ITALIAN

NEO-REALISM
Asl Kokuluda
L4C 604

WHAT IS ITALIAN NEOREALISM?

It started in Italy after the World War II

Its origin is founded on the films made under the Fascist regime.

The directors were free to film about economic, political and social issues.

In general it focuses on the lower class and their lives.

Rome, Open City (1945) by Roberto Rosselini is accepted to be the first film
that started neorealism and Umberto D. (1952) by Vittorio De Sica is
considered to be the last of it.

For some critics, Federico Fellinis La Strada (1954) is the last neorealist film.

Golden Age of Italian Cinema

It revolved around film critics that contributed to the magazine Cinema

It rejects the White Telephone films of Hollywood.

A lot of American Hollywood films were exported into Italy

Dramatic editings, happy endings

They were not telling the reality in the streets.

After World War II, the fascist censorship lifted from the film industry and therefore the directors were
free to film about anything and this helped to relive their realism.

Most of the films talk about the poverty, unemployment, hopelessness, unhappiness of the public
that rose after the post-war economic problems occurred.

After Mussolini, Italian Spring began which meant goodbye to the old ways and welcome to the
realistic approach.

INSPIRATION AND IMPACT

inspired by poetic realism, marxism and

Christian humanism,

influence on French New Wave cinema, Polish

Film School and the Parallel Cinema movement
in India. Especially Satyajit Ray and Bimal Roy
were inspired by Bicycle Thieves,

The movement put emphasis on their problems.

a humanistic approach

After 1950s, the movement began to fade away.

The political situation were changing in Italy.

The film industry was beginning to lose one of its major themes.

The negative parts of the Italian lifestyles was being transferred but Italians did
not want to be remembered of their poverty, their despair anymore.

The criticism to De Sicas films from the conservative politician Giulio Andreotti,
who said Neorealism is a dirty laundry that shouldn't be washed and hung to
dry in the open.

FEATURES
Non-Professional actors:

Use of children

Directors aimed to catch the reality of the lives of

ordinary people.

Some even chose to not have scripts.

The dramatic sequence of events we see in

Hollywood was not present in the neorealist films.

There are some films which star well-known

actors

These actors were playing out of their general

roles

The background artists were local people.

On-location shooting:

Cinecitta studies were damaged, unavailable to use

Common belief is that on-location shooting costs less

On the contrary, using sets were less expensive than shooting outside.

The directors cant predict the lighting, sounds, weather conditions

Although the directors wanted to use the sound in the streets, the dialogues were
added later dubbed.

This helped directors to be flexible with the scenario too.

CESARE ZAVATTINI

Journalist and screenplay writer

Best known for his works with Vittorio De Sica

In total, he wrote 126 screenplays, 26 of

them for De Sica.

He collaborated with directors like Alessandro

Blasetti, Guiseppe De Santis, Luchino Visconti
and Alberto Lattuada too.

His collaborations with De Sica made him

known as a neorealist. (Especially; Shoeshine,
Bicycle Thieves, Miracle in Milan and Umberto
D.)

He played an important role in advocating neo-realism.

encouraged directors to use nonprofessional actors and authentic

locations,

rejected the dramatic editing of Hollywood.

He wrote simple stories about ordinary people.

Late1950s;

Zavanatti provided De Sica with screenplays which won him Oscars of

Best Foreign Film:

Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (leri, oggi, domani)

The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini)

ROBERTO ROSSELINI

Italian director and screenwriter

Dramatic editing techniques

He learned from making documentaries and studying the Russian masters

during the Fascist period

Apparently rewrote scripts after listening to the stories of non-professionals

ROME, OPEN CITY (1945)

It is considered to be the first major

neorealist production.

After Rome, Open City , neo-realism was

globally recognized when it won the Grand
Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

Rossellini was running out of funds to film

so the guerrilla style production became
important for the development of
neorealism.

What is guerrilla style production?

