Italian Neorealism

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Italian Neorealism
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Italian Neorealism (1944-50s)

• HISTORICAL-POLITICAL BACKGROUND
• Overthrow of Mussolinis fascist regime
• Monarchy abolished in June of 1946
• Battle for power- Italian Communist Party
  (PCI) - Italian Socialist Party (PSI)-
  Christian Democratic Party (DC)
• Divided country- North Republicans- South
  Monarchists (migration north)

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Italian Neorealism (1944-50s)

• HISTORICAL-POLITICAL BACKGROUND
• Christian Democrats won 1946 general election
• Italian Communist Italian Socialist parties
  united in 1948 to form Popular Democratic Front
  (FDP)
• Europe US feared Italy would become Communist
• US National Security Council CIA launched
  propaganda campaign
• 10 million letters from Italian Americans

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Italian Neorealism (1944-50s)

• HISTORICAL-POLITICAL BACKGROUND
• Christian Democrats won 1948 general election
• Strong support in rural areas by Vatican
• Communists still had supporters in Northern
  industrial areas (working class)
• Miracolo economico of the 1950s extraordinary
  economic reforms
• US/European aid sped recovery
• Socialist Party continued to play role inItalian
  politics

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Italian Neorealism (1944-50s)

• HISTORICAL ZEITGEIST
• Economy in shambles high unemployment (25)
• Thousands of orphaned children
• Emergence of Socialist and Communist parties
• Terrorism and extremism
• Corruption
• Extremely distrustful and fatigued public

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Italian Neorealism (1944-50s)

• ITALIAN FILM INDUSTRY
• 1937-1945 Fascists controlled cinema(founded
  Cinecitta--largest studio in Europe)
• Government-funded film school
• White telephone filmsAmerican-style, escapist
  romantic comedies
• Propaganda films
• Mussolini issued imperial edicts commenting on
  aspects of Italian life he did and did not like

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Italian Neorealism (1944-50s)

• ITALIAN FILM INDUSTRY
• After WWII, Socialists and Communists in
  government tolerated Neorealisms left-wing
  ideology (former resistance movement)
• Cost of studio production, film, lighting,
  etc.became prohibitive
• Reflected desire for social reform

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Italian Neorealism (1944-50s)

• Response to artificiality of cinema of the
  Fascist period (white telephone films)
• Influenced by French and American literary
  naturalism (e.g., Dreiser, Zola)
• Impact of urban/industrial environment
• Experiences of poor and socially marginalized
• Slice of life things and facts in time and
  place (versimo)
• Ambivalence of everyday experience
• Some took strong Marxist stance, with a hopeful,
  humanistic dimension

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Italian Neorealism (1944-50s)

• Infused by a democratic spirit
• Focus on the value of ordinary people
• Compassionate point-of-view
• Refusal to make moral judgments on behavior of
  common people as they deal with lifes struggles
• Often anti-authority (bureaucracy of the church,
  government, politics)
• The tawdry, the ordinary, the insignificant

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Italian Neorealism (1944-50s)

• CINEMATIC CHARACTERISTICS
• Environment as important as actors
• Sense of actuality and immediacy
• On-location shooting
• Natural light
• Long takes and pans
• Medium and long shots
• Tracking shots
• Negative space

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Italian Neorealism
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Italian Neorealism (1944-50s)

• CINEMATIC CHARACTERISTICS
• Rough, unpolished look
• Unknown, non-professional actors
• Ordinary events, ordinary people
• Representative of a class of people, not
  individual heroes
• Loose, unresolved plots
• Conversational speech, not literary dialogue
• Post-production dubbing

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Italian Neorealism (1944-50s)

• CESARE ZAVATTINI
• Some Ideas on the Cinema (1953)
• 1. Portray real or everyday people, using
  nonprofessional actors in real settings
• 2. Examine socially significant themes
• 3. Promote the organic development
  of situations--the real flow of life--in which
  complications are rarely resolved

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Italian Neorealism (1944-50s)

• CESARE ZAVATTINI
• Identification with the common man in the
  crowd.
• Take dialogue and actors from the street.
• Reality in American films is unnaturally
  filtered.

