957986
Italian Neo-Realism
- 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.
- Features
- Narrative focus
- Child character
- working class
- Vernacular, non-literary dialogue
- "There must be no gap between life and what is on the screen... I want to meet the real protagonist
of everyday life... Neorealism has perceived that the most irreplaceable experience comes from
things happening under our eyes, from natural necessity. ...the ideal film would be ninety minutes in
the life of a man to whom nothing happens." (Cesare Zavattini, screenwriter - below)
- Child character
- Plot
- Episodic narrative structure
- Episodic narrative structure
- Mise-en-scene
- On location
- Grainy
- ‘It is not the absence of actors that is, historically, the hallmark of social realism nor
of the Italian film. Rather, it is specifically the rejection of the star concept and the
casual mixing of professionals and those who just act occasionally. It is important to
avoid casting the professional in the role for which he is well known.’ (21)
- ‘with the disappearance of the concept of the actor
into a transparency seemingly as natural as life
itself, comes the disappearance of the set.’ (57)
- ‘It is not the absence of actors that is, historically, the hallmark of social realism nor
of the Italian film. Rather, it is specifically the rejection of the star concept and the
casual mixing of professionals and those who just act occasionally. It is important to
avoid casting the professional in the role for which he is well known.’ (21)
- On location
- Style
- A direct, unadorned style of filming
was typical, notably in long takes.
- beautifully shot on 35 mm Gevaert negative
- Mobile camera
- Rejection of classical
editing, it is no longer
the source of meaning.
- ‘It is no longer the editing that selects what we see, this giving it an a priori significance,
it is the mind of the spectator which is forced to discern [...]the dramatic spectrum proper
to the screen […] Orson Welles returned to reality its visible continuity’ (28)
- ‘It is no longer the editing that selects what we see, this giving it an a priori significance,
it is the mind of the spectator which is forced to discern [...]the dramatic spectrum proper
to the screen […] Orson Welles returned to reality its visible continuity’ (28)
- A direct, unadorned style of filming
was typical, notably in long takes.
- Neo-realist films were typified
by location shooting, often in
poor neighbourhoods and the
countryside, and by using
predominantly
non-professional actors.
- Narrative focus
- Roberto Rossellini - “above
all a moral position from
which to look at the world”.
- Coming in the wake of studio-bound melodramas of the Fascist regime – ‘white telephone’
films – neo-realist films demonstrated a new social consciousness, with their emphasis on
working class hardship and the daily struggle to get by in post-war Italy, where the shadow
of defeat lay over its material conditions of economic hardship in war-damaged cities.
- An export ban on films that
'maligned' Italy, combined with
the increasing popularity of
American movies, meant that
the style fell out of favour with
producers and audiences.
- Bicycle Thieves (1949) Vittorio De Sica
- ‘the very principle of Ladri di Biciclette
is the disappearance of a story.’ (58)
- ‘the very principle of Ladri di Biciclette
is the disappearance of a story.’ (58)
- Illusion of Reality
- there is no “realism” in art which is not first and foremost
profoundly “aesthetic” …Realism in art can only be
achieved in one way – through artifice’ (Bazin in Cook, 225).
- ‘Every form of aesthetic must necessarily choose between what is worth preserving
and what should be discarded, and what should not even be considered. But when
this aesthetic aims in essence at creating the illusion of reality, as does the cinema,
this choice sets up a fundamental contradiction which is at once unacceptable and
necessary: necessary because art can only exist when such a choice is made.
Without it, supposing total cinema was here and now technically possible, we would
go back purely to reality. Unacceptable because it would be done definitely at the
expense of that reality which the cinema proposes to restore integrally’ (26).
- ‘for the initial reality there has been substituted an
illusion of reality composed of a complex of abstraction
(black and white, plane surface), of conventions (the rules
of montage, for example), and of authentic reality.’(27)
- ‘Some measure of
reality must always be
sacrificed in the effort
of achieving it’ (30).
- there is no “realism” in art which is not first and foremost
profoundly “aesthetic” …Realism in art can only be
achieved in one way – through artifice’ (Bazin in Cook, 225).
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