We the Living
Brief Synopsis
Cast & Crew
Goffredo Alessandrini
Alida Valli
Rossano Brazzi
Fosco Giachetti
Giovanni Grasso
Emilio Cigoli
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
Doomed love within a corrupt political world. At 18, the beautiful and smart Kira comes to Petersburg as the Communists consolidate power. She rebuffs a cousin who rises in the Party and may remember the slight. She falls in love with Leo, the son of an aristocrat, who gets into political trouble and never gets out. Meanwhile, a Party leader, Andrei, also loves her, and she feigns love for him to get political protection for Leo and money to pay for his TB treatment. But can Leo forgive her being Andrei's mistress? Subplots dramatize Party corruption, the disillusion of those who fought hardest in the revolution, and reflections on the man's individual nature.
Director
Goffredo Alessandrini
Cast
Alida Valli
Rossano Brazzi
Fosco Giachetti
Giovanni Grasso
Emilio Cigoli
Cesarina Gheraldi
Mario Pisu
Guglielmo Sinaz
Gero Zambuto
Annibale Betrone
Elvira Betrone
Sylvia Manto
Claudia Marti
Evelina Paoli
Gina Sanmarco
Lamberto Picasso
Sennuccio Benelli
Gioia Collei
Bianca Doria
Crew
Giorgio Abkhasi
Corrado Alvaro
Andrea Beloborodoff
Leone Bioli
Amleto Bonetti
Giuseppe Cavacciolo
Piero Cavazutti
Giorgio Cristallini
Eraldo Da Roma
Helen Eisenman
Rosi Gori
Erika Holzer
Erika Holzer
Henry Mark Holzer
Isabelle Ichay
Franco Magi
Franco Magli
Anton Giulio Majano
Anton Giulio Majano
Tullo Parmegiani
Ayn Rand
Renzo Rossellini
Duncan Scott
Duncan Scott
Orio Vergani
Film Details
Technical Specs
Quotes
Trivia
The film is based on the novel "We the living" by American author Ayn Rand. Director Gofferdo Alessandrini read it and thought it would make an excellent epic, but Italy was at war with the United States and acquiring rights to the novel would be a major obstacle. Following the then laisser-faire attitude regarding what seemed at the time trivial matters, Alessandrini and screenwriter Anton Majano, decided to simply use the novel and base their screenplay on it. Whilst he was working on another film (_Nozze di sangue_ ), Scalera Film, the production company, asked several other writers to rewrite scenes and dialogues from the existing screenplay, but the final draft ended up being so different from Alessandrini and Majano's original screenplay that they both decided to start shooting without a script and just follow the book. They wrote the scenes at night and handed them over to the actors in the morning. As weeks went by it soon became evident that it would take longer than the customary three weeks of shooting to finish this film and that there was also enough material for two films. But nothing was said to the actors, as they probably would have requested to be paid double. Despite the fact that Rand's book is an overt criticism of the communist regime and ideology, the fascist Ministry of Culture soon became aware that Alessandrini was also using the film as a platform to criticise the Mussolini government. The shooting was interrupted several times by fascist officials who demanded to see the rushes, but Alessandrini had two edited copies of the film, one that would be in line with the fascist ideology and another one which reflected his own vision of the story. In September 1942, after nearly five months of shooting, the film was completed and presented at the Venice Film Festival where it received the highest accolade and was awarded the Volpe Cup. It went on general release in November of the same year as two separate films, "Noi Vivi" and Addio Kira! (1942) and proved to be a resounding success with the I