Independent filmmaking that has low funds

Using any props that can be found

On-location shooting

Reflected the moral and psychological atmosphere

Captured the tension and the tragedy of Italian life under German
occupation
Relied on dramatic actors
Constructed a number of studio sets
So did not follow the exact neorealist trend of shooting films in the streets

Good and evil were clear-cut

Lighting in key sequences (The famous
torture scene) follows expressionist and
American film-noir conventions
He aimed to provoke an emotional response
symbol of their contiunous observation of
the difficulties

PAISAN (1946)

Second film of his war trilogy

Six episodes of the invasion of Italy
A novelistic approach to film realism
Inspiration by;
Its grainy film,
The acting of its nonprofessional
protagonists
Its voice-over narration

GERMANY, YEAR ZERO

(1948)

Last film of Rossellini's war

trilogy

A young German boy who

commits suicide
Directors attention on the
effects of the war on Germany
Shot in the ruins of Berlin
before reconstruction

VITTORIO DE SICA

leading figure in the neorealist movement

Uses non-professionals more brilliantly than
Rossellini
Deep-focus photography, normally associated
with Jean Renoir and Orson Welles

(using a large depth of field, all in focus)

BICYCLE THIEVES (1948)

Adapted from a novel by Luigi Bartolini

Unemployed father (Antonio Ricci) needs a
bicycle to go to work to hang posters on city
walls.
Enzo Staiola as Bruno,
They search for their stolen bicycle
a landmark of humanist filmmaking
A lot of documentation of war-torn Rome

SHOESHINE (1946)

Misadventures of two boys scraping a living

shining shoes in the aftermath of WWII.

The use of children is a continuous theme

in De Sicas films.

He thinks obtaining child actors is being

faithful to the character.

He believes non-professionals can do a

better job than hired actors to play ordinary
roles.

MIRACLE IN MILAN (1951)

A fable >>> abandons film realism

Its cast is made of professional actors

Many special effects:

superimposed images for magical effects,

process shots,

reverse action,

surrealistic sets,

UMBERTO D. (1952)

It focuses on a lonely elder, a former civil

servant

The effects of poverty and old age in Italy

during the Christian democratic post-war
period.

Cesare Zavattini came closest to making a

film about a character to whom nothing
happens.

De Sica had another outstanding

performance from a nonprofessional.

LUCHINO VISOTTI
-

An influential director of post-war Italian

cinema

His adaptation of I malavoglia (The

Earth Trembles) were entirely filmed out
on Sicilia with local people as its cast

OBSESSION (1942)

Ossessione

Considered to be the first Italian neorealist film

Adapted from James M.Cains 1934 novel

According to Visconti, the term neorealism

was first used by editor Mario Serandrei after
he saw a few frames from Obsession.

Visconti were heavily influenced by his

experiences with Jean Renoir

Visconti: it was a shock to everyone, at those

times you could not address such themes,
even if you wanted to

THE EARTH TREMBLES

(1948)

Was originally planned as a documentary

on the lives of Sicilian fishermen

But then became a fiction film

It would be the first Sicilian trilogy but

Visconti never got to finish it.

He retained many documentary elements

like having his cast entirely
nonprofessionals speak in their own dialect

He made another neorealist style 1951s

Bellissima

OTHER IMPORTANT
WORKS

Bitter Rice (1949) by Giuseppe De Santis

About a thief and his accomplice who is
hiding from police after stealing jewellery

It tells the difficult conditions in Italy, the

struggle to survive
Its different than others in terms of his focus
on women

La Strada by Federico Fellini

Some accept La Strada as the last neo-realist film

because;

Most of it is filmed outside (on-location)

The characters are natural, their speech is not scripted

It shows the war-torn Italy and the unemployment

after WWII

However, it also does not carry all characteristics of

neorealism;

The cast consists of professional actors

Few sets have been used

FOLLOW-UP ACTIVITY
Think about the things you learned and
by using them write a scenario. Decide
who will play in your film and where
you plan to film it. Keep these in mind
while writing the scenario. Share your
scenario in your blog.

WORKS CITED
1.

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http://www.filmreference.com/encyclopedia/Independent-Film-RoadMovies/Neorealism-HISTORICAL-ORIGINS-OF-ITALIAN-NEOREALISM.html
https://www.criterion.com/explore/6-italian-neorealism
http://cinecollage.net/neorealism.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_neorealism
https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/3868-bitter-rice-a-field-in-italy
http://sarastreamlines.blogspot.com.tr/2005/12/neorealism-and-lastrada.html
http://filmdirectorsite.com/luchino-visconti