Italian Neorealism
Anthony Wilson
11/10/2014
Italian Neorealism
As cultures progress, cinema will always revive its past, mirror its present, and predict its future. Throughout history, cultures have inspired new waves of film. Filmmaking has reflected cultural decades of every era. Whether through non-fiction or fiction, films still establish the principle of human psyche. From America’s popular westerns in the 1920s to Italy’s neorealist films in the ‘40s-‘50s, films have been created to emulate the conditions of life. The influential film movement, Italian Neorealism, began in the mid-to-late 1940s and was a style of filmmaking that aesthetically established everyday life of the lower class in post World War II Italy. The stories would follow themes …show more content…
of poverty and oppression, which were relevant issues during this time. Neorealist filmmakers often created their pieces with a documentary visual style that used natural resources as opposed to the artificial sets and props of the widely popular Hollywood cinemas. They used actual locations, sometimes live in busy streets, natural lighting, realistic stories, and nonprofessional actors that would play main characters. Directors Pier Pasolini, Robert Rossellini, Luchino Visconti, and Vittorio De Sica dominated the Italian neorealism film movement. It was a short-lived style that inspired new creative styles of filmmaking and impacted, not only the future of contemporary Italian cinema, but even French New Wave, Dogme 95, and films from all over the world. Italian Neorealism realistically covered the hardships of reality with the focus of authenticity and minimal use of resources to convey serious emotion about historical and societal human conditions.
Italian neorealism was inspired by the effects of a fascist government, troubled economy, and a devastating war to create moving films of raw emotion about current social and political problems. Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini, started the fascist movement in 1919. Under Mussolini’s style of dictatorship and authoritarian rule, he became prime minister of Italy in 1922 (CITE). The fascist government heavily influenced the censorship of early Italian cinema and regulated it. In 1926, the fascist regime founded L’Unione Cinematografica Educativa (LUCE). Throughout the late 1930s, the fascist government and LUCE strictly fostered Italian cinema and banned Italian films that did not approve of Fascism theory. Any films that depicted the fascist government in a negative way were immediately banned from being screened. They also banned American imported films like Scarface (1932), Little Caesar (1930), and other gangster genre films because these films were based on American gangsters with Italian origins, which gave Italy a bad representation (Ricci, 75). Director, Luchino Visconti’s film Ossessione, made in 1942, is considered the precursor of neorealism. It was a drama different of its time about the real-life conditions under fascism with unemployment and poverty and it included the many elements of neorealism. Ossessione was severely criticized by the fascist press for its portrayal of adultery, amorality, sexual excess, and murder and had a limited distribution (Wood, 85). Under the direction of Mussolini, LUCE only produced large volumes of documentaries and newsreels that emphasized Italy’s economic, industrial, and cultural progress and making the image of Mussolini all over the place in Italian society (Shiel, 21). All under Mussolini’s authority, in 1934, he appointed Luigi Freddi as the director of the new “Direzione Generale per le Cinematografia” (General Directorate for Cinema) which was created to establish a part of Rome to be devoted to cinema called the “Cinecittà” or Cinema City (Shiel, 22-23). Cinecittà offered new theaters, studios, and even a cinematography school (Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia) it was a city dedicated to cinema (CITE).
The Italian industry lacked after World War I, they fell far behind the international standards in equipment and training, and Italian films lost foreign market share, especially with the new age of films with sound (Shiel, 22). Though the reconstruction of Italian cinema put them back on the map, Italian film production went from ten to twenty films per year in the early 1930s to almost 100 per year in the early 1940s (Quaglietti, 245). The typical films being made at this time were considered “white telephone” films, which were mostly romantic melodramatic films that were shot in modern fancy décor and were about the upper-class, hence the name “white telephone” which is a luxurious symbol of wealthy status, “white telephone films were deemed pure fluff, providers of a smokescreen of light entertainment that obscured entirely the truth of life under the dictatorship” (Gundle, 31). The repetitive high production of “white telephone” films was short-lived once the government crumbled (CITE).
