The circle is complete. A new terror is shaped by death, a new superstition entering the unassailable fortress of infinity. I Am Legend.
With this inscription worthy ends the life of Robert Neville, the protagonist of I Am Legend, Richard Matheson's novel and inspired several films, the latter of whom now on Italian screens. A story that is worth the expense to monitor closely, beginning with the author.
Richard Matheson belongs to the old guard of the writers of fantastic literature, those that have built and made great race: born in 1926 in New Jersey, was a skilled writer (remember Duel, the first film Spielberg), and author of short stories and novels that the film subsequently product: from The Shrinking , from which he drew the beautiful Jack Arnold The Incredible Shrinking: Shrinking Man (1957), in Hell House, which gave rise to the striking After life (1973) John Hough of .
I Am Legend (Fanucci, 2003), written in 1954, tells the story of Robert Neville, sole survivor of a mysterious epidemic that turns men into creatures similar to vampires, besieged every night at his home , mocked and threatened with the rising of the sun's up to him armed with a hammer and pegs going around to hunt them and kill them. His double role of hunter and prey, the constant flashbacks of the past with the death of his loved ones, the encounter with a stray dog \u200b\u200bthat survived after a week dies undermine his balance and pushes him towards alcoholism, but in the meantime Neville is getting closer to the truth and refinement of his art: the epidemic is a bacillus that is spread by air first, then by contagion, and he is immune to an old bat bite, garlic acts as a repellent, all the folk repertoire accompanying the vampire is just a psychological problem, a vampire fears the Christian cross, because he thinks of having to fear - is necessary for a Jew the Torah.
Matheson, in short, sets out a theory that, even if attacked from the standpoint of science fiction when it appeared, was ahead of at least thirty years to that of the chemical David Dolphin, a supporter of the thesis that "vampires" and "werewolves "Another eighteenth century were not that sick" porphyria "in which the disease damages the nervous system making them aggressive and pushing them to nocturnal habits because of photophobia ...
's encounter with Ruth Neville, a girl who he seems like a survivor, seems to be balanced for a moment the situation, until the truth is not float: Ruth is a contagious, however, belongs to a new mutation that can live in the sunshine. Its species, which kills the traditional vampires, Neville considers as a threat, a strange creature, a murderess, and decided to capture him and kill him. Neville accepts this fate, and his last words tell us the title and the final purpose of the book: a beautiful book, full of charm, far away from the vulgarity vampire in which the last two decades we have become accustomed.
found stimulating cinema remake of the classic vampire myth, and this reversal of roles and in different ways appropriated it: the first attempt to stage it in 1964, and is entitled The Last Man on Earth , written by Furio Monetti, and Ubaldo Ragona, Matheson, under the name of Logan Swanson participated in the film treatment, but disagreements with the director, the same Ragona, withdrew his name.
The film, photographed in a beautiful black and white by Tonino Delli Colli, who transformed the Eur in a kind of sci-fi horror shades, and saw the participation of the great Vincent Price in the title role here becomes Robert Morgan, Franca Bettoja (Ruth), Giacomo Rossi-Stuart and Emma Danieli. He little success in Italy and low distribution (but now there is a version on DVD, especially for outbound calling I am Legend), but the honor of an American version, a little 'different and directed by Sidney Salkow " . And to think that it is more faithful implementation of the novel by Matheson, just think of the pictures of the siege to the house of the hero, when the "infected" they call him urgently, a real masterpiece horror.


Scripted by John W. And Joyce H. Carrington Carrington, but without credit Matheson, directed with the times and ways television by Boris Sagal, the film is a kind of homage to the genre, but also a generational manifesto (in fact the survivors are young people and children) and a critique of consumerism Yankees, represented by the interchangeability of self and of objects available to the protagonist. One film in particular that influenced the 'post-atomic imagery of film, with its deserted streets and the haunting sense of loneliness.
