Addio Kira!

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.

I haven't watched that many Italian films made prior to the neo-realist movement but I knew of this film from "Leonard Maltin's Film Guide", so I taped it when shown on late-night TV some years ago. Though it had lain in my "VHS To Watch" pile since that time, I decided to give it a whirl now as a tribute to its leading lady Alida Valli - who died only last week!

The film's history is as convoluted as that of its narrative, which is close to 3 hours in length: the story takes place in Russia and the plot (an unauthorized adaptation of the Ayn Rand novel) naturally dealt with Communism; being a wartime production (if still handsomely mounted), it was deemed to be critical of the Fascist regime and subsequently banned! Only in 1986 was the film restored to its current form - and distributed in the U.S. to considerable success - but, unfortunately, the source print wasn't perfect (with the result that the video version suffers from some distracting fuzziness, particularly towards the end)...

Despite its epic scope, the film is decidedly talky and necessarily heavy-going in nature; but the acting (featuring perhaps romantic idol Rossano Brazzi's finest performance) is terrific and, as a whole, the narrative anticipates another troubled wartime epic - Marcel Carne''s masterpiece CHILDREN OF PARADISE (1945), particularly in the way Valli is pursued by a number of suitors throughout the film but ends up alone by the end of it.

The only other film by director Goffredo Alessandrini I've watched is ABUNA MESSIAS (1939), another historical piece but - ironically enough - a propagandist one! In the end, with all the celebrated classics that have emerged from Italy along the years by any number of influential auteurs, WE THE LIVING remains - with good reason - an important film and, undeniably, one of the most impressive (if largely unsung) ever made in that country.

This is a splendidly produced and directed allegory of Mussolini regime authoritarianism and patron-clientelism, plus then universal patriarchy, in the ostensible terms of a critique of the early Soviet regime powerfully performed -- charismatically by the young Valli and Brazzi. Rand's libertarian idealism engaging their original, biographically grounded authoritarian foils, rather than fantastic conceptions of Progressive Liberalism, yields rich, illuminating drama.

Especially striking to many contrails will be acquaintance with a Valli far more radiant than The Third Man's leading lady and the Brazzi whom the Brazzi of Summertime and South Pacific caricatured.

The film is as strikingly feminist Mizoguchi's Osaka Elegy, Cukor's 1940s Hephburn-Tracy films, or Sturges' Palm Beach Story.

Whoopsie.

I stand corrected; the title here is indeed the part II title for the original release in WW2 Italy, not a later, alternate, earlier or renamed title. Other facts are accurate to the best of my current knowledge.

Although still pretty expensive (still at this writing about twice the price of, say, "Ayn Rand: A Sense Of Life"), and not to my knowledge released in DVD yet, it's still a great buy. This film is, in addition to its unique specifics, an artifact of what I judge the superior artistic sensibility of an earlier, more civilized time. Obtain and enjoy!

This was an alternate title for "Noi Vivi" ("We The Living"), the Italian wartime filming of the 1936 novel of Ayn Rand's, which dealt with the social costs of the 'noble experiment' of Stalin's Russia. Rossano Brazzi is remembered in the States for "Three Coins In The Fountain" and "South Pacific", while Valli did at least one film with Orson Welles and Carol Reed and had a supporting role in Dario Argento's "Suspiria" (although primarily working in Italy, practically to the present day).