The fall of Benito Mussolini happened in July 1943, and the twenty years of fascist dictatorship fell with him (Gundle, 261). After his support lost during World War II, the King of Italy, Victor Emmanuel III, ruled Mussolini out of power and on April 25th, 1945, Italy celebrated as it was the end of Nazi occupation of Italy and the end of the second world war. This transformed Italy into an anti-fascist democracy thus leading the downfall of the fascist government into the rise of Italian neorealism. In Rome, the Germans and Italian fascists had removed the equipment in the main studios of Cinceittà when they fled the advancing Allies in the summer of 1943 (Shiel, 10). The lack of studios led to the innovation of Italian neorealism, forcing filmmakers to squander the streets with their cameras and film on the expansive countryside of Italy and the ruins of cities from World War II destruction, which showed the harsh environment of social and political reality more clearly than through a secluded studio set. Italian film could no longer be abolished; director Robert Rossellini was already in the destructed streets filming Rome, Open City (1945). Rossellini’s Rome, Open City was considered the first neorealist film created. The film is about Rome during the final years of World War II, with the Nazis occupying the city and the Allied forces slowly moving in. It successfully dramatized the traumatization of the aftermath of World War II. This film’s aesthetic style created an effective impression on the social and political life of postwar Italy and rebuilt the future of Italian cinema.
Italian neorealism’s preferred use of low budget and natural resources made the film more personal and less industrial. It was a rough time during post World War II Italy filled with hard work, unemployment, starvation, welfare, rebuilding, politics, poverty, oppression, homelessness, displacement, crime, and depression. Italian neorealism focused on the difficult lives of the lower class in Italy. They created identical depictions to what it was like emotionally during these times after the war through new filmmaking techniques. Techniques that have never been seen before like the use of amateur actors to play major roles; “they will use non-professional actors, to some extent, to help reinforce the aura of realism” (Lawton, 11). There were no “extras”, stunt doubles, or costumes, just average civilians going about their days in the background. This use of non-professional actors conveyed a sense of comfort towards Italian moviegoers at the time. Famous neorealist director Vittorio De Sica claimed that he casted non-professional actors because he liked the fact that they were unseen: “actors who are not actors, who have not yet been corrupted by the profession and by the constant practice, in whom everything is genuine and fresh” (Wagstaff, 314). Italian neorealism was against the repetition in cinema, the recycled use of the same professional actor that you’ve already seen in a previous film is not what neorealist directors had in mine during casting. For most of these non-professional actors they were also working-class people who were living through the struggles of the lower class of post-war Italy just like the characters they portrayed.
Italian Neorealism films did have scripts though and the dialogue was usually informal and short making it seem more conversational, “In fact, films were particularly successful among the lower class of society, formed by people who were usually vernacular speakers, and who really liked watching some stories on the big screen which seemed to be taken directly from their lives” (Schiavo, 101). This gave the audience something to relate to because of how similar the story can be to a realistic situation that themselves have been through and witnessed first-hand, “the fact that actors usually expressed themselves in a very informal style contributed to making lower-class moviegoers feel at ease, since it broke down the formal “barrier” that the very elevated language of the previous decades had inevitably built up between characters and audience” (Schiavo, 105). Italian neorealist novelist, Elio Vittorini encouraged the use of simple and straightforward dialogue because the lower class of Italy was not accustomed to the more intricate language that the upper class spoke in.
Another technique filmmakers used to create their real emotion was the preferred use of natural lighting. Italian neorealist directors thought their stories should be expressed in the same everyday quality you envision them, with no altercations of settings or placement of artificial sets and lights. They relied on the use of natural lighting in their shots, “these shots also correspond to what Bazin (French film critic) labeled “faith in the reality of the image” since they are unmediated by “plastics” (lighting or sets)” (Ruberto, 100). They would shoot on location, no studios, everything was real with the people in the background, the ruins of buildings from World War II destruction, and the natural lighting, they opposed the use of sets to depict what was going on in their country. They barley made any changes in post-production either; they avoided elaborate editing to leave the focus on the film’s look. These films connected to people from all over the world emotionally, the films were like news segments that showed people from other countries what post World War II Italy lifestyle was like. Italian neorealism’s success relied on human relationships and believable stories, rather than a booming budget with giant sets, light kits, and highly paid professional actors (CITE).
Italian neorealist films conveyed a stronger relationship towards characters by favoring the complexities of character over plot and promoting social awareness.
