Category: The Atlasphere

BY ROBERT BIDINOTTO

Readers of Ayn Rand’s novels are no strangers to the inspirational power of fictional heroes. But new research suggests the power of these heroes may be more than merely inspirational. They can lead to real-world changes in one’s life.

Decades ago, after reading a lot of “self-help” psychological literature, I concluded that much of the advice it offered could be condensed into a single key principle, which I summarized as: You are what you dwell upon.

Recently, I read news of a fascinating study that appears to confirm this truth in an unusual way. It suggests that when we “lose ourselves” in the world of a fictional hero, we actually may be on the path to personal change.

From the news release announcing the study:

When you “lose yourself” inside the world of a fictional character while reading a story, you may actually end up changing your own behavior and thoughts to match that of the character, a new study suggests.

Researchers at Ohio State University examined what happened to people who, while reading a fictional story, found themselves feeling the emotions, thoughts, beliefs and internal responses of one of the characters as if they were their own — a phenomenon the researchers call “experience-taking.”

What is denigrated too often as hero-worship may not be an adolescent neurosis at all, but an important, even essential, component of self-improvement.

They found that, in the right situations, experience-taking may lead to real changes, if only temporary, in the lives of readers.

One of their most intriguing findings however, was that “Experience-taking doesn’t happen all the time. It only occurs when people are able, in a sense, to forget about themselves and their own self-concept and self-identity while reading,” [research leader Geoff] Kaufman said. In one experiment, for example, the researchers found that most college students were unable to undergo experience-taking if they were reading in a cubicle with a mirror.

“The more you’re reminded of your own personal identity, the less likely you’ll be able to take on a character’s identity,” Kaufman said. “You have to be able to take yourself out of the picture, and really lose yourself in the book in order to have this authentic experience of taking on a character’s identity.”

We all know, introspectively, the inspirational power of fiction, but this study appears to provide empirical confirmation of it. I found their experiment with the mirror particularly intriguing, as a window on how reading fiction may facilitate actual personal change. Perhaps we must lose ourselves by entering the world of — and walking in the shoes of — some model character, before we can “replace” our current self with a new and better one. If so, then what is denigrated too often as hero-worship may not be an adolescent neurosis at all, but an important, even essential, component of self-improvement.

A couple years ago, I discussed how heroic fiction shaped my own character development. I wrote, in part:

Growing up in a dying mill town in western Pennsylvania was an oppressive experience. And in our blue-collar home, there were few windows that opened to a world of wider possibilities.

That wasn’t my parents’ fault. Their lives had been brutally tough, their own horizons painfully limited. My dad was born on a nearby farm and never made it to high school. For many years, he worked with his hands — stone mason, soldier in WWII, carpenter, railroad brakeman. Mom never finished school, either. She displayed early signs of musical talent, but there was no money for piano lessons. She spent her young adulthood on the assembly line at the “the pottery” — the local china factory.

After the war, they met, married, and settled in a tiny ranch house. Later, they bought and ran a local tavern, to help put my brother and me through college. They worked like mules; there was little time for anything else. So, culture was an unknown. There were no books in our house. We didn’t go to plays or concerts. The local radio stations featured farm reports and Patsy Cline.

Like most parents of that generation, they desperately wanted their kids to have more than they did, so they valued education. But the local offerings were limited. Each morning, I rode an old yellow bus with bad shocks to a school where the biggest club was the Future Farmers of America. I was eternally lucky that the school had a quirky librarian with political passions, an art teacher who played classical recordings during class, and an unforgettable history teacher who opened my mind to the world of ideas.

I can’t tell you how important such experiences were to a lonely little kid with a big imagination, growing up in that four-room ranch house.

But the cultural inspiration of my youth came from the TV action heroes of the 1950s.

As a toddler, I became addicted to TV. Mom would park me in my little walker in front of our massive Philco. She told me that somehow I figured out when my favorite shows would come on, and I would scoot the whole walker forward to change the channels. That small screen introduced me to the concept of vigilante heroes — appropriately, in black and white.

My earliest imprinted images of manhood included the Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers, Robin Hood, the Range Rider, Hopalong Cassidy, Wyatt Earp, “Lash” LaRue, “Cheyenne,” and Tarzan. There was a Saturday serial cliffhanger featuring the adventures of an amazing guy with a “jet pack” on his back, “Commando Cody.” Meanwhile, Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse Club served up a regular diet of Zorro and Davy Crockett.

And then there was Superman. Boy, did I love Superman.

