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WIKIMAG n. 6 - Maggio 2013
Italian neorealism
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Italian Neorealism |
Rome, Open City (1945) |
| 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,
Cinema Novo |
Italian
Neorealism (Italian:
Neorealismo) is a national
film movement characterized by stories set amongst the poor and the
working class, filmed on location, frequently using non-professional
actors.
Italian Neorealist films mostly contend with the difficult economic and
moral conditions of post-World
War II
Italy, representing changes in the Italian psyche and conditions of
everyday life, including
poverty,
oppression, injustice and desperation.
History
Italian Neorealism came about as
World War II ended and
Benito Mussolini's
government fell, causing the Italian film industry to lose its
center. Neorealism was a sign of cultural change and social progress in
Italy.
Its 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 neorealist style was developed by a circle of film critics that
revolved around the magazine Cinema, including
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
Vittorio Mussolini, son of
Benito Mussolini), the critics attacked the
white telephone films that dominated the industry at the time.
As a counter to the popular mainstream films, including the so-called
"White Telephone" films, some critics felt that Italian cinema should
turn to the
realist writers from the turn of 20th century.
Both Antonioni and Visconti had worked closely with
Jean Renoir. In addition, 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 was
liberated from German occupation. 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 shooting on location in the countryside and city streets
in the realist style.[1]
The first neorealist film is generally thought to be
Ossessione by
Luchino Visconti (1943). Neorealism became famous globally in 1946
with Roberto Rossellini's
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.
Italian Neorealism rapidly declined in the early 1950s.
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, characterized the official view of the movement:
Neorealism is "dirty laundry that shouldn't be washed and hung to dry in
the open."
Italy's move from individual concern with neorealism to the tragic
frailty 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
individuals. Their needs, their alienation from society and their 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.
Characteristics
They are generally filmed with nonprofessional actors--although, 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 run-down
cities as well as rural areas due to its forming during the post-war
era.
The topic involves the idea of what it is like to live among the poor
and the lower working class. The focus is on a simple social order of
survival in rural, everyday life. Performances are mostly constructed
from scenes of people performing fairly mundane and quotidian
activities, devoid of the self-consciousness that amateur acting usually
entails. Neorealist films often feature children in major roles, though
their characters are frequently more observational than participatory.
Open City established several of the principles of neorealism,
depicting 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
Bicycle Thieves 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 neorealist filmmakers drifted away
from pure neorealism. Some directors explored allegorical fantasy, such
as de Sica's
Miracle in Milan, and historical spectacle, like
Senso by Visconti. This was also the time period when a more
upbeat 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, 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,
The Earth Trembles, starred only non-professional actors and was
filmed in the same village (Aci Trezza) as the novel was set in.
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.[3]
Peter Brunette and Marcia Landy both deconstruct the use of reworked
cinematic forms in Rossellini's Open City.[4]
Using
psychoanalysis, Vincent Rocchi characterizes neorealist film as
consistently engendering the structure of anxiety into the structure of
the plot itself.[5]
Impact
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
The Bicycle Thief (1948).[6]
Furthermore, as some critics have argued, 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.
[7]
[8] 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.
[9]
Significant works
Precursors
and influences
Main works
-
Ossessione (Luchino
Visconti, 1942)
-
Open City (Roberto
Rossellini, 1945)
-
Shoeshine (Vittorio
De Sica, 1946)
-
Paisan (Roberto Rossellini, 1946)
-
Germany, Year Zero (Roberto Rossellini, 1948)
-
The Bicycle Thief (Vittorio De Sica, 1948)
-
The Earth Trembles (Luchino Visconti, 1948)
-
Bitter Rice (Giuseppe
De Santis, 1949)
-
Stromboli (Roberto Rossellini, 1950)
-
Bellissima (Luchino Visconti, 1951)
-
Miracle in Milan (Vittorio De Sica, 1951)
-
Rome 11:00 (Giuseppe De Santis, 1952)
-
Umberto D. (Vittorio De Sica, 1952) — filmed in 1951, but
released in 1952. Many film historians date the end of the
neorealist movement with the public attacks on the film.[10]
Major figures
See also
References
-
^ Thompson, Kristin.
Bordwell, David. "Film History: An Introduction, Third Edition".
McGraw Hill. 2010, p.330-331.
-
^ Bordwell, David.
Thompson, Kristin. Film History: An Introduction. Postwar
European Cinema: Neorealism and Its Context, 1945-1959. Pg. 333
-
^ Marcus, Italian
Film in the Light of Neorealism (Princeton University Press,
1987) ).
-
^ 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) ).
-
^ Rocchio, Cinema
of Anxiety: A Psychoanalysis of Italian Neorealism (UT
Press, 1999) ).
-
^
Anwar Huda (2004).
The Art and science of Cinema. Atlantic Publishers &
Dist. p. 100.
ISBN 81-269-0348-1.
-
^
Miccichè, Lino (1975).
Il neorealismo cinematografico italiano (in Italian).
Venezia: Marsilio.
ISBN 88-317-7237-6,
9788831772372
.
-
^
Daniele, Romina (2011).
Ascenseur pour l'échafaud, Il luogo della musica
nell'audiovisione. Milan: RDM. p. 41.
ISBN 88-904905-9-4,
9788890490590
.
-
^
Sainati, Augusto (1998).
Supporto, soggetto, oggetto: forme di costruzione del sapere dal
cinema ai nuovi media, in Costruzione e appropriazione del
sapere nei nuovi scenari tecnologici (in Italian). Napoli:
CUEN. p. 154.
-
^ Bordwell, David &
Thompson, Kristin. Film Art; An Introduction. 8th
edition. p. 461
Further reading
- Mario Verdone, Il Cinema Neorealista, da Rossellini a
Pasolini (Celebes Editore, 1977).
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