Since most of the Italian neorealist films were narratively structured about simple plots within the lower working class of Italian society, the characters were the main focus of the film and the story was simply the randomness of real life and how it organically plays out. The best neorealist example of this is the film Bicycle Thieves by Vittorio De Sica. The film is about a man, Antonio, who gets the bicycle he needs for his job stolen and then goes on a search with his son Bruno for the culprit. It sounds like simple story to the average civilian, but to Antonio, a poor man living in postwar Italy, getting his bicycle stolen is a tragedy that could put his job in jeopardy and eventually put him back through the desperate struggle of trying to find a job and provide for his family. De Sica stated that Bicycle Thieves was a film concerned with “those social contradictions which society wants to ignore” and a film “dedicated to the suffering of the humble”, and how realism could never be a matter of “mere documentation” (Shiel, 59). The film deals with the theme of moral chances between right and wrong during poverty. After looking everywhere in town, towards the end of the film Antonio gives up and drives himself to making the bad decision of stealing a bicycle from a poor civilian like himself. He is …show more content…
unsuccessful in the crime when a mob of witnesses saw Antonio commit the act in progress and chased him down till they caught up to him and made him return it. Antonio and Bruno then walk away and blend through a crowd of other civilians in the scene to go back home empty-handed, ending the film.
It was an emotionally hard-hitting film at the time, it “was like a hand grenade thrown into a cocktail party. Its aesthetic act not primarily to denounce specific evils in the Italian social order, but to enact what the aesthetics of cinema could be” (Wagstaff, 397). It opened the viewer’s eyes to the evil of postwar Italy and to a new style of cinema at the same time. The film represents the experience of a made-up character (Antonio), and what the world is like through his eyes, “De Sica appears to be reproducing an experience; but of course, this cannot be what he is doing, because he is making a film, not recording reality” (Wagstaff, 399). That’s why the characters are so important to the progression of the film’s story. Neorealism is almost like a documentary, whereas it seems the script writes itself as the character progresses through life naturally, except its a narrative and all imagined.
Italian neorealist films visually created feeling and pulled viewers deeper in reality while movies at the time created escapement of reality into another world visually. Italian neorealism films did not succeed in Italy, but internationally. The Italian people didn’t want to relive the recent war that had just ended, they wanted to enjoy life and forget about it, “Therefore, tragic stories which were often set in the war period inevitably became less and less popular, and were replaced by light amusing movies that gave the audience the opportunity to spend some hours of serenity” (Schiavo, 117). The end of World War II left Italy in wreckage and enemy armies monitored the country. It was a tragic time and the Italian neorealism movement reflected the conditions through the use of the ontological truth and reality of life set on screen, visible to the world. Most of these films were composed under the prevalent theme of survival within conflicts of the working-class, sometimes ending with no resolution and no “happy ending” as opposed to the classical Hollywood cinema, “Film critic and director Luigi Chiarini’s account of the historical context in which neorealist films first appeared is rife with the vocabulary of tragedy in its description of the conditions of the times” (Pirro, 412).
Italian moviegoers went to the theaters to see the Italian slapstick comedies, “most others (Italian neorealism films) did not perform well in box-office terms, especially given the quick post-war re-establishment of commercial genre film production in Italy and the return of Hollywood cinema to market dominance” (Shiel, 5). These films became so popular internationally because the material invited the average person from another country into the social life of another average person in Italy visually. Cinema critics were the ones who praised Italian neorealist films into global success; in 1950, critics gave neorealist director Vittorio De Sica an academy award for his 1948 film Bicycle Thieves, which won best foreign language film. Many non-Italian critics and audiences who welcomed neorealism realized that that it related tremendously to the war they had too experienced (Shiel, 7). Bosley Crowther, a writer at the time for the New York Times reviewed Rossellini’s Rome, Open City, and stated it as “unquestionably one of the stronger dramatic films yet made about the recent war. And the fact that it was hurriedly put together by a group of artists soon after the liberation of Rome is significant of its fervor and doubtless integrity” (1946:32).
Italy’s economy soon developed and the people demanded and received Hollywood films, which soon swamped the production of neorealist and Italian cinema in general.
Though the short success of Italian Neorealism from the ‘40s to ‘50s created a long-lasting impression towards cinema and helped change the direction of this art form. Italian neorealism was born out of an obscure fascist government and a troubling war to express and communicate the truth of the World War II aftermath in society through the lives of everyday civilians on screen. The directors devoted to promoting authenticity through the mise-en-scène of actual locations, minimal postproduction, natural lighting, and non-professional actors to create their look. The strong relationships and emotions between characters pulled audiences into the reality of their lives. The critics and viewers across the globe responded positively to these films and awarded the Italian film crews involved Academy Awards and Golden Globes for their work. Italian Neorealism was an inspiration to an entire generation of young filmmakers internationally because of their precision of tackling difficult issues through their vision of
authenticity.