Later, I discovered other comic-book heroes — vigilantes all. There was Batman (still my favorite), the Flash, the Green Lantern, Aquaman, the Phantom, and Spider-Man. Novels — especially science fiction and action thrillers — came along later, during adolescence.

I can’t tell you how important such experiences were to a lonely little kid with a big imagination, growing up in that four-room ranch house. Those heroes told me that life didn’t have to be a series of boring, empty routines. That there was more to the world than the claustrophobic rural township where I grew up. That the universe was a huge place filled with adventure and romance, open to infinite, exciting possibilities.

But, most importantly, that you always had to stand up for justice.

Like millions of other kids from that era, I took all this very seriously.

I still do.

In college, I fell in love with the heroic action thrillers of writers like Alistair MacLean, Mickey Spillane, Desmond Bagley, Donald Hamilton, and Don Pendleton. My current favorites include Lee Child, Stephen Hunter, Robert Crais, Brad Thor, Vince Flynn, Jack Higgins, Nelson DeMille, and Robert B. Parker. Significantly, most of their stories feature lone-wolf, “vigilante”-type heroes.

Of all genres of popular fiction, action thrillers are my favorite, because they present an extravagant, open-ended, no-limits vision of human potential. Just as TV, film, and comic-book heroes can spark passion and idealism in children, thrillers can keep the fires of that passion and idealism burning in adults — at least, in those adults who have not surrendered to cynicism.

Hunter: A Thriller by Robert Bidinotto

In 2011, I wrote and published my own debut novel, HUNTER: A Thriller, which went on to become a national bestseller. It is the first in a projected series of fast-paced, romantic crime thrillers that dramatize individualist philosophical perspectives on controversial current issues.

But more importantly, I created its tough-guy hero — a “philosophical vigilante” named Dylan Lee Hunter — to be an idealized model of individualist values.

Those who know me from nearly half a century of writing nonfiction about politics and philosophy may wonder: Why have I rebooted my career to become a thriller writer? Some may believe it’s a step down: that “philosophical” writing is far more important and has much greater impact on the world — assuming that is my primary goal.

In response, I recall what Ayn Rand wrote in The Romantic Manifesto about how to communicate moral ideas and ideals most effectively:

An exhaustive philosophical treatise defining moral values, with a long list of virtues to be practiced, will not do it; it will not convey what an ideal man would be like and how he would act: no mind can deal with so immense a sum of abstractions… Hence, the sterile, uninspiring futility of a great many theoretical discussions of ethics…

Art is the indispensable medium for the communication of a moral ideal.

Observe that every religion has a mythology — a dramatized concretization of its moral code embodied in the figures of men who are its ultimate product… This does not mean that art is a substitute for philosophical thought: without a conceptual theory of ethics, an artist would not be able successfully to concretize an image of the ideal. But without the assistance of art, ethics remains in the position of theoretical engineering: art is the model-builder. (“The Psycho-Epistemology of Art”)

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The Romantic Manifesto by Ayn Rand (cover image from audiobook)

Even so, some might dismiss the thriller genre, specifically, as the literary equivalent of junk food. How could such “popular escapism” impart important ideals to readers?

Well, as far as escapism goes, all works of fiction — including those with literary pretensions — transport the reader into imaginary worlds. Certainly, a mental journey into an imaginary world can offer a few hours’ reprieve from boring routines and unhappiness, if such happens to be your chronic state. Call that an escape, if you will.

However, for the ambitious soul, fiction offers more than an escape: It provides road maps and fuel to set out on one’s own real-life journey to a different, better place. And, as the Ohio State study appears to confirm, it can provide the morally ambitious soul with even more: the inspiration, insights, and examples to become a different, better person.

For the ambitious soul, fiction offers more than an escape: It provides road maps and fuel to set out on one’s own real-life journey to a different, better place.

It also implies the critical importance of what we choose each day to feed to our souls — not only in terms of art, but also in terms of experiences and personal associations.

Excuse-makers who minimize personal responsibility may claim that a person who does something bad was “influenced by his peers.” But we choose the influential company that we keep. Likewise, we also choose the influential company that we keep when we pick up a novel or watch a film.

If “you are what you dwell upon,” then what should you choose to dwell upon?

Those who craft heroic, visionary fiction present us models of what individuals should aspire to become. During challenging times, in life and in history, what work could possibly be more important, or intellectually meaningful, than that?

