Realist Film Movements

1
Realist Film Movements

• Neorealismo (1)
• Films of Roberto Rossellini

2
Table of Contents

• Neorealismo
• Roberto Rossellini
• Roma, Citta Aperta and Other Films
• as the theatrical sense of drama stems
• from reality, people in real situations will
• produce drama Richard Leacock

3
Neorealismo

• Documentary films and fiction films
• DIFFERENCE?
• Documentary films ? To be true to the reality
  that they depict to reflect truthfully the
  issue they raise

4
Neorealismo

• Fiction films ? free to shape and alter reality
  in the way it suits the needs of the story. We
  cannot ask whether they are true to facts and
  circumstances outside themselves, but we can ask
  whether they create a convincing make-believe.

5
Neorealismo

• Italian NEOREALISMO
• One of the first conscious attempts in the
  fiction film to be true to real circumstances and
  reflect truthfully the issue raised in it.
• Classical American Films - conscious attempts to
  create a convincing make-believe
• Film making tendencies, if not movement in
  the mid- and late 1940s.

6
Neorealismo

• One of the first significant alternatives to the
  Hollywood-style realism and its conventions in
  film making.
• Neorealismo - the name given by hindsight to the
  films of such directors as Roberto Rossellini,
  Vittorio De Sica, Giuseppe di Santis, Pietro
  Germi and Luchino Visconti
• Documentary-style rendering of actual lives in
  actual circumstances

7
Neorealismo

• The Parma Conference on Neorealismo in 1953
• COMMON FEATURES Ideological
• A new democratic spirit with emphasis on the
  value of ordinary people
• A compassionate point of view towards the poor
  and the oppressed and a refusal to make facile
  moral judgements

8
Neorealismo

• COMMON FEATURES - Ideological
• Preoccupation with Italys fascist past and the
  aftermath of the wartime devastation
• Blending of Christian and Marxist humanism
• Emphasis on emotions rather than abstract ideas

9
Neorealismo

• COMMON FEATURES - sylistic
• An avoidance of neatly plotted stories in favour
  of loose, episodic structure
• A documentary visual style
• The use of actual locations usually exteriors
  rather than studio sites
• The use of non-professional actors, even for
  principal roles

10
Neorealismo

• COMMON FEATURES Stylistic
• The use of conversational speech, not literary
  dialogue
• The avoidance of artifice in editing, camerawork,
  and lighting in favour of a simple styless style

11
Pre-Neorealismo

• Italian realism before Neorealismo and Rossellini
• Realist impulse in literature and cinema
• We are convinced that one day we will create our
  most beautiful film following the slow and tired
  step of the worker who returns home. Di Santis
  and Mario Alicata (1941)

12
Pre-Neorealismo

• Young writers, who became film directors later,
  attacked the commercialism, conservatism and lack
  of realism in popular Italian cinema.
• They include Michelangelo Antonioni, Luchino
  Visconti, Gianni Puccini, Giuseppe de Santis and
  Pietro Ingrao.
• Film journals, Cinema (its director, Vittorio
  Mussollini)

13
Pre-Neorealismo

• Reaction to the filmmaking tradition in Italy -
  historical epic, fantasy and romantic melodrama
  (telefoni bianchi)
• Some critics urged to go back to the tradition of
  verismo realist novel at the turn of the century.
  
• Versmo novels faithfully reflected Italian local
  colours in local language.

14
Pre-Neorealismo

• Influence of French Poetic Realism
• Films in the 1930s by Jean Renoir, Jean Vigo,
  Jacques Feyder, Marcel Carné are mainly about
  tragic destiny of working protagonists. Poetic,
  lyrical and aesthetic treatment of their lives.

15
Roberto Rossellini

• Roberto Rossellini
• Father of Italian Neo-realismo
• 1906-1977
• Director and screenwriter

16
Roberto Rossellini

• War-time documentary trilogies made with Federico
  Fellini - Propaganda films.
• Basis for his post-war realist films La Nave
  bianca

17
Roberto Rossellini

• Two months before the liberation of Rome,
  Rossellini prepared for making the self-financed
  film, Roma, Citta aperta (Rome, Open City) with
  the help from Fellini (script writer) and Aldo
  Fabrizi (who played the role of Roman priest in
  it)

18
Roma, Citta aperta

• Roma, Citta aperta (Rome, Open City, 1945) The
  (half-) true story of the struggle against the
  German troops occupying Rome and a priest
  executed by Nazis.

19
Roma, Citta aperta

• IMPROVISATION AND SCRIPT
• Rossellini never used a script in a conventional
  sense. His script was collectively written and
  contained only its narrative outline. The film
  is based on blended pieces of the true stories
  which took place in the winter of 1943-44.

20
Roma, Citta aperta

• LOCATION SHOOTING
• Take the camera out into the streets. Rossellini
  avoided studios whenever possible.
• (Imaginary) geography created out of various
  settings and places. Roma, Citta aperta was one
  of the rare films which kept to the correct
  streets and directions of the city in which it
  was filmed.
• Once the imaginary geography was established, the
  narrative events and characters movements
  faithfully observed it.

21
Apartments in Via Montecuccoli,Church of
SantElena in Via CasilinaStreet scenes where
Don Pietro, Macrello, Agostino, Pina Meet,
Circonvaliazione Casilina
22
Via Motecuccolli, exteriors and interiors of
apartments
23
Via Motecuccolli, exteriors and interiors of
apartments
24
(No Transcript)
25
Roma, Citta Aperta

• NON-PROFESSIONAL ACTORS
• Mainly amateur actors with some professionals in
  the key roles.
• In order to really create the character that
  one has in mind, it is necessary for the director
  to engage in a battle with his actor which
  usually ends with submitting to the actors wish.
  Since I do not have the desire to waste my
  energy in a battle like this, I only use
  professional actors occasionally.
• Roberto Rossellini

26
Roma, Citta Aperta

• Only professional actors used
• Anna Magnani and Aldo Fabrizi

27
Roma, Citta Aperta

• GRAINY PHOTOGRAPHY
• Documentary feel
• The film owes its uneven look to the stock, some
  of which was given by the American occupation
  army or other was bought from street
  photographers.

28
Grainy and out-of focus photography
29
Washed-out colour
30
Roma, Citta aperta

• Montage
• Pinas death scene the imitation of our real
  experience. We hear a crack (though, we do not
  see the one who has shot her) - we see her fall -
  we make connection. Briefness, the episode told
  by sound.
• Compare this to Hitchcocks suspense montage The
  Man Who Knew Too Much

31
Roma, Citta Aperta

• REALITY EFFECT
• Non-diegetic scenes and realistic details
• Small incidental details ? a choirboy kicks a
  German soldier another soldier molests Pina a
  long ladder in Pinas stockings must be noticed.

32
Roma, Citta Aperta

• This is the way things are.
  
• Roberto Rossellini
• -- A motto of neorealismo

33
War-time Trilogy

• Paisa (1946)
• Six episodes of the Allied advance from the South
  at the end of WWII.
• Paisa
• Germania, Anno Zero (1948)
• A story of a German boy in Berlin under
  occupation.