Works Cited
The Bicycle Thieves. Dir. Vittorio De Sica. 1948.
Crowther, Bosely. "Open City (1945) THE SCREEN; How Italy Resisted." New York Times [New York City] 26 Feb. 1946: 1-40. Print.
Gundle, Stephen. Mussolini 's Dream Factory: Film Stardom in Fascist Italy. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.
Lawton, Ben. "Italian Neorealism: A Mirror Construction of Reality." Film Criticism 3.2 (1978): 8-23. Web.
Pirro, Robert. "Cinematic Traces of Participatory Democracy in Early Postwar Italy: Italian Neorealism in the Light of Greek Tragedy." Italica 86.3 (2009): 30-408. Web.
Quaglietti, Lorenzo. Storia Economico-politica Del Cinema Italiano, 1945-1980. Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1980. Print.
Ricci, Steven. Cinema and Fascism: Italian Film and Society, 1922-1943. Berkeley: U of California, 2008. Print.
Ricciardi, Alessia. "The Italian Redemption of Cinema: Neorealism from Bazin to Godard."" The Romantic Review 97.3 (2006): 483-501. Web.
Rome Open City. Dir. Roberto Rossellini. By Federico Fellini, Sergio Amidei, S. Midi, and Renzo Rossellini. Perf. Aldo Fabrizi and Anna Magnani. Excelsa Film, 1945.
Ruberto, Laura E., and Kristi M. Wilson. Italian Neorealism and Global Cinema. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2007. Print.
Schiavo, Gianluca. "Language and National Identity: The 'revolution ' of Italian Neorealism." Fu Jen Studies: Literature & Linguistics 45 (2012): 22-101. Web.
Shiel, Mark. Italian Neorealism: Rebuilding the Cinematic City. London: Wallflower, 2006. Print.
Wood, Mary P. Italian Cinema. Oxford: Berg, 2005. Print.
11/10/2014
Italian Neorealism
As cultures progress, cinema will always revive its past, mirror its present, and predict its future. Throughout history, cultures have inspired new waves of film. Filmmaking has reflected cultural decades of every era. Whether through non-fiction or fiction, films still establish the principle of human psyche. From America’s popular westerns in the 1920s to Italy’s neorealist films in the ‘40s-‘50s, films have been created to emulate the conditions of life. The influential film movement, Italian Neorealism, began in the mid-to-late 1940s and was a style of filmmaking that aesthetically established everyday life of the lower class in post World War II Italy. The stories would follow themes …show more content…
of poverty and oppression, which were relevant issues during this time. Neorealist filmmakers often created their pieces with a documentary visual style that used natural resources as opposed to the artificial sets and props of the widely popular Hollywood cinemas. They used actual locations, sometimes live in busy streets, natural lighting, realistic stories, and nonprofessional actors that would play main characters. Directors Pier Pasolini, Robert Rossellini, Luchino Visconti, and Vittorio De Sica dominated the Italian neorealism film movement. It was a short-lived style that inspired new creative styles of filmmaking and impacted, not only the future of contemporary Italian cinema, but even French New Wave, Dogme 95, and films from all over the world. Italian Neorealism realistically covered the hardships of reality with the focus of authenticity and minimal use of resources to convey serious emotion about historical and societal human conditions.
