Italian Neorealism Between Hollywood and Nation

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Italian Neorealism Between Hollywood and Nation
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• Thinking Italian Film project
• Italian Studies, 2008
• Neorealism
• Hollywood and Nation
• Stazione Termini/Indiscretion of an American Wife
  (1953)

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What We Talk About When We Talk About Neorealism

• 1943-53
• Documentary-style
• Politically committed
• Opposed to star-driven practices of Hollywood
• De Sicas Sciuscia (1946), Bicycle Thieves
  (1948), Rossellinis Rome Open City (1945) and
  Paisa (1946)

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• (Hayward 203) one film meets with all these
  tenets of neorealism Bicycle Thieves
• Neorealism supposedly based on real-life subject
  matter

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Legacies

• Moral and ideological stance
• Cinema of the Liberation (Bazin, 1948)
• Constant reference point
• Gomorrah (Garrone, 2008) neo-neo-realism

Gomorrah
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Critical topoi

• Rhetoric of crisis fall, belatedness, loss
• New beginning Edenic
• Stasis of discourse 2007 debate on The Crisis
  of a Cinema Without Language

• LA CRISI DI UN CINEMA SENZA LINGUAGGIO

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Critical topos 2

• Great auteurs as masters
• Fellinis description of Rossellini
• Adam, a kind of progenitor from whom we are all
  descended

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Critical topos 3

• Neorealism as national cinema and collective
  sounding board
• Importance of national reference Millicent
  Marcus
• mirror of national life Gian Piero Brunetta

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• Transnational turn in film studies ignored
• Vitali and Willemen (2006) Films can be seen
  not to reflect, but to stage the historical
  conditions that constitute the national (8)
• Cinema itself as instrument for social
  regeneration (Gundle 2000, 27)

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Series of Exclusions

• rejection of the star concept (Bazin, 1948)
• Generic influences melodrama especially
• Bazin demon of melodrama (1948)
• Female address
• Address to nation
• Caldwell (2000) neorealism created little
  discursive space for the specific experience of
  women

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• Wood (2005) on neorealism rosa pink neorealism
• Female-addressed form of popular realism
• OLeary (2007) masculinist terms of discourse
  of impegno (political commitment)

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LUnita

• 1955 enquiry on Cinema e popolo
• Distinction reiterated between the public
  (pubblico) and the people (popolo)
• Gramscian conception of popolo and the popular
  still dominates
• Inductive fallacy

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Hollywood

• Cesare Zavattini neorealism opposed to Hollywood
  practice
• American realism, eg Vidors The Crowd, or Fords
  The Grapes of Wrath, were acceptable models

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• Neorealism constructed critically through its
  reception in the US
• Two Oscar nominations for De Sica (Sciuscia,
  Bicycle Thieves)
• New Italian realism successful import

Anna Magnani in Un uomo ritorna (1946)
released as Revenge in USA 1947
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Transnational address?

• Use of American actors/GIs (Paisa, Tombolo
  paradiso nero (Tombolo, Ferroni, 1947), Senza
  pieta (Without Pity, Lattuada, 1948)
• Americanized star figures
• Riso amaro (Bitter Rice, De Santis, 1948), Il
  bandito (The Outlaw, Lattuada, 1946), Desiderio
  (Desire, Pagliero 1946)

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Co-productions and Collaborations

• Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman, Stromboli (1949)
  and Viaggio in Italia (Journey to Italy, 1953)
• Anna Magnani directed by William Dieterle in
  Vulcano (1949)
• Stazione Termini De Sica and David O. Selznick

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Stazione Termini (1953)

• Financed/co-produced by David O. Selznick
• Starring Jennifer Jones, Montgomery Clift
• Released in the US as Indiscretion of an American
  Wife
• Excluded from De Sica filmographies and dismissed
  by critics

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• US trailer
• Clash of cinematographic practices
• Long shots of material environment vs soft-focus
  star close-ups
• Neorealism vs codes of womans film

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Creative Struggle

• G.R. Aldo (La terra trema, Umberto D) replaced as
  close-up photographer by Oswald Morris
• DOS flew in Richard Van Hessen (Its a Wonderful
  Life, The Paradine Case) to oversee sound
  post-production

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Selznick vs De Sica

• Framed as struggle over notions of quality and
  craftsmanship
• the subsequent revelation of the lenses used by
  Aldo so shocked the entire film community that it
  became a matter of public debate (23/2/52).

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Value of the Star

• DOS the distortion of Jennifers face and
  figure into a monstrosity because of the almost
  irrational insistence upon giving superior
  consideration to the photography of buildings
  literally two city blocks away
• Different visual schemes lighting, framing,
  lenses

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Conclusion Questions of Definition

• Hallam and Marshment (2000) neorealism as
  vacant signifier
• Bracket it with film noir as a flexible
  container
• Noir conceptual black hole
• Neale (2000) noir never existed
• Bazin (1955) le néoréalisme nexiste pas en soi

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Film, History, Nation

• Duncan (2008) Histories of Italian cinema tell
  a national story The point and project of
  such histories, it must be remembered, is not to
  furnish a descriptive account of what happened.
  Rather, their purpose is to stake a claim that
  would align time and space in a gesture that is
  recuperative and utopian. It is a claim that, in
  the most positive sense, makes the nation up.