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A long-time author of nonfiction books, essays, and reviews, Robert Bidinotto is author of HUNTER, which became the number-one Kindle bestseller in “Mysteries and Thrillers” and a Wall Street Journal “Top Ten Fiction Ebook.” HUNTER is available at Amazon.com in print and in a Kindle ebook edition. It is also available in a new audiobook edition from Audible.com, from Amazon.com, and from iTunes. Bidinotto currently is at work on the second in the Dylan Hunter thriller series, BAD DEEDS. You can follow him on his blog, “The Vigilante Author,” and on Facebook.

BY KURT KEEFNER

Human beings are the most fascinating things in the known universe. Nowhere is their beauty more evident than in the characters portrayed in great novels, movies, paintings, and sculptures. What makes these characters so meaningful? What do they reveal about life — and about ourselves?

About 20 years ago my wife and I were walking through the Metropolitan Museum of Art, when, at the end of a corridor, I came upon a bust of Julius Caesar. It was made about 500 years ago by Andrea Ferrucci. He seemed so real, I felt a jolt when I saw him.

The statue portrays Caesar at the age of 45 or 50, showing some wrinkles, but still quite vigorous. He’s a good looking man: thin, broad forehead, direct eyes, beautiful Roman nose, nice mouth, smallish jaw with a slightly prominent chin and a long neck. He’s wearing a magnificent breastplate with a screaming Medusa — to turn his enemies to stone, presumably — and a Roman eagle.

But it’s the expression Ferrucci gave Caesar that really impressed me. He has his head a little cocked as if he’s curious and amused. His eyes are intense, with creases at the corners and he is looking off to one side as if something had gotten his attention. His mouth is a little compressed, as if he is in control of himself. Overall he looks confident and composed, but also as if he is able to see the humor in things. He seems self-aware and self-assured.

Because of its casual posture and carved-in pupils and irises, the bust looks less stiff than most other statues, more natural. Yet it is a masterpiece of stylization. Ferrucci’s Caesar is idealized, compared to the traditional representation of the dictator as balding and maybe a bit past his prime. But the expression represents a triumph of characterization. I don’t know whether it is what Julius Caesar was actually like, but it is definitely the image of some kind of greatness.

The real Julius Caesar is not a hero of mine. He had many virtues, but he was an agent of Rome’s loss of freedom. The person in the bust, however, is a hero to me. You look at him and say “There is a man.” Nietzsche thought the real Caesar was a superman. I’m not sure I buy that concept, but this depiction does make the idea plausible.

However, it’s not greatness or heroism per se that most fascinates me about the bust. It’s another quality, which I have trouble pinning down. I call it the “exquisite.” It refers to a kind of perfection of character, so particular that it could be real and at the same time almost archetypal.

For example, the character of Howard Roark, in The Fountainhead, is exquisite. It’s not that he’s morally perfect; he keeps helping Keating, for example, when he shouldn’t. And it’s not that he’s psychologically perfect, either. Actually Roark is practically a freak. We’re talking about a man who is surprised to find himself thinking about a woman the day after he has sex with her for the first time.

He’s interesting because he’s a freak. What makes him special is he does not start out all tangled up with other people as the rest of us are. He has to learn to be connected. That learning process is an exquisite thing to watch.

Caesar was morally ambiguous and Roark was good, but I even appreciate, if that’s the right word, exquisiteness in the portrayal of evil. In The Fountainhead, Ellsworth Toohey and Gail Wynand are both exquisite characters. Toohey gets the best dialogue Rand ever wrote. Wynand gets the second best.

Also on the evil side, I love Vito Corleone in The Godfather. Ever since the movie came out in 1972, Don Corleone has had a grip on the American mind. For a while, all young men had a Godfather impression. That’s because people sensed, without having the concept, that he was exquisite.

Interestingly, there’s a connection between Corleone and Caesar. According to the novel, Vito chose a path of crime because he refused to have his greatness crushed by a corrupt society. Furthermore, given his criminal behavior, Corleone is actually quite reasonable, and his evil deeds are tempered by his “family values.”

Corleone is also somewhat similar to Wynand, and both are romanticized notions of bad people. Real criminals, of course, are not generally so pure in their motives and are not exquisite.

All the examples I have discussed so far have been great men, in the sense of being larger-than-life human beings of superior ability. But an exquisite character need not be great in this sense, nor a man.

Take for example the character of Ripley as portrayed by Sigourney Weaver in the first Alien movie. She is a thinking person. She is not reactive. She is healthily assertive with the men on the spaceship. But she’s just a second officer on a towing vessel.

Still, I look at her and say “There is a woman!” And it’s not just the climactic duel between her and the alien that makes me say so. She’s admirable throughout the story. Sure, it’s just science fiction, but her character is still indelible.

