Set during the Spanish Civil War, Genina’s film celebrates the 70-day defence of the Alcazar fortress in Toledo by Nationalist troops under the command of General Moscardo. It is an example of a documentario romanzato or “fictional documentary”, a combination of historical facts with elements of romanticised fiction.Read More »
The story is taken from the drama “I Pescatori” (The Fishermen) by Raffaele Viviani, and is set in a fishing island off the coast of Naples (clearly identifiable with Ischia). Here lives Concetta, a widow with two children, who now lives with another man who however secretly lusts after his stepdaughter until when, on a stormy night…Read More »
Recently returned to Rome after a long imprisonment of war, doctor Paolo Marchini learns that his wife Patrizia was arrested for murder.
Three years before, not having money to treat her seriously ill child, she had consented to an appointment with a wealthy unknown gentleman, whom she had not met again ever since.
This man had showed up the night before, trying to draw on her again. Quarrel, gunshot…
Patrizia is acquitted at the trial. For the three, life begins anew.Read More »
The time is the Russian Revolution. The place is a country burdened with fear – the midnight knock at the door, the bread hidden against famine, the haunted eyes of the fleeing, the grublike fat of the appeasers and oppressors. In a bitter struggle of the individual against the collective, three people stand forth with the mark of the unconquered in their bearing: Kira, who wants to be a builder, and the two men who love her – Leo, an aristocrat, and Andrei, a Communist. In their tensely dramatic story, Ayn Rand shows what the theories of Communism mean in practice. We the Living is not a story of politics but of the men and women who have to struggle for existence behind the Red banners and slogans.Read More »