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Italian Neorealism (1944-50s)

• CESARE ZAVATTINI
• The ideal film
• Ninety minutes of the life of a man to whom
  nothing happens.

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Italian Neorealism (1944-50s)

• CESARE ZAVATTINI
• The world goes on getting worse because we are
  not truly aware of reality.
• The job of the director is to observe reality,
  and not extract fictions from it.
• The frequent habit of identifying oneself with
  fictional characters will become very dangerous.

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Italian Neorealism

• DE SICA
• Film makers, when they depict human social
  problems, instinctively seek the causes and
  effects of the disequilibrium in human
  relationships. They are led to conclusions, a
  sort of commentary in images, which are more or
  less partisan. There is none of this in my
  work.

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Italian Neorealism

• DE SICA
• My films are a struggle against the absence of
  human solidarity. . .against the indifference of
  society towards suffering. They are a word in
  favor of the poor and unhappy."

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The Bicycle Thief

• Awarded honorary Academy Award in 1949
• Inaugural issue of Sight and Sound (BFI journal,
  now on Web) called it the greatest movie ever
  made
• Sergio Leone was an assistant director Fistful
  of Dollars Good, Bad and Ugly Once Upon A Time
  in America (1984)

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Italian Neorealism (1944-50s)

• Roberto Rossellini
• Luchino Visconti
• Guisippe DeSantis
• Giovanni Verga
• Vittorio De Sica
• Federico Fellini
• Michelangelo Antonioni
• Bernardo Bertolucci
• Francesco Rosi

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Italian Neorealism
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Italian Neorealism (1944-50s)
The pregnancy caused a huge scandal in the United
States. It even led to her being denounced on the
floor of the U.S. Senate by a Democratic senator,
who referred to her as "a horrible example of
womanhood and a powerful influence for evil." In
addition, there was a floor vote, which resulted
in her being made persona non grata.
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Italian Neorealism (1944-50s)
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Italian Neorealism (1944-50s)
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End of Italian Neorealism

• Criticized for negative depiction of Italy
• Lack of positive heroes
• Negative displays of human flesh
• Catholic Church forbidden for believers
• Leaders disliked desolate images portrayed by
  neorealism
• Giulio Andreotti, vice-minister in the De Gasperi
  cabinet Dirty laundry that shouldn't be washed
  and hung to dry in the open
• Leftists Do not go far enough in suggesting
  social reforms

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End of Italian Neorealism

• Leftist parties defeated at the polls
• Massive US aid speeded recovery
• Democracy took root
• Personal income surpassed pre-War levels
• Italians liked American cinema optimism
• Only 10 of the 800 films made in Italy between
  1945 and 1953 were Neorealist

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End of Italian Neorealism

• New focus on the inner man
• Moral and spiritual decline
• Alienation
• Psychology of relationships
• BUT the movement did influence the French New
  Wave, Hollywood and TVeven today
• On the Waterfront (1954)
• Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
• Mean Streets (1973)

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Neorealism Today

• Influence of Italian Neorealism
• French New Wave
• British Social Realism
• Scorcese New York street life
• Ken Loach UK working class
• Common Topics
• Immigrant experience in U.S.
• Exposure of social injustices
• Oppression of working class
• Crime and corruption

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Neorealism Marxist Tradition

• Film as a medium for social reform
• Expose the shallowness of modern capitalistic
  society
• How people exploited by the system
• Real-life problems of the common man
• Poverty, crime, social injustice common themes
• Ideal society is classless
• Social change requires mobilization of groups of
  workers, minorities, etc.

