with Duncan Scott
In this podcast episode with Duncan Scott, we explore the unlikely survival of We the Living: its production in Fascist Italy, its suppression and near-destruction, its rediscovery in Italy decades later, the restoration process with Ayn Rand’s involvement, and the stories behind the scenes. It’s a conversation about lost art, political power, and why this film still deserves an audience.
Watch the remastered film trailer.
We the Living
“The only hero she had known was a Viking whose story she had read as a child; a Viking whose eyes never looked farther than the point of his sword, but there was no boundary for the point of his sword; a Viking who walked through life, breaking barriers and reaping victories, who walked through ruins while the sun made a crown over his head, but he walked, light and straight, without noticing its weight; a Viking who laughed at kings, who laughed at priests, who looked at heaven only when he bent for a drink over a mountain brook and there, over-shadowing the sky, he saw his own picture; a Viking who lived but for the joy and the wonder and the glory of the god that was himself.”
- Ayn Rand, We the Living.