A message about We the Living from Bruce Beresford, the director of the Academy Award-winning Best Picture, Driving Miss Daisy.
“Thanks so much for sending the link to that amazing film. It was an astonishing achievement to have made it in Italy during the war. The acting is wonderful, and the director did an amazing job; he had to give the illusion of being in Russia without any access to that country. The characters are all convincingly Russian (to me) despite the Italian dialogue. Photography is superb, too. The restoration is first class.”
[Bruce also told us a top Hollywood producer once offered him the chance to direct an English language remake of We the Living. He turned it down. “I told him I thought the 1942 Italian film was wonderful and I wouldn’t be able to make anything as good.”]
Audience reactions to 2024 screenings of We the Living.
A letter to Ayn Rand from legendary film director, Cecil B. deMille (The Ten Commandments).
Paramount Pictures
17 February 1948
Dear Ayn:
Congratulations on a good story. I ran WE THE LIVING last night and it is a good piece of work…your dramatic build and situations of the story were excellent.
Greetings,
Cecil B. deMille