| Italian Neorealism | |
|---|---|
| Years active | 1944 - 1952 |
| Country | Italy |
| Major figures | Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio De Sica, Cesare Zavattini, Luchino Visconti, Giuseppe De Santis, Suso Cecchi d'Amico, Federico Fellini |
| Influences | Poetic realism, Communism, Christian humanism |
| Influenced | French New Wave, L.A. Rebellion |
Italian neorealism (Italian: Neorealismo) is a style of film characterized by stories set amongst the poor and The Working Class , filmed on location, frequently using nonprofessional actors. Italian neorealist films mostly contend with the difficult economic and moral conditions of post-World War II Italy, reflecting the changes in the Italian psyche and the conditions of everyday life: poverty and desperation. This movement created a defined approach to fictional filmmaking.
Contents |
This movement came about after the fall of Mussolini's government when the Italian film industry lost its center. Neorealism was a sign of cultural change and social progress in Italy. These films presented contemporary stories and ideas, and were often shot in the streets because the film studios had been damaged significantly during the war. The films were dubbed with dialogue after they were shot. The neorealist style was developed by a circle of film critics that revolved around the magazine Cinema, including Michelangelo Antonioni, Luchino Visconti, Gianni Puccini, Cesare Zavattini, Giuseppe De Santis and Pietro Ingrao. Largely prevented from writing about politics (the editor-in-chief of the magazine was none other than Vittorio Mussolini, son of Benito Mussolini), the critics attacked the telefono bianco films that dominated the industry at the time. As a counter to the poor quality of mainstream films, some of the critics felt that Italian cinema should turn to the realist writers from the turn of the century. Key elements are an emphasis on real lives (close to but not quite documentary style), Both Antonioni and Visconti had worked closely with Jean Renoir. Additionally, many of the filmmakers involved in neorealism developed their skills working on calligraphist films (though the short-lived movement was markedly different from neorealism). Elements of neorealism are also found in the films of Alessandro Blasetti and the documentary-style films of Francesco De Robertis. Two of the most significant precursors of neorealism are Toni (Renoir, 1935) and 1860 (Blasetti, 1934). In the Spring of 1945, Mussolini was executed and Italy, finally liberated. This period, known as the "Italian Spring," was a break from old ways and an entrance to a more realistic approach when making films. Italian cinema went from utilizing elaborate studio sets to using the countryside and the city streets to provide a more "realistic" setting. Famous directors whom emerged from this era include Roberto Rosellini, Vittorio De Sica, Luchino Visconti, and Fedrico Fellini. [1]
There are a number of traits that make Neorealist films distinct. They are generally filmed with nonprofessional actors (though, in a number of cases, well known actors were cast in leading roles, playing strongly against their normal character types in front of a background populated by local people rather than extras brought in for the film). They are shot almost exclusively on location, mostly in poor neighborhoods and in the countryside.
The subject matter involves life among the impoverished and the working class. Realism is always emphasized, and performances are mostly constructed from scenes of people performing fairly mundane and quotidian activities, completely devoid of the self-consciousness that amateur acting usually entails. Neorealist films generally feature children in major roles, though their roles are frequently more observational than participatory.
The first neorealist film was Ossessione by Luchino Visconti (1943). Neorealism became famous globally in 1946 with Roberto Rossellini's Roma, città aperta (Rome, Open City), when it won the Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival as the first major film produced in Italy after the war. Despite containing many elements extraneous to the principles of neorealism, it depicted clearly the struggle of normal Italian people to live from day to day under the extraordinary difficulties of the German occupation of Rome, consciously doing what they can to resist the occupation. The children play a key role in this, and their presence at the end of the film is indicative of their role in neorealism as a whole: as observers of the difficulties of today who hold the key to the future. Vittorio De Sica's 1948 film Ladri di biciclette is also representative of the genre, with non-professional actors, and a story that details the hardships of working-class life after the war.