Ripley is still impressive as a great survivor, even if she is not a “great woman” in a general sense. But greatness need not be a feature of the exquisite character at all. Take another of my favorite film personages: Jean Brodie in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

The story concerns a teacher at a private school for girls in 1930s Scotland. Jean tries to make her charges into something above the run of the mill, tries to bring some refinement into their lives. Unfortunately, this includes showing slides of her Italian vacation when she is supposed to be teaching history. Even more unfortunately, it includes her sharing her admiration for the Italian dictator Mussolini.

Jean is what I call a “pretender.” She adopts a false sense of life, not as a pose for others, but to try to become something she’s not. (I write at length about the pretender type in my forthcoming book Killing Cool.) The false sense of life that Jean adopts is one of “sophistication.” She believes in art and that all of her little girls are “the crème de la crème.” Jean, played artfully by Maggie Smith, is an exquisite example of the pretender.

But even Jean Brodie is still a formidable person. Exquisiteness can co-exist with vulnerability, too, and then it becomes a thing so piquant that it’s breathtaking. Look at this painting. It’s the sketch for “Alone Together,” and it’s by realist painter Maria Kreyn, who is based in New York.

I’ve given a lot of thought to what I love about this painting. I tried to look at it as I did the bust of Caesar. The woman is comforting the man, her fingers in his hair as he lays his head in the crook of her neck. She is not looking at him. She is looking off to one side, like Caesar, but I don’t think she’s looking at something specific. I think she’s looking at a source of her own private sorrow. She may share that sorrow with the man, but the pain is her own.

She is vulnerable, not controlled: her lips are parted. He skin is very pale and delicate, also a sign of vulnerability. She almost looks as if she is going to cry, but she doesn’t look like she’s breaking down. She just looks like she’s living with it, whatever it is. She seems present to her feelings.

Now I certainly don’t worship pain. But this woman is beautiful in her suffering. I almost imagine that this is a couple who has lost a child.

I love how a representation of a person can mix unexpected, even paradoxical, qualities and not come out just a muddle.

Some sadness is part of life. The only way you can avoid it is to withdraw from caring in a stoical or Buddhist fashion or to adopt some kind of Pollyannaish “It all happens for the best” attitude. But how much more life-affirming is it to face pain and go on? This painting shows us the answer to that question. That is its gift.

It’s very difficult for me to describe exactly what exquisiteness is and why I am in love with. It’s almost a cognitive thing rather than a moral quality: I love the perfect example of some human quality, even if it is not a morally admirable or happy quality. I love how a representation of a person can mix unexpected, even paradoxical, qualities and not come out just a muddle. I don’t belong to the cult of moral grayness, but freakish, ambiguous and even evil characters can be exquisitely subtle and therefore cognitively engaging.

Good art shows us what is possible for human beings, for better or worse. The best art gives us not just an abstraction of a single characteristic but a concretized embodiment of that trait, with all the individual notes. Roark is not an allegory of independence, but a fully realized person, freakish in his separateness, loyal to the earth, naïve at the novel’s opening when it comes to people. The unexpected, yet logical, juxtaposition of these traits and many others makes him seem real and at the same time becomes a whole too integrated to reduce to a philosophical abstraction.

I would compare exquisiteness to Rand’s concept of a “sense of life.” One could say that a person has a joyous or a tragic sense of life, just as one could say that Roark embodies the virtue of independence. But the individual notes that make a person unrepeatable would be missing. The joyous person always has something else going on, too: something a little mischievous, some silent wonder, a patient wisdom. And so it is with the exquisite character; that’s what makes him a presence.

The exquisite is a dimension of beauty that counts for a lot, sometimes even more than classical beauty or the sublime or even a moral ideal. The exquisite promises us that we will not fizzle out into a tepid gray puddle, but will continue to be interesting and alive. The exquisite energizes the mind by showing it what subtleties it is capable of grasping.

Human beings are the most fascinating thing in the known universe. Their specialness is prior to philosophy and, in a way, transcends it. Look at how Rand’s positive characters struggle to find philosophy. They are already something beautiful, if sometimes tortured, before they do find it. Roark never does find a full-fledged philosophy, just some isolated bits of truth. Ah, but there is a man!

This way of looking at things leads to passion, and it is passion that makes one want to live, rather than merely not wanting to die.

We need to remind ourselves that philosophy serves life, not the other way around. Philosophy helps our natural inclinations find their proper ends, but those natural inclinations and our passion for living do not descend from philosophy — they motivate it. This way of looking at things leads to passion, and it is passion that makes one want to live, rather than merely not wanting to die.

