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 take n from the fro nt of the car as it ri des into the r oad, as if we  were entering  a differen t dimension . Irene (Be rgman) star ts the movie:  we just see a dark city  landscape  but her voice- over narratio n tells us of her a ngst and infor ms us that the  story is a fla shback, her s. Bergma n's  been cheat ing on  her hus band. At first guilt is j ust psy chological torture bu t soon expa nds int o economic blac kmail and  then gro ws into someth ing else. F rom beginning t o end the mo vie focuses on what Bergm an feels, e very other cha racter is there to make her feel s omething. On ly when the  director gives away the plot b efore th e main charac ter can find out do es he want us to feel  something Berg man still can&a mp;#39;t. Wh en she fi nds out,  we have already experien ced the warp ed mechanics of the situat ion and we m ay focu s once a gain on t he emotional i mpact i t has on Ber gman' s Irene.  In La Paura tre asons are not imagined  but real, n ightmares ar e deliberate  and the couple 's ve nom suppu rates in  bitter ways.  Needless to say, Ingr id has anoth er of her rou gh rides in the movies bu t Rossellin i doesn& #39;t dare put her aw ay as he did i n Europa 51, n or does  he abando n her to the in scrutable  impassivity of nature (S tromboli). His  gift is less transcendent a nd fragile than the conclusio n of Viaggio in Italia. He j ust gives his wife a s much of a  fairy tal e ending  as a real w oman can h ave, a human  landscape whe re she can fin ally feel  at home.  Back to the co untry, a half lit inter ior sce ne where shado ws suggest the  comfort of sleep. Aft er all,  it's t he &qu ot;fairy go dmother&quo t; who speaks the last words in the movie.　 　Wheneve r I see La Paura I th ink of it as a compan ion pie ce to Eye s Wide S hut, or maybe it is the o