In the period from 1944-1948, many filmmakers in Italy drifted away from the purer Neorealism wave. Many directors explored with allegorical fantasy, such as Vittorio de Sica's Miracle in Milan, and historical spectacle, like Senso (film) by Luchino Visconti. This was also the time period when rosy Neorealism emerged, which produced films that melded working-class characters with 1930s-style populist comedy, as seen in de Sica's Umberto D. [2]
At the height of neorealism, in 1948, Luchino Visconti adapted I Malavoglia, a novel by Giovanni Verga, written at the height of the 19th century realist verismo movement (in many ways the basis for neorealism, which is therefore sometimes referred to as neoverismo), bringing the story to a modern setting, which resulted in remarkably little change in either the plot or the tone. The resulting film, La terra trema (The Earth Trembles), starred only non-professional actors and was filmed in the same village (Aci Trezza) as the novel was set in. Because the local dialect differed so much from the Italian spoken in Rome and the other major cities, the film had to be subtitled even in its domestic release. The celebrated 1952 film Umberto D., by De Sica, about an elderly, impoverished retired civil servant struggling to make ends meet is often cited as a classic neo-realist effort.
Italian Neorealism virtually ended in 1952. Liberal and socialist parties were having a hard time presenting their message. Levels of income were gradually starting to rise and the first positive effects of the Ricostruzione period began to show. As a consequence, most Italians favored the optimism shown in many American movies of the time. The vision of the existing poverty and despair, presented by the neorealist films, was demoralizing a nation anxious for prosperity and change. The views of the postwar Italian government of the time were also far from positive, and the remark of Giulio Andreotti, who was then a vice-minister in the De Gasperi cabinet, about neorealist movies (dirty laundry that shouldn't be washed and hung to dry in the open) remains famous to this day.
Italy's move from individual concern with Neorealism to the tragic failure of the human condition can be seen through Federico Fellini's films. His early works Il bidone and La Strada are transitional movies. The larger social concerns of humanity, treated by neorealists, gave way to the exploration of the individual. His needs, his alienation from society and his tragic failure to communicate became the main focal point in the Italian films to follow in the 1960s. Similarly, Antonioni's Red Desert and Blow-up take the neo-realist trappings and internalize them in the suffering and search for knowledge brought out by Italy's post-war economic and political climate.
More contemporary theorists of Italian Neorealism characterize it less as a consistent set of stylistic characteristics and more as the relationship between film practice and the social reality of post-war Italy. Millicent Marcus delineates the lack of consistent film styles of Neorealist film (see Marcus, Italian Film in the Light of Neorealism (Princeton University Press, 1987) ). Peter Brunette and Marcia Landy both deconstruct the use of reworked cinematic forms in Rossellini's Roma: Citta Aperta (see Brunette Roberto Rosellini (Oxford University Press, 1987) and Landy "Diverting clichés: femininity, masculinity, melodrama, and neorealism in Open City" in Roberto Rosellini's Rome Open City (Cambridge University Press, 2004) ). Using psychoanalysis, Vincent Rocchio characterizes Neorealist film as consistently engendering the structure of anxiety into the structure of the plot itself (see Rocchio, Cinema of Anxiety: A Psychoanalysis of Italian Neorealism (UT Press, 1999) ).
The period between 1943 and 1950 in the history of Italian cinema is dominated by the impact of neorealism, which is properly defined as a moment or a trend in Italian film, rather than an actual school or group of theoretically motivated and like-minded directors and scriptwriters. Its impact nevertheless has been enormous, not only on Italian film but also on French New Wave cinema, the Polish Film School and ultimately on films all over the world. It also influenced several Indian film directors including Bimal Roy, who made Do Bigha Zameen (1955) after watching, Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves (1948).[3]
Furthermore, as some important studies point out, the abandoning of the classical way of doing cinema and so the starting point of the Nouvelle Vague and the Modern Cinema can be found in the post world-war II Italian cinema and in the neorealism experiences. [4] [5] In particular,
this cinema seems to be constituted as a new subject of knowledge, which it-self builds and develops. It produces a new world in which the main elements have not so many narrative functions as they have their own aesthetic value, related with the eye that is watching them and not with the action they are coming from. [6]
Mario Verdone, Il Cinema Neorealista, da Rossellini a Pasolini (Celebes Editore, 1977).