The Reader’s Digest used to run a feature called “My Most Unforgettable Character.” At the risk of trivializing my meaning, I will say that that’s what I’m talking about: the most distinctive and impressive kinds of human beings, good or bad, happy or sad, pure or mixed. Such characters provide us with reassurance that we as a species are not ordinary, drab, and merely “nice.” They are pinnacles.

I’d like to know what you think. Do you believe in the idea of an unforgettable character who transcends good and bad? Was Francis Bacon right when he said, “There is no excellent beauty, that hath not some strangeness in the proportion”? Please leave a message about one of your most unforgettable characters.

Kurt Keefner is a writer and teacher who studied philosophy at the University of Chicago. He lives near Washington, DC with his wife. His first book, Killing Cool, will be published in early 2013. His recent essay “Free Will: A Response to Sam Harris” is available from Amazon. Visit his blog at kurtkeefner.com.

BY DON HAUPTMAN

This month marks the 70th anniversary of the first public exhibition of the great Italian film version of Ayn Rand’s first novel, We the Living. The story of how the movie was originally made, and of the events that followed, are as dramatic and compelling as fiction. Here’s an insider’s account.

On September 14, 1942, the Italian film version of Ayn Rand’s We the Living premiered at the Venice Film Festival. It won a major festival award, a standing ovation, and considerable praise from reviewers.

This month is, therefore, the 70th anniversary of the movie’s debut. It’s an appropriate occasion to celebrate this superb film, its “lost years” and rediscovery, and its subsequent restoration and theatrical release here in America in the late 1980s. I’ve been involved with the project since that last stage, and the following is my look back at a remarkable cinematic odyssey.

We the Living, first published in 1936, was Ayn Rand’s first novel. Set in Russia during the 1920s, the chaotic years following the Communist Revolution, it’s a powerful love story on an epic scale.

The plot involves a passionate romantic triangle that unfolds against a background of world-changing events. Kira, an engineering student, is fiercely independent, determined, and rebellious. She’s at odds not only with a corrupt, collectivist society, but also with her conventional, middle-class family. Kira is torn between Leo, a counter-revolutionary fugitive, and Andrei, a disillusioned captain of the secret police. A forbidden love affair, jealousy, deception, and betrayal ensue.

Those are the concretes of the story. But as with all great literature, the book has wider and more profound implications. As Rand wrote in her foreword to the 1958 edition of the book: “It is a novel about Man against the State. Its basic theme is the sanctity of human life….” These ideas are important, universal, and enduring.

In 1926, Rand had arrived in America, having escaped the bleak tyranny of Soviet Russia. The world she depicted in the novel was based on her own first-hand experiences, although the characters and plot were largely the products of her imagination. Still, she called it “as near to an autobiography as I will ever write. It is not an autobiography in the literal, but only in the intellectual, sense.”

The book did not sell well initially, and became successful only decades later, after Rand became famous as author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.

How an “impossible” film came to be.

If these events were presented as fiction, they would probably be dismissed as too far fetched.

Mussolini’s cronies thought it would be a good idea to authorize a film that would serve as anti-Soviet propaganda, whipping up its citizens against its enemy.

The time: World War II. The place: Italy, led by Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. Back then, America and Soviet Russia were allies, fighting the Axis powers, Italy and Germany.

Mussolini’s cronies thought it would be a good idea to authorize a film that would serve as anti-Soviet propaganda, whipping up its citizens against its enemy. An Italian translation of the novel had been published in 1937 and had been popular, so the notion must have seemed logical.

In 1940, Cinecittà, a major Italian studio, negotiated with Ayn Rand’s representatives for the film rights to the novel. Not surprisingly, the rights were denied. The following year, Italy and America were at war, which created an obstacle to further negotiations. The authorities were unconcerned, though, and the year after that, production began at another studio, Scalera. The film, then, was made without authorization. To phrase it more bluntly, Rand’s intellectual property was stolen.

But a wonderful irony was at work — a twist that ultimately defeated the Fascists at their own game.

What the officials didn’t understand was that, as noted above, Rand wrote in universal terms. She called We the Living “a story about Dictatorship, any dictatorship, anywhere, at any time….” Thus, the ideas expressed in the film had the potential to undermine the Fascists’ own totalitarian regime.

We’ll get to that dramatic turn of events momentarily. First, let’s introduce the film’s performers and creative people, most of whom were assembled by Massimo Ferrara, Scalera’s general manager and legal counsel.

