Realist writer Moravia, lays down the truth bomb on a tortured relationship in, Contempt, and fascism in, The Conformist, both translated into film by Godard and Bertolucci respectively. The writer is intensely interested in misrepresentation, the point at which projection becomes invisible or decadence begets a need for order, and thus, the cinematic interpretations accurately depict tenuous idylls ruptured with a kind of paradox.

As incisive as McTeague, by Frank Norris, Moravia performs a dissection of human fallibility within the framework of external pressures. In the novels, though the object is always meaningfully and maddeningly obscured, the drive for clarity is precise. When the omniscient narrator is removed, complicated internal dialectics become flattened and baffling on screen. Instead, the audience needs to succumb to the aftereffects, pure visual interpretation, become mere humans wallowing and wading through the muck as best we can. Remarkable how much gets lost in and without language.