With I am Legend Matheson finally back to the authorship of the idea, we are faced with a dash of romance, of the screenplays and several other films mentioned above. Authors of the script are Mark Protosevich and Akiva Goldsman (writer capable of highs and lows ranging from I, Robot to The Da Vinci Code), while director Francis Lawrence, from the world of music videos and author of Constantine and their work is, above all, a job that gives a nod to the genre (think the use of a black actor like Will Smith, rival Duane Jones, the insistence that use Bob Marley as a standard bearer of anti-pacifism and, with much more consistency when they used the Woodstock festival, transposed to the setting from Los Angeles to New York to "quarantine" straight out of Manhattan from Carpenter's film, the pictures that adorned the house of Neville-hour peep from Heston and Neville-Smith, the fact that while the first he knew by heart the lines of Woodstock, the second known those Shrek ...). But at the same time wants to be a film for the general public and not for a circle of fans, so that is built directly on the person of Will Smith (even before the character of Neville), functional choice, since the actor holds the camera in all possible shades, from fear, emotion, despair (think the intensity of expression with which he confronts euthanasia of his dog, Samantha, bitten and injured by the dogs of "infected" and then for the end ) but which in fact determines a phase image.
All first time slips away alternating between the present situation, the environment (a New York faithful to modern theories about the catastrophe, far from the bright Los Angeles Sagal, all rust, dirt, plants that pierce asphalt, puddles of water and wildlife, photographed with great aerial shots and long shots) and staff (Smith hounded by the lens, which, unfortunately, in tune with the modern habit of film to use hand-held camera, it ends with assuming a hopping pattern) and several flashbacks reminiscent of the epidemic, the attempted escape and the death of wife and daughter. Faithful to the teaching of the great fantasy films, the director shows the little "infected", deformed creatures, glabrous, waxy, and creates the suspense with their intuitive: the whole sequence inside a dark building where Neville was also to search for Samantha, for example, is well executed. Then, the second time, the situation worsened, and it seems to have arrived in another film. They appear to legions the "infected", all digitized and with enormous strength and agility monkey that make them look super-heroes with no reason, and the suspense is cleared in the name of the special effects, Neville is saved by a girl, Anna (Alice Braga) and his son Ethan (Charlie Tahan), a couple that are unlikely to drive around in a continent plagued by monsters, trying to reach survivors of a municipality, of which Neville and they know not; mystical drift, which is necessary in a world populated from "theocons," begins to occur when Anna says that God is talking to her and suggest the way and even more so when Neville gets worse, definitely an atheist before he died gives her a test tube with the blood and immune implies that there really is a design divine. Worse still the final, when she and the child come to town: a nice and clean rural American village, complete with church and flag stars stripes, guarded by military and surrounded by a wall that seems to be separating Israel from Palestine ...
All first time slips away alternating between the present situation, the environment (a New York faithful to modern theories about the catastrophe, far from the bright Los Angeles Sagal, all rust, dirt, plants that pierce asphalt, puddles of water and wildlife, photographed with great aerial shots and long shots) and staff (Smith hounded by the lens, which, unfortunately, in tune with the modern habit of film to use hand-held camera, it ends with assuming a hopping pattern) and several flashbacks reminiscent of the epidemic, the attempted escape and the death of wife and daughter. Faithful to the teaching of the great fantasy films, the director shows the little "infected", deformed creatures, glabrous, waxy, and creates the suspense with their intuitive: the whole sequence inside a dark building where Neville was also to search for Samantha, for example, is well executed. Then, the second time, the situation worsened, and it seems to have arrived in another film. They appear to legions the "infected", all digitized and with enormous strength and agility monkey that make them look super-heroes with no reason, and the suspense is cleared in the name of the special effects, Neville is saved by a girl, Anna (Alice Braga) and his son Ethan (Charlie Tahan), a couple that are unlikely to drive around in a continent plagued by monsters, trying to reach survivors of a municipality, of which Neville and they know not; mystical drift, which is necessary in a world populated from "theocons," begins to occur when Anna says that God is talking to her and suggest the way and even more so when Neville gets worse, definitely an atheist before he died gives her a test tube with the blood and immune implies that there really is a design divine. Worse still the final, when she and the child come to town: a nice and clean rural American village, complete with church and flag stars stripes, guarded by military and surrounded by a wall that seems to be separating Israel from Palestine ...
These images, in a sort of short circuit, they quickly saw the review: the virus outbreak which originated from cure for cancer instead of a germ warfare, the destruction of bridges connecting Manhattan to the mainland with strokes of explosion; checkpoints like in War of the Worlds ; signs of a cinema that is around half if the Typically, the other half comes out, and instead worry, as it should be his own, reassuring the audience on the survival of the "dream American. " And the last words, which would explain the meaning of the title seem a parody of the speech Matheson: Neville is a legend for all, because he died to find the cure to the disease. Improvident a role reversal which is yet another betrayal of the great writer.
Ulysses Ursini