socialists/communists--Rand busts you...
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?

Proof that even Ayn Rand novels can be made into great films....
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.

Despite Alyssa Anne Rosenbaum's phoney beliefs, not a bad...
Italian import written by failed playwright
'Ayn Rand' [Atlas Strugged, et, al], played
in two parts, or acts. Beware the Ayn Rand
Collectivist Cult though...

One of the few film versions of Ayn Rand's maxim that "You cannot enslave man's mind. You can only destroy it."
"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!

Great, but NOT THE COMPLETE FILM(S)!
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.