The film was superbly cast. Kira was played by Alida Valli, Leo by Rossano Brazzi, Andrei by Fosco Giachetti. It was early in the careers of Valli and Brazzi — both of them young, good looking, talented.

As Kira, Valli is gorgeous and enthralling, and her performance has been widely praised. She ultimately made more than 100 films, including Luchino Visconti’s influential Senso. Hollywood tried to turn Valli into an American star, even billing her, like Garbo, by her last name only. Orson Welles and David O. Selznick were both wild about her. But she didn’t become popular here. Among her films in the U.S. were The Paradine Case, perhaps Hitchcock’s least interesting production, and the treacly Miracle of the Bells, which usually shows up on TV every Christmas. She appeared in one English-language film that has become a classic: The Third Man.

Brazzi also had a long performing career. He is best known to American audiences as the star of South Pacific, the film version of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. His other English-language films include The Barefoot Contessa, Summertime, and Three Coins in the Fountain.

Giachetti, though never well known in America, was at the time Italy’s number-one box-office star, which is probably why he was cast. But at 38 — or perhaps 42, as accounts of his birth date vary — and looking even older, he was well beyond the age of the Andrei in Rand’s novel. Still, his performance is so compelling that you quickly suspend disbelief.

Minor roles were also well cast. Some extras and crew members were White Russians, former members of the Czarist nobility who were living in exile in Italy. Their contributions surely lent authenticity to the film. Raf Vallone had an uncredited bit part as a sailor, his first film role.

The director was Goffredo Alessandrini. Aside from We the Living, Alessandrini is best remembered today for being married to Anna Magnani. The fine musical score (containing two dramatic leitmotifs I often find myself humming) was by Renzo Rossellini, brother of famed director Roberto.

In an interview, Ferrara told a surprising story. When he experienced difficulty getting the project approved by the Fascist officials who controlled the movie industry, he enlisted the aid of his friend Vittorio Mussolini, son of the dictator and a film producer himself. With the intercession of this VIP, the necessary approvals were obtained.

Though the officials were evidently clueless about the story’s message, the people making the film knew exactly what they were doing.

An earlier screenplay had departed from the book so egregiously that the director had rejected it. There was no time to commission a new one. Decades later, Brazzi recalled, “We made the picture without a script — just following the book. Majano [Anton Giulio Majano, credited as screenwriter] and Alessandrini wrote the day before what we were going to do the day after.”

This expedient technique had an unintended but ultimately happy result: It made the film far more faithful to Rand’s novel than if teams of scriptwriters had had the opportunity and time to tinker with the original source.

The schedule was grueling: four and a half months of shooting, sometimes requiring 14-hour days. When censors visited, a set of innocuous scenes was quickly cobbled together and screened for them. Reportedly, they were always satisfied and departed without suspicions.

Italian audiences flock to a surprise hit.

In November of 1942, when We the Living opened in Rome — and then throughout Italy — audiences were entranced by the story of three young people courageously defying the state.

The original film ran four hours — so long that it was released in two parts, with the titles Noi Vivi and Addio, Kira. After a few weeks, both were playing simultaneously in different theaters in Rome. People watched the first part, then raced across town for the second, some wearing buttons depicting the film’s stars. We the Living was a huge box-office success. Moreover, it was promptly “accepted as a masterpiece,” Ferrara recalled.

In perhaps the most amazing turn of events, the film was screened in Berlin for Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t much like it. But his main objection was that the Soviets weren’t portrayed negatively enough.

Back in Italy, audiences got the point. They quickly recognized that the film was a clever indictment of the Mussolini regime. But it was too good to last. Several months later, the authorities finally figured things out. They issued an injunction ordering the film’s seizure and destruction.

Fortunately, however, the original negatives were hidden in the cellar of one of the crew members. According to one version of events, someone cagily pulled a switch, substituting another film among those en route to be burned.

Lost … and found.

Fast forward to May of 1946. The war had ended the year before. Ayn Rand learned that her book had been ripped off. Understandably, she was furious and contacted her attorney to discuss taking legal action.

A year later, she saw the film for the first time. Then, in July of 1947, Valli and Brazzi visited America and gave her a first-hand report. In 1950, Rand filed a claim against the Italian government. It took until 1961, but she finally received an out-of-court settlement of $23,000 (more than $300,000 in today’s dollars). She decided to use the windfall extravagantly, buying a mink coat and other luxuries. For more details on these events, in her own words, see Letters of Ayn Rand (Dutton, 1995).

