For Liberty Lovers 'We The Living' Arrives on DVD

An extraordinary film just came out on DVD which couldn’t be more timely. It’s about a fiercely outspoken, beautiful woman trapped in a country rapidly descending into socialism, with the government steadily ratcheting up control over all aspects of life.

No, it’s not The Ann Coulter Story.

The movie is We The Living, based on the Ayn Rand novel of the same title. Rand said that We The Living “is as near to an autobiography as I will ever write.”

Conservatives and libertarians have long lamented the scarcity of movies that depict the evils of communism. Let’s see, there’s Doctor Zhivago, The Killing Fields, The Lives of Others, and… and, well, now there’s We The Living — a long-lost classic filmed in 1942, and now available on DVD for the first time ever.

WTL takes place soon after the Bolshevik takeover of Russia (which Rand experienced as a young woman). The stunning Alida Valli plays Kira, a fiery college student who detests the communists ruining her country. (Valli is perhaps best known to American audiences for her indelible performances in The Third Man and The Paradine Case.)

Kira’s formerly bourgeois family struggles to survive as the government outlaws most private trade, rations food and shelter, and implements health-care death panels. (Okay, I might be confused about that last part.)

Life is a grind for all but the politically privileged. The masses endure shortages and injustice, while well-connected Party members enjoy special treatment and profit from corruption. Everything is politicized: the economy, education, even science (as Party officials inform Kira and her fellow students).

But some forces override politics and even good sense. At college one day, secret police officer Andrei (Fosco Giachetti) overhears Kira pouring scorn on Bolshevism. Instead of arresting Kira, the officer is smitten with her. In turn Kira develops a respect for Andrei bordering on love, despite their ideological differences.

Shortly thereafter, Kira has a chance encounter with the handsome, mysterious Leo (Rossano Brazzi), a free spirit like her, hunted by the authorities. Kira and Leo have an immediate, almost animal chemistry.

This is one of the most affecting scenes in the movie, an instance of “love at first sight” made credible by the sublimity of the acting. When they agree to see each other in a month in the same spot, you can’t wait for that month to pass so you can see what happens next. From here unfolds a tragic romantic triangle marked by jealousy, deception and sacrifice.

WTL has some of Rand’s most layered characters. In her later work, a character like Andrei the communist might be portrayed as an unalloyed villain. But in WTL, Andrei gradually reveals a sensitive and decent humanity at odds with his repellent politics. (Who hasn’t encountered such paradoxes in real people?)

The story behind the movie is nearly as remarkable as the film itself, further proof there is little daylight between fascism and communism. (Jonah Goldberg, call your book editor.)

We The Living was made during World War II in Mussolini‘s Italy, of all places. The government warily allowed it to be filmed as a propaganda vehicle against the Soviet Union. But when Mussolini realized the movie was a critique not only of communism but of all forms of statism, he banned it from theatres, where it was a smash hit.

The government rounded up and destroyed all copies of the film – save one, the original negative, which was secreted away. As we are informed by the fascinating documentary (included among the DVD extras), the film’s reels languished unseen for decades until Rand’s attorneys went hunting for it among the Italian film community.

Duncan Scott, who produced the DVD release, explains how as a young editor he talked his way into recutting and subtitling the film alongside Ayn Rand herself. WTL had originally been released as two separate films. They combined them, trimmed away some of the excess, and removed or redubbed pro-fascist propaganda speeches inserted at the insistence of the authorities.

Scott tells how in the original version, Andrei delivered a heated diatribe against the evils of capitalism. Needless to say, this speech didn’t exactly belong. Not content merely to change the subtitles, Scott actually hired a sound-a-like Italian actor so he could redub the voice track in Italian to match the new subtitles.

Unfortunately the digital transfer was done in 1987, and the cost of a high-definition remastering was prohibitive for this DVD release, so the picture quality isn’t quite as crisp as one might wish. Nevertheless, it is completely watchable.

Considering the circumstances under which We The Living was made and later restored, this inspiring classic is a tremendous achievement, and a worthy addition to every liberty-lover’s DVD library — and to the too-brief list of films exposing the pitfalls of socialism in whatever form.