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Andre Bazin Italian Neorealism
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Siefried Kracauer (1889-1966)

• CINEMATIC REALISM Philosophy
• Critic of modernity (Frankfurt School)
• Human condition characterized by alienation
• Mass culture/society manipulates individuals
• Materialistic values have replaced religion,
  metaphysical, romantic convictions, resulting in
  disenchantment
• People live distracted lives
• Film as a redemptive experience that can show
  man damaged condition of modernity and help him
  transcend materialism

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Siefried Kracauer (1889-1966)

• CINEMATIC REALISM
• Foreshadowed and predicted dehumanizing power of
  mass media
• Mass ornaments--film, military parades and
  sporting events
• Real world of the individual desubstantiated by
  spectacle and empty rituals
• Film must reengage individual with nature and
  the Kantian real world

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Andre Bazin (1918-1958)

• Views cinema as a redemptive art
• The role of cinema is to help man in his search
  for truth and understanding in an ambiguous and
  uncertain world
• Man can transcend alienation and modernity
• Film can be a religious experience
• Love and state of grace

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Andre Bazin (1918-1958)

• Bergsons concept of creative evolution
• Catholic phenomenologist
• The liminal image
• Close experiential scrutiny reveals deep
  structures/meanings behind phenomena
• Under scrutiny of inquiry artistic
  analysisthese deep structures are brought into
  the light
• Cinema and photography are media that an artist
  can utilize to review the deeper meanings behind
  the phenomena of existence

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Andre Bazin (1918-1958)

• We know that under the image revealed there is
  another which is truer to reality and under this
  image still another and yet again still another
  under this last one, right down to the true image
  of reality, absolute, mysterious, which no one
  will ever see.
• Michelangelo Antonioni

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Andre Bazin (1918-1958)

• Film image embalms time wrenches phenomena
  from the flux of life
• Symbolic power of cinematic imagery combined with
  empirical density of cinematic realism
• The spirit behind the real object
• The long hard gaze
• Disliked over-expressive, over-ornamental, or
  overuse of montage

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Andre Bazin (1918-1958)

• Montage...chops the world up into little
  fragments, and disturbs the natural unity in
  people and things.

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Andre Bazin (1918-1958)

• German expressionism did violence to the image
  by ways of sets and lighting.

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Andre Bazin (1918-1958)

• Francois Truffaut
• Erich von Stroheim
• Roberto Rossellini
• Vittorio De Sica
• Robert Bresson
• Jean Renoir
• Orson Welles
• William Wyler

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Andre Bazin (1918-1958)

• Depth of focus long takes
• Respect for the continuity of dramatic space and
  the flow of time
• Composition in depthDramatic effects for which
  we had formerly relied on montage were created
  out of the movements of the actors within a fixed
  framework.
• Ambiguity of expression closer to reality viewer
  must choose

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Andre Bazin (1918-1958)

• The principle responsibility is to document the
  world before attempting to interpret or criticize
  it. For Bazin, this moral duty is ultimately a
  sacred onethe photographic media are, in effect,
  preordained to bear witness to the beauty of the
  cosmos.
• Peter Matthews, Sight and Sound, August 1999

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Andre Bazin (1918-1958)

• Bazin distrusted montage on the grounds that its
  dynamic juxtaposition of images hurtles the
  viewer along a predetermined path of attention,
  the aim being to construct a synthetic reality in
  support of a propagandist message.
• Peter Matthews, Sight and Sound, August 1999

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Andre Bazin (1918-1958)

• De Sicahumbly renounced the hubristic display
  of authorial personality and thus enabled the
  audience to intuit the numinous significance of
  people and things.
• Peter Matthews, Sight and Sound, August 1999

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Andre Bazin (1918-1958)

• At no other period in its history has cinema
  been so enslaved by escapist fantasyand never
  have we been less certain of the status of the
  real. Now the digitization of the image
  threatens to cut the umbilical cord between
  photograph and referent on which Bazin founded
  his entire theory.
• Peter Matthews, Sight and Sound, August 1999

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Andre Bazin (1918-1958)

• At no other period in its history has cinema
  been so enslaved by escapist fantasyand never
  have we been less certain of the status of the
  real. Now the digitization of the image
  threatens to cut the umbilical cord between
  photograph and referent on which Bazin founded
  his entire theory.
• Peter Matthews, Sight and Sound, August 1999
• Kracauer Mass ornaments distracting society.
• Baudrillard We live in hyperreality