In 1966, Rand told Henry Mark Holzer and Erika Holzer, who were her lawyers and friends, about the film. They were intrigued and excited, and they resolved to track it down. They made several trips to Italy, meeting with various intermediaries and “fixers.” Finally, two years later, their search paid off. They were connected with a pair of Romans who claimed to possess the film.

Hank and Erika wanted proof, so one of the Romans offered to drive them to a screening room. Not until they reached their destination did they discover that the film was in the car’s trunk — and that they had been traveling on Rome’s bumpy roads with a dangerous passenger: nitrate film stock. Common at the time but later abandoned, nitrate film is highly flammable and capable of “auto-igniting.”

Ayn Rand wrote, “The picture is quite good and the performance of the girl in the starring part is magnificent.”

Fortunately, everyone survived, as did We the Living. The Holzers purchased the negatives, immediately had them duplicated on “safety film,” and brought them back to America.

What did Ayn Rand think of this pirated version of her novel? In a letter to her friend Isabel Paterson in February of 1948, she wrote: “The picture is quite good and the performance of the girl in the starring part is magnificent….” She discussed the possibility of exhibiting the film in America, as long as certain changes were made. And she recognized the drama inherent in the unintended demonstration of the parallels between Italian Fascism and Soviet Communism, shrewdly suggesting that this would make a good publicity hook.

In 1969, restoration and re-editing began. Rand personally supervised the process, working with Duncan Scott, a young Objectivist who later became a Hollywood producer-director. Together, they watched the film on a Moviola — a now-antique device, equipped with a tiny screen, that allows a film to be viewed and spliced, frame by frame. Rand, a former screenwriter, instantly understood the craft of editing and offered intelligent guidance on cuts and other changes. Once again, she expressed her admiration for the film and for Valli’s performance as Kira, telling Duncan, “The girl is perfect.”

But why did the film need to be edited?

First, as mentioned above, it was almost four hours, and American theater owners weren’t receptive to films of that length. Rand’s view was that that if cuts had to be made, it was preferable to remove the subplots and keep the main storyline intact. Even more important, some Fascist propaganda had been inserted after all. To rectify that problem, Duncan flew to Italy and hired an actor to re-record the audio in problematic scenes to be consistent with the novel. And of course, all the dialogue had to be translated into English and turned into subtitles.

In the early 1970’s, Rand, for personal reasons, found it difficult to continue collaborating on the editing. Duncan and the Holzers were reluctant to proceed without her participation. Because the film was initially made without her involvement or approval, they were hesitant to, in effect, repeat that offense. So everything was put on hold.

After Rand died in 1982, work on the project resumed.

This is where I come in. I’m a longtime admirer of Ayn Rand’s fiction and philosophy. In 1984, We the Living, still a work in progress, was to be screened privately in New York City, where I live. I had encountered mentions of the film in Objectivist publications, but knew almost nothing about it. A friend of mine, Dyanne Petersen, who was also a friend of the Holzers, invited me to the screening. I still remember Dyanne’s words: “Hank and Erika told me I can bring one guest — and you’re it!”

The film had not yet been subtitled. For close to three hours, Duncan stood in the back of the screening room and recited the English dialogue, working from a bilingual script. Occasionally, the audience saw red and green splotches appear on frames — temporary marks used in the editing process.

Yet even viewed under these less-than-ideal circumstances, I knew that this film was extraordinary. Afterward, Dyanne and I asked the Holzers if they were seeking investors. They were. We each took a small stake. (Dyanne, a longtime libertarian activist, worked tirelessly on the film’s distribution and promotion. She died unexpectedly in 2003. Many of us loved her and still miss her.)

My career is advertising, so it made sense for me to volunteer to write copy and handle some of the film’s marketing and publicity. Once a mere cinephile, I was suddenly behind the scenes of an important motion picture. It turned out to be one of the most exciting intellectual adventures of my life.

The show goes on.

Initially, We the Living was screened to acclaim at several major film festivals — in Boston, Miami, and Telluride, Colorado. The objective of filmmakers who attend these events is to find distributors and exhibitors.

In 1988 and ’89, the restored version of the film played in theaters in 75 cities. Not a bad run for a little-known independent movie, almost three hours long, in black-and-white and a foreign language.

A young fellow visiting from Australia was such a enthusiastic fan that he followed the film from city to city, just as groupies trail their favorite touring rock bands.

Here in Manhattan, it played for several months at two small indie theaters or “art houses”: the Bleecker Street Cinema in Greenwich Village and the Carnegie Hall Cinema, both now sadly gone.