Italian neorealism was inspired by the effects of a fascist government, troubled economy, and a devastating war to create moving films of raw emotion about current social and political problems. Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini, started the fascist movement in 1919. Under Mussolini’s style of dictatorship and authoritarian rule, he became prime minister of Italy in 1922 (CITE). The fascist government heavily influenced the censorship of early Italian cinema and regulated it. In 1926, the fascist regime founded L’Unione Cinematografica Educativa (LUCE). Throughout the late 1930s, the fascist government and LUCE strictly fostered Italian cinema and banned Italian films that did not approve of Fascism theory. Any films that depicted the fascist government in a negative way were immediately banned from being screened. They also banned American imported films like Scarface (1932), Little Caesar (1930), and other gangster genre films because these films were based on American gangsters with Italian origins, which gave Italy a bad representation (Ricci, 75). Director, Luchino Visconti’s film Ossessione, made in 1942, is considered the precursor of neorealism. It was a drama different of its time about the real-life conditions under fascism with unemployment and poverty and it included the many elements of neorealism. Ossessione was severely criticized by the fascist press for its portrayal of adultery, amorality, sexual excess, and murder and had a limited distribution (Wood, 85). Under the direction of Mussolini, LUCE only produced large volumes of documentaries and newsreels that emphasized Italy’s economic, industrial, and cultural progress and making the image of Mussolini all over the place in Italian society (Shiel, 21). All under Mussolini’s authority, in 1934, he appointed Luigi Freddi as the director of the new “Direzione Generale per le Cinematografia” (General Directorate for Cinema) which was created to establish a part of Rome to be devoted to cinema called the “Cinecittà” or Cinema City (Shiel, 22-23). Cinecittà offered new theaters, studios, and even a cinematography school (Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia) it was a city dedicated to cinema (CITE).
The Italian industry lacked after World War I, they fell far behind the international standards in equipment and training, and Italian films lost foreign market share, especially with the new age of films with sound (Shiel, 22). Though the reconstruction of Italian cinema put them back on the map, Italian film production went from ten to twenty films per year in the early 1930s to almost 100 per year in the early 1940s (Quaglietti, 245). The typical films being made at this time were considered “white telephone” films, which were mostly romantic melodramatic films that were shot in modern fancy décor and were about the upper-class, hence the name “white telephone” which is a luxurious symbol of wealthy status, “white telephone films were deemed pure fluff, providers of a smokescreen of light entertainment that obscured entirely the truth of life under the dictatorship” (Gundle, 31). The repetitive high production of “white telephone” films was short-lived once the government crumbled (CITE).
The fall of Benito Mussolini happened in July 1943, and the twenty years of fascist dictatorship fell with him (Gundle, 261). After his support lost during World War II, the King of Italy, Victor Emmanuel III, ruled Mussolini out of power and on April 25th, 1945, Italy celebrated as it was the end of Nazi occupation of Italy and the end of the second world war. This transformed Italy into an anti-fascist democracy thus leading the downfall of the fascist government into the rise of Italian neorealism. In Rome, the Germans and Italian fascists had removed the equipment in the main studios of Cinceittà when they fled the advancing Allies in the summer of 1943 (Shiel, 10). The lack of studios led to the innovation of Italian neorealism, forcing filmmakers to squander the streets with their cameras and film on the expansive countryside of Italy and the ruins of cities from World War II destruction, which showed the harsh environment of social and political reality more clearly than through a secluded studio set. Italian film could no longer be abolished; director Robert Rossellini was already in the destructed streets filming Rome, Open City (1945). Rossellini’s Rome, Open City was considered the first neorealist film created. The film is about Rome during the final years of World War II, with the Nazis occupying the city and the Allied forces slowly moving in. It successfully dramatized the traumatization of the aftermath of World War II. This film’s aesthetic style created an effective impression on the social and political life of postwar Italy and rebuilt the future of Italian cinema.
Italian neorealism’s preferred use of low budget and natural resources made the film more personal and less industrial. It was a rough time during post World War II Italy filled with hard work, unemployment, starvation, welfare, rebuilding, politics, poverty, oppression, homelessness, displacement, crime, and depression. Italian neorealism focused on the difficult lives of the lower class in Italy. They created identical depictions to what it was like emotionally during these times after the war through new filmmaking techniques. Techniques that have never been seen before like the use of amateur actors to play major roles; “they will use non-professional actors, to some extent, to help reinforce the aura of realism” (Lawton, 11). There were no “extras”, stunt doubles, or costumes, just average civilians going about their days in the background. This use of non-professional actors conveyed a sense of comfort towards Italian moviegoers at the time. Famous neorealist director Vittorio De Sica claimed that he casted non-professional actors because he liked the fact that they were unseen: “actors who are not actors, who have not yet been corrupted by the profession and by the constant practice, in whom everything is genuine and fresh” (Wagstaff, 314). Italian neorealism was against the repetition in cinema, the recycled use of the same professional actor that you’ve already seen in a previous film is not what neorealist directors had in mine during casting. For most of these non-professional actors they were also working-class people who were living through the struggles of the lower class of post-war Italy just like the characters they portrayed.
