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's last work. Like Dorothy, Tom and Nicole go through fantasies and nightmares and at the end Dorothy's reassuring childish motto there's no place like home is ironically updated to the adult circumstantial adage there's no sex like marital sex. Kubrick'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 40 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'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'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's Irene. In La Paura treasons are not imagined but real, nightmares are deliberate and the couple's venom suppurates in bitter ways. Needless to say, Ingrid has another of her rough rides in the movies but Rossellini doesn't dare put her away as he did in Europa 51, 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's the fairy godmother who speaks the last words in the movie.
多比斯（罗宾·威廉斯 Robin Williams）主持的脱口秀节目非常犀利，能旁征博引言辞刺骨地把美国总统们讽刺一番，把听众乐得心花怒放。甚至有听众建议他不如参选总统，一展身手。 多比斯的参选让他成为了草根阶层的代表，自然也获得了民众的大量支持。而且，多比斯拥有的杰出口才更是在辩论赛中占尽优势，令他在众多候选人中显得卓越不凡。大选结果让多比斯大为振奋——无背景无资历的他竟然以超过半数德票选获得总统之位。 选举期间，统计票数的程序员埃莉诺（劳拉·琳妮 Laura Linney）让多比斯暗暗动心。正是这个姑娘，在关键时刻发现统计系统出错，选举结果其实源于一个BUG……