Having recently watched the film several times, I didn’t need to see it again. But the evening it opened at the latter venue, I walked a few blocks from my apartment to a restaurant directly across the street. (Yes, the theater was in the same building as that Carnegie Hall.) At 7:30, I found a table near the window, ordered coffee, and watched the queue. Toward 8, I strolled to the box office, asked for a ticket, and was told, “I’m sorry, sir; this screening is sold out.” I waited a beat, then said to the befuddled clerk: “Good!”

How about the reviews?

Predictably, critics at a few liberal newspapers in New York and Los Angeles panned the film. But in America’s “heartland,” reviewers were far more positive. Indeed, when I wrote the advertising materials, it was often difficult to select blurbs to quote, because so many were ecstatic. Here’s a sampling:

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s William Arnold raved: “A lush, romantic, bigger-than-life epic filled with movie-star performances.” The Cleveland Plain Dealer’s Joanna Connors called it “one of the two big film history events of the year.” The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Carrie Rickey praised the film as “a passionate epic” with “wonderful performances.” New York Newsday’s Mike McGrady noted the “dazzling performances” and wrote that the film “qualifies in every respect as film treasure…. Director Alessandrini brilliantly blends glamour, romance, politics, intrigue and danger.” Michael Medved called it “an amazing piece of cinema. I loved every minute of it.”

Many of the reviews contained this accurate statement: “They don’t make movies like We the Living anymore.”

The film was exhibited in other countries — Canada, England, Australia — also to favorable media notices. Duncan even took it to Moscow. That, in a way, brought the film and the book full circle. Unfortunately, Rand didn’t live long enough to witness the end of the Soviet Union she so abhorred, nor to see the film in its final restored form.

As for viewer reactions, my impression is that most people love the film, even those who aren’t admirers of Ayn Rand’s ideas or her later novels.

Over the course of more than a quarter of a century, I’ve often speculated about this phenomenon. Why does We the Living, both novel and film, resonate with so many? My theory: Rand wrote the book before she had developed the philosophy she called Objectivism, some of the tenets of which are, to say the least, controversial. But who could object to the inspiring story of three young people struggling to find happiness and freedom in a soul-crushing collectivist society? Of all Rand’s works, We the Living may be the most accessible and appealing.

In 1993, I was introduced to Jerry Vermilye, an editor at TV Guide. Jerry was writing a book called Great Italian Films (Citadel, 1994). We supplied him with background information and stills. When the book was published, there was Noi Vivi/We the Living in the company of the classic films of Bertolucci, De Sica, Fellini, and others.

Video keeps the film alive.

After the theatrical run ended, We the Living was released on VHS and LaserDisc. In 2009, the DVD came out, including a bunch of special features — see the description below.

Reviews for the video were equally enthusiastic. At Forbes.com, Cathy Young wrote: “Valli is luminous…. Brazzi is perfect as the dashing, arrogant, charismatic Leo. Their onscreen chemistry sizzles, and this pair alone makes the film worth watching…. The story’s central themes of individual freedom, the power of the human spirit and resistance to tyranny are truly timeless.”

This is certainly the best film version of an Ayn Rand novel.

I may be biased, but I think We the Living is one of the best films ever made. I’ve seen it at least ten times and it gets better with every viewing. The dramatic arc, the performances, direction, cinematography, music — everything is beautifully done.

This is certainly the best film version of an Ayn Rand novel. It’s yet another strange irony in a story filled with ironies. After all, it was made without Rand’s permission or participation. In contrast, she wrote the screenplay for The Fountainhead, was frequently on the set, and had at least some influence on that production.

As a tyro movie producer of sorts, I may never recoup my investment. Still, if I were offered a magical way to undo my involvement, I wouldn’t agree. Having played a small role in bringing this masterpiece to new audiences, and in the process disseminating Ayn Rand’s ideas and vision, was an honor and a high point of my life.

Consider all the elements….

A riveting, heroic story of the eternal battle for individual liberty against the oppressive fist of the state. Filmed illegally under the noses of tyrants unconsciously sabotaging their own regime. Banned. Lost. Rediscovered and restored. It’s a tale no one could have invented. Ayn Rand’s epic film romance lives on, 70 years later. If you haven’t yet seen it, I envy you for your first experience of We the Living on screen.

IMPORTANT NOTE: I want to express my gratitude to Duncan Scott (see his 2003 Atlasphere interview about the film) as well as Erika and Henry Mark Holzer, all of whom have put an enormous amount of time and effort into the rediscovery and restoration of We the Living, entirely as a labor of love, over the course of half a century. From all of us who treasure this magnificent film: Thank you!