Italian Neorealism films did have scripts though and the dialogue was usually informal and short making it seem more conversational, “In fact, films were particularly successful among the lower class of society, formed by people who were usually vernacular speakers, and who really liked watching some stories on the big screen which seemed to be taken directly from their lives” (Schiavo, 101). This gave the audience something to relate to because of how similar the story can be to a realistic situation that themselves have been through and witnessed first-hand, “the fact that actors usually expressed themselves in a very informal style contributed to making lower-class moviegoers feel at ease, since it broke down the formal “barrier” that the very elevated language of the previous decades had inevitably built up between characters and audience” (Schiavo, 105). Italian neorealist novelist, Elio Vittorini encouraged the use of simple and straightforward dialogue because the lower class of Italy was not accustomed to the more intricate language that the upper class spoke in.
Another technique filmmakers used to create their real emotion was the preferred use of natural lighting. Italian neorealist directors thought their stories should be expressed in the same everyday quality you envision them, with no altercations of settings or placement of artificial sets and lights. They relied on the use of natural lighting in their shots, “these shots also correspond to what Bazin (French film critic) labeled “faith in the reality of the image” since they are unmediated by “plastics” (lighting or sets)” (Ruberto, 100). They would shoot on location, no studios, everything was real with the people in the background, the ruins of buildings from World War II destruction, and the natural lighting, they opposed the use of sets to depict what was going on in their country. They barley made any changes in post-production either; they avoided elaborate editing to leave the focus on the film’s look. These films connected to people from all over the world emotionally, the films were like news segments that showed people from other countries what post World War II Italy lifestyle was like. Italian neorealism’s success relied on human relationships and believable stories, rather than a booming budget with giant sets, light kits, and highly paid professional actors (CITE).
Italian neorealist films conveyed a stronger relationship towards characters by favoring the complexities of character over plot and promoting social awareness.
Since most of the Italian neorealist films were narratively structured about simple plots within the lower working class of Italian society, the characters were the main focus of the film and the story was simply the randomness of real life and how it organically plays out. The best neorealist example of this is the film Bicycle Thieves by Vittorio De Sica. The film is about a man, Antonio, who gets the bicycle he needs for his job stolen and then goes on a search with his son Bruno for the culprit. It sounds like simple story to the average civilian, but to Antonio, a poor man living in postwar Italy, getting his bicycle stolen is a tragedy that could put his job in jeopardy and eventually put him back through the desperate struggle of trying to find a job and provide for his family. De Sica stated that Bicycle Thieves was a film concerned with “those social contradictions which society wants to ignore” and a film “dedicated to the suffering of the humble”, and how realism could never be a matter of “mere documentation” (Shiel, 59). The film deals with the theme of moral chances between right and wrong during poverty. After looking everywhere in town, towards the end of the film Antonio gives up and drives himself to making the bad decision of stealing a bicycle from a poor civilian like himself. He is …show more content…
unsuccessful in the crime when a mob of witnesses saw Antonio commit the act in progress and chased him down till they caught up to him and made him return it. Antonio and Bruno then walk away and blend through a crowd of other civilians in the scene to go back home empty-handed, ending the film.
It was an emotionally hard-hitting film at the time, it “was like a hand grenade thrown into a cocktail party. Its aesthetic act not primarily to denounce specific evils in the Italian social order, but to enact what the aesthetics of cinema could be” (Wagstaff, 397). It opened the viewer’s eyes to the evil of postwar Italy and to a new style of cinema at the same time. The film represents the experience of a made-up character (Antonio), and what the world is like through his eyes, “De Sica appears to be reproducing an experience; but of course, this cannot be what he is doing, because he is making a film, not recording reality” (Wagstaff, 399). That’s why the characters are so important to the progression of the film’s story. Neorealism is almost like a documentary, whereas it seems the script writes itself as the character progresses through life naturally, except its a narrative and all imagined.
