and Rossano Brazzi as her wastrel lover Leo, devour the screen in their scenes together. Fosco Giachetti as Andrei, head of the secret police and willing to sacrifice honor and ideals for Kira, is poignant and unforgettable. As is this film, or as are these films.

This black and white version of Ayn Rand's 1936 novel is even more faithful to her work than Rand's own screenplay to Warner's 1949 'The Fountainhead.' This film can get talky at times, the snow in the Rome studios is obviously fake and the plot is sort of soap-operatic. That said, this movie is a rare treat to me, who fell in love with Valli when I saw her in 'The Third Man.' She's even more beautiful here, and has a complex lead role to boot. Her acting reminds me a lot of Ingrid Bergman's, and it is no wonder Selznick brought her to America after the war. Fosco Giachetti plays Andrei Taganov, and his steely resolve holds the tension throughout. The soundtrack, by Renzo Rossellini, is beautiful 1940s bombastic movie music, and lifts from Verdi and Puccini the way that Max Steiner and Alfred Newman borrowed generously from Wagner and Richard Strauss. Remember Rossano Brazzi from 'South Pacific'? He plays Leo Kovalensky, but is much younger and his baby-face makes it hard to take him seriously at times, but I believe it's because I can't shake my memories of him being much older in 'South Pacific.'

"What's a citizen? Only a brick and of no use unless cemented to other bricks just like it"? As one character lectures another herein: "why do you think you are entitled to your own thoughts...against those of the majority of the Collective?" After all, as a Bolshevik explains, "...no external enemy...is as dangerous to us as the internal enemy of dissension within our own ranks. On the jacket of the book on which this film is based appears the following: "We the Living demonstrates the supreme value of a human life and the evil of those who claim the right to sacrifice it." There's your life. You begin it feeling that it's something so precious & rare, so beautiful that it's like a sacred treasure." But "one man means nothing in the face of the mighty Proletarian Collective," the Bolsheviks counter. In such an environment, Kira, the heroine of this film (based on a 1936 novel by Ayn Rand) subsequently concludes: "Nothing matters. We mustn't think. We mustn't think at all." To a Bolshevik she charges, "you came and forbade life [as in freedom of choice] to the living." "You took their every hour, every minute, every nerve, every thought in the farthest corners of their souls---and you told them what it had to be;" "telling men "what they must live for." This after we see how a number of characters lose their jobs, or get thrown out of university "for trying to think" for themselves. This is life in the Soviet Union as personally experienced by Ayn Rand (a nom de plume the Russian author invented to protect family members still living in Leningrad at the time). She saw firsthand how Bolshevism went about putting down new rules, fashioning a state that took "your honor, your life and your freedom." And while this isn't Ms. Rand's life story, it is, as the author states in the introduction of her novel, a sort of autobiography, in the intellectual sense; having instilled Kira with the author's "ideas, her convictions, her values." And while the "plot is invented," Ms. Rand admits, "the background is not." And the "Sovietness" of said background is not the paramount issue herein either, but the notion that, notwithstanding any utopian rhetoric, "you cannot enslave man's mind. "You can only destroy it." In a collectivist society, "what are your masses but millions of dull, shrivelled, stagnant souls that have no thoughts of their own, no dreams of their own, no will of their own." This film based (faithfully for the most part) on Ms. Rand's work is, in short, a powerfully written expose of collectivist mentalities; a warning that "you cannot castigate life "in order to perpetuate it." Do make an effort to see it. It's a very effective film. (06May) Cheers!

I remember finding a copy of this film, and I really liked it. Its history is as fascinating as the film itself. For those who don't know, this is an unauthorized version of Ayn Rand's novel We The Living. It was made in 1942 under Mussolini's rule. It had the full approval of the government, at least when it was being made. When the film was shown to the censor boards, it was banned. But somehow Mussolini saw it himself, and he loved it, so it was approved and was shown around Italy. But then Mussolini reversed himself, because the film was as much anti-authoritarian as it was anti-Communist. It disappeared for decades, but eventually it was rediscovered, and even Ayn Rand loved the film (and she wasn't easy to please).

The film is remarkable in that it makes Rand's characters believable and they come across as real people. Rand's characters in her novel usually pontificate on soapboxes about the ideal of capitalism, the evil of collectivism, etc., etc.. There is a little of that here, and it's pretty muted compared to the later film version of The Fountainhead. It also gives hope that Rand's novels (there aren't many of them) can actually be made into good movies. The Fountainhead is a particularly bad film, and Atlas Shrugged hasn't seen the light of day for nearly 50 years (and is still in the dark hell of development). I'm glad Rand ultimately gave her blessing to this film, and that it survived all those years.

Yes. Absolutely. You're busted by this film (you know whom you are) and you STILL will not admit it. Classic.

The-Powers-That-Be (or think that they "Be", incorrectly, I must add) in Hollywood should produce this movie in English.

There is a DEMAND for it. It would sell. Yep.

Yet the hypocritical, "tell-us-what-we-should-think" and "tell-us-what-we-should-do" people in Hollywood will never produce this in English.

Oh, no, they will not, for they are long-time admirers of socialism/communism. Fidel and Hugo Chavez are their heroes. Long live an economic system--socialism/communism--that has failed so often in history!!

Thankfully, not all of the actors and actresses in Hollywood are communists that fall down and worship Fidel or kiss Hugo's butt. MY GOD! Some are even proud to be Americans! Imagine that!

Thus I do not believe the DEMAND will ever be met. Thus I do recommend this movie.

CAVEAT: I am not an Ayn Rand fan. Nope. I DO believe her because she witnessed the events in Russia. She was able to escape the "cemetery." Millions of others met their cemetery in the USSR--wow, isn't communism wonderful?

This story is important for young people to see NOW. We don't want to let our government keep up this huge power grab, and take away all of our libery & freedom!

Don't be discouraged if you buy this movie and at first see poor quality video. It does clear up, and just remember we are lucky to have it at all. Second; I would recommend reading the book before viewing to make reading the subtitles easier. Sometimes the words are quite hard to see.

The only disappointment came when the movie finished without the ending from the novel. If the original film was lost then it is forgivable. If not, I don't understand the deletion.

Beware! The film is intended to be a true depiction of life in a slave state where no one can be trusted. Ayn Rand saw it and lived it herself. She knew the importance of sharing the experience with those who never lived with these conditions. The right to choose one's own destiny led her to depart Russia and come here.