We the Living

The Banned, Lost, Rediscovered: Ayn Rand’s We the Living Lives on!

It was made illegally, suppressed by a hostile government, cheered and honored, then banned at the height of its success and forgotten for decades. But, today, the film version of Ayn Rand’s WE THE LIVING is back on the screen. The story behind the making of WE THE LIVING, in Italy, in 1942, is almost as interesting as the movie itself.

Goffredo Alessandrini, one of Italy’s leading directors had been searching for a drama of epic proportions, and WE THE LIVING, a recent best-seller in war-torn Italy, fit the bill perfectly. The struggle of a young woman to live her own life despite being trapped in a state-controlled society, was a story that moviegoers could easily relate to in Facist-run Italy. But Rand’s novel was considered a political hot potato by Fascist authorities in Rome and was approved for filming only via the personal intervention of the son of dictator Benito Mussolini. Alessandrini and his young associate director, Anton Majano, knew that while WE THE LIVING touched on volitile political issues, they hoped they would be safe from repercussions because of the story’s harshly negative portrayal of Communist Russia –Italy’s wartime enemy.

Scalera Films, the studio that was producing the film, was considered by some to be the best, most efficient producing company that ever existed in Italy. Ordinarily, the first order of business would be for Scalera to secure the movie rights from Ayn Rand. But with the war on, negotiations with an American author were out of the question. The solution was simple, but certainly not elegant. They stole it.

“It was actually a cheat and a fraud,” said Majano many years later. “Because of the war we couldn’t buy the rights. The Fascist Ministry of Culture set up a special law, as far as negotiations for rights, copyrights, or anything else, with enemy countries: Do what you have to do. Do the film, take the book, use it, we’ll worry about it later.”

So WE THE LIVING, a story that Ayn Rand described “as close to an autobiography as I will ever write,” was put into production in early 1942 without permission from the author and without compensation to her – without even her knowledge.

Cast in the leading roles were three of Italy’s top box-offices attractions: 38-year-old Fosco Giachetti, a star of such magnitude that his casting was unquestioned, in the role of Andrei.

21-vear-old Alida Valli, already a major star in Italy, won the coveted role of Kira. And 22-year-old Rossano Brazzi, in only his second movie, played Leo.

As WE THE LIVING got underway in early 1942, location permits were just about impossible to get because of the war. So every thing was built from scratch on the Scalera Films sound stages. Crowded Red Square, a deserted garden, a ship’s deck, a train station, even a snow covered street scene with horse-drawn sleigh – every set was a painstaking recreation by scenic artists, designers, and special effects technicians. Authenticity was enhanced by the fact that the production designers were Russian-born.

During the filming, the Fascist Ministry of Culture made the first of several efforts to suppress WE THE LIVING. One morning an official showed up on the set. “He said there was to be a screening that night, at nine o’clock, at the Ministry, and they wanted to see everything that had been shot so far”, Majano remembers. “We rushed to the editing room and spent all day cutting out the dangerous scenes – all the anti-Fascist scenes – for that screening. That night it looked like an inquisition. They kept asking, ‘Is that all there is? Is that it?”

The movie opened in Rome and was a huge box-office success. But before long, the film came to be viewed as a sly indictment of the Mussolini regime. In addition, the portrayal of an intelligent, sexually independent heroine, groundbreaking for its time, was viewed as controversial. The film was banned by the Italian government and ordered to be destroyed. But Massimo Ferrara, the studio chief for Scalera Films, hid the original negatives with a trusted friend and sent the negatives of another Scalera production to authorities for destruction! After the war, efforts to rerelease the film were ended when Rand declined to grant the necessary literary rights. By the early 1950′s Scalera Films had gone out of business and We the living had dropped from sight.

Rediscovery

Although Ayn Rand’s novel WE THE LIVING had been a best seller for over 40 years, virtually no one in America knew of the existence of the film version made in Italy. In the 1960′s Erika and Henry Mark Holzer began representing Ayn Rand. As their professional relationship developed into a personal friendship, she told them that there was an Italian motion picture version of the novel that had disappeared after a brief theatrical run in Italy.

The Holzers decided to find the film. They began to query official Italian agencies, to no avail. The search went on and ended in the summer of 1968 when it was discovered that two Romans representing a business entity that owned dozens of vintage Italian films, had in their possession the original film, which was made In two parts, titled NOI VIVI and ADDIO KIRA.

The technical quality of the film was excellent. Using the original nitrate negatives, the Hoizers had duplicate negatives made on safety film.

World Premiere

The new version of WE THE LIVING received its world premiere at the Telluride Film festival in Colorado in 1986—the first public showing of the film outside of Italy since World War II. Soon after, it was released in theaters throughout the US, Canada, and overseas, garnering rave reviews. New York Newsday said “WE THE LIVING” qualifies in every respect as film treasure “one of the best movies of the year”; “Hugely entertaining” wrote the Los Angeles Times; and Sneak Previews called it “An amazing piece of cinema — I think you will fall under the spell of this film.”