p 　　Whenever I see La Paura I think of it as a companion piece to Eyes Wide Shut, or maybe it is the other way around Adultery makes both films tick but in different ways I think Phillip French was right on the money when he pointed out a Wizard of Oz thing in Kubrick 三九 s last work Like Dorothy, Tom and Nicole go through fantasies and nightmares and at the end Dorothy 三九 s reassuring childish motto quot there 三九 s no place like home quot is ironically updated to the adult circumstantial adage quot there 三九 s no sex like marital sex quot Kubrick 三九 s take is intellectual, he never leaves the world of ideas to touch the ground He taunts the audience first with an erotic movie and then with a thriller and refuses to deliver either of them He was married to his third wife for 四0 years, until he died Rossellini was still married to Ingrid Bergman when he directed La Paura they had been adulterous lovers and their infidelity widely criticized La Paura is a tale, a noirish one The noir intrigue is solved and the tale has a happy ending The city is noir the country is tale, the territory where childhood is possible The transition is operated in the most regular way: by car, a long-held shot taken from the front of the car as it rides into the road, as if we were entering a different dimension Irene Bergman starts the movie: we just see a dark city landscape but her voice-over narration tells us of her angst and informs us that the story is a flashback, hers Bergman 三九 s been cheating on her husband At first guilt is just psychological torture but soon expands into economic blackmail and then grows into something else From beginning to end the movie focuses on what Bergman feels, every other character is there to make her feel something Only when the director gives away the plot before the main character can find out does he want us to feel something Bergman still can 三九 t When she finds out, we have already experienced the warped mechanics of the situation and we may focus once again on the emotional impact it has on Bergman 三九 s Irene In La Paura treasons are not imagined but real, nightmares are deliberate and the couple 三九 s venom suppurates in bitter ways Needless to say, Ingrid has another of her rough rides in the movies but Rossellini doesn 三九 t dare put her away as he did in Europa 五一, nor does he abandon her to the inscrutable impassivity of nature Stromboli His gift is less transcendent and fragile than the conclusion of Viaggio in Italia He just gives his wife as much of a fairy tale ending as a real woman can have, a human landscape where she can finally feel at home Back to the country, a half lit interior scene where shadows suggest the comfort of sleep After all, it 三九 s the quot fairy godmother quot who speaks the last words in the movie p