Italian neorealist films visually created feeling and pulled viewers deeper in reality while movies at the time created escapement of reality into another world visually. Italian neorealism films did not succeed in Italy, but internationally. The Italian people didn’t want to relive the recent war that had just ended, they wanted to enjoy life and forget about it, “Therefore, tragic stories which were often set in the war period inevitably became less and less popular, and were replaced by light amusing movies that gave the audience the opportunity to spend some hours of serenity” (Schiavo, 117). The end of World War II left Italy in wreckage and enemy armies monitored the country. It was a tragic time and the Italian neorealism movement reflected the conditions through the use of the ontological truth and reality of life set on screen, visible to the world. Most of these films were composed under the prevalent theme of survival within conflicts of the working-class, sometimes ending with no resolution and no “happy ending” as opposed to the classical Hollywood cinema, “Film critic and director Luigi Chiarini’s account of the historical context in which neorealist films first appeared is rife with the vocabulary of tragedy in its description of the conditions of the times” (Pirro, 412).
Italian moviegoers went to the theaters to see the Italian slapstick comedies, “most others (Italian neorealism films) did not perform well in box-office terms, especially given the quick post-war re-establishment of commercial genre film production in Italy and the return of Hollywood cinema to market dominance” (Shiel, 5). These films became so popular internationally because the material invited the average person from another country into the social life of another average person in Italy visually. Cinema critics were the ones who praised Italian neorealist films into global success; in 1950, critics gave neorealist director Vittorio De Sica an academy award for his 1948 film Bicycle Thieves, which won best foreign language film. Many non-Italian critics and audiences who welcomed neorealism realized that that it related tremendously to the war they had too experienced (Shiel, 7). Bosley Crowther, a writer at the time for the New York Times reviewed Rossellini’s Rome, Open City, and stated it as “unquestionably one of the stronger dramatic films yet made about the recent war. And the fact that it was hurriedly put together by a group of artists soon after the liberation of Rome is significant of its fervor and doubtless integrity” (1946:32).
Italy’s economy soon developed and the people demanded and received Hollywood films, which soon swamped the production of neorealist and Italian cinema in general.
Though the short success of Italian Neorealism from the ‘40s to ‘50s created a long-lasting impression towards cinema and helped change the direction of this art form. Italian neorealism was born out of an obscure fascist government and a troubling war to express and communicate the truth of the World War II aftermath in society through the lives of everyday civilians on screen. The directors devoted to promoting authenticity through the mise-en-scène of actual locations, minimal postproduction, natural lighting, and non-professional actors to create their look. The strong relationships and emotions between characters pulled audiences into the reality of their lives. The critics and viewers across the globe responded positively to these films and awarded the Italian film crews involved Academy Awards and Golden Globes for their work. Italian Neorealism was an inspiration to an entire generation of young filmmakers internationally because of their precision of tackling difficult issues through their vision of
authenticity.
Works Cited
The Bicycle Thieves. Dir. Vittorio De Sica. 1948.
Crowther, Bosely. "Open City (1945) THE SCREEN; How Italy Resisted." New York Times [New York City] 26 Feb. 1946: 1-40. Print.
Gundle, Stephen. Mussolini 's Dream Factory: Film Stardom in Fascist Italy. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.
Lawton, Ben. "Italian Neorealism: A Mirror Construction of Reality." Film Criticism 3.2 (1978): 8-23. Web.
Pirro, Robert. "Cinematic Traces of Participatory Democracy in Early Postwar Italy: Italian Neorealism in the Light of Greek Tragedy." Italica 86.3 (2009): 30-408. Web.
Quaglietti, Lorenzo. Storia Economico-politica Del Cinema Italiano, 1945-1980. Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1980. Print.
Ricci, Steven. Cinema and Fascism: Italian Film and Society, 1922-1943. Berkeley: U of California, 2008. Print.
Ricciardi, Alessia. "The Italian Redemption of Cinema: Neorealism from Bazin to Godard."" The Romantic Review 97.3 (2006): 483-501. Web.
Rome Open City. Dir. Roberto Rossellini. By Federico Fellini, Sergio Amidei, S. Midi, and Renzo Rossellini. Perf. Aldo Fabrizi and Anna Magnani. Excelsa Film, 1945.
Ruberto, Laura E., and Kristi M. Wilson. Italian Neorealism and Global Cinema. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2007. Print.
Schiavo, Gianluca. "Language and National Identity: The 'revolution ' of Italian Neorealism." Fu Jen Studies: Literature & Linguistics 45 (2012): 22-101. Web.
Shiel, Mark. Italian Neorealism: Rebuilding the Cinematic City. London: Wallflower, 2006. Print.
Wood, Mary P. Italian Cinema. Oxford: Berg, 2005. Print.