Italian neorealism
Encyclopedia
Italian neorealism
is a style of film characterized by stories set amongst the poor and working class
, filmed on location, frequently using nonprofessional actor
s. Italian neorealist films mostly contend with the difficult economic and moral conditions of post-World War II
Italy, reflecting the changes in the Italian psyche and the conditions of everyday life
: poverty and desperation.
, Luchino Visconti
, Gianni Puccini
, Cesare Zavattini
, Giuseppe De Santis and Pietro Ingrao
. Largely prevented from writing about politics (the editor-in-chief of the magazine was none other than Vittorio Mussolini
, son of Benito Mussolini
), the critics attacked the telefono bianco
films that dominated the industry at the time. As a counter to the poor quality of mainstream films, some of the critics felt that Italian cinema should turn to the realist
writers from the turn of the century.
Key elements are an emphasis on real lives (close to but not quite documentary style), Both Antonioni and Visconti had worked closely with Jean Renoir
. Additionally, many of the filmmakers involved in neorealism developed their skills working on calligraphist films (though the short-lived movement was markedly different from neorealism). Elements of neorealism are also found in the films of Alessandro Blasetti
and the documentary-style films of Francesco De Robertis. Two of the most significant precursors of neorealism are Toni
(Renoir
, 1935) and 1860
(Blasetti
, 1934).
The subject matter involves life among the impoverished and the working class. Realism is always emphasized, and performances are mostly constructed from scenes of people performing fairly mundane and quotidian activities, completely devoid of the self-consciousness that amateur acting usually entails. Neorealist films generally feature children in major roles, though their roles are frequently more observational than participatory.
The first neorealist film was Ossessione
by Luchino Visconti
(1943). Neorealism became famous globally in 1946 with Roberto Rossellini's Roma, città aperta (Rome, Open City), when it won the Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival as the first major film produced in Italy after the war. Despite containing many elements extraneous to the principles of neorealism, it depicted clearly the struggle of normal Italian people to live from day to day under the extraordinary difficulties of the German occupation of Rome, consciously doing what they can to resist the occupation. The children play a key role in this, and their presence at the end of the film is indicative of their role in neorealism as a whole: as observers of the difficulties of today who hold the key to the future. Vittorio De Sica
's 1948 film Ladri di biciclette is also representative of the genre, with non-professional actors, and a story that details the hardships of working-class life after the war.
At the height of neorealism, in 1948, Luchino Visconti adapted I Malavoglia
, a novel by Giovanni Verga, written at the height of the 19th century realist verismo movement (in many ways the basis for neorealism, which is therefore sometimes referred to as neoverismo), bringing the story to a modern setting, which resulted in remarkably little change in either the plot or the tone. The resulting film, La terra trema
(The Earth Trembles), starred only non-professional actors and was filmed in the same village (Aci Trezza) as the novel was set in. Because the local dialect differed so much from the Italian spoken in Rome and the other major cities, the film had to be subtitled even in its domestic release. The celebrated 1952 film Umberto D.
, by De Sica, about an elderly, impoverished retired civil servant struggling to make ends meet is often cited as a classic neo-realist effort.
Italian Neorealism virtually ended in 1952. Liberal
and socialist parties were having a hard time presenting their message. Levels of income were gradually starting to rise and the first positive effects of the Ricostruzione period began to show. As a consequence, most Italians favored the optimism shown in many American movies of the time. The vision of the existing poverty and despair, presented by the neorealist films, was demoralizing a nation anxious for prosperity and change. The views of the postwar Italian government of the time were also far from positive, and the remark of Giulio Andreotti
, who was then a vice-minister in the De Gasperi
cabinet, about neorealist movies (dirty laundry that shouldn't be washed and hung to dry in the open) remains famous to this day.
Italy's move from individual concern with Neorealism to the tragic failure of the human condition can be seen through Federico Fellini
's films. His early works Il bidone
and La Strada
are transitional movies. The larger social concerns of humanity, treated by neorealists, gave way to the exploration of the individual. His needs, his alienation from society and his tragic failure to communicate became the main focal point in the Italian films to follow in the 1960s. Similarly, Antonioni's Red Desert and Blow-up
take the neo-realist trappings and internalize them in the suffering and search for knowledge brought out by Italy's post-war economic and political climate.
More contemporary theorists of Italian Neorealism characterize it less as a consistent set of stylistic characteristics and more as the relationship between film practice and the social reality of post-war Italy. Millicent Marcus delineates the lack of consistent film styles of Neorealist film (see Marcus, Italian Film in the Light of Neorealism (Princeton University Press, 1987) ). Peter Brunette and Marcia Landy both deconstruct the use of reworked cinematic forms in Rossellini's Roma: Citta Aperta (see Brunette Roberto Rosellini (Oxford University Press, 1987) and Landy "Diverting clichés: femininity, masculinity, melodrama, and neorealism in Open City" in Roberto Rosellini's Rome Open City (Cambridge University Press, 2004) ). Using psychoanalysis, Vincent Rocchio characterizes Neorealist film as consistently engendering the structure of anxiety into the structure of the plot itself (see Rocchio, Cinema of Anxiety: A Psychoanalysis of Italian Neorealism (UT Press, 1999) ).
cinema, the Polish Film School
and ultimately on films all over the world. It also influenced several Indian film directors including Bimal Roy
, who made Do Bigha Zameen
(1955) after watching, Vittorio De Sica
's Bicycle Thieves
(1948).
Furthermore, as some important studies point out, the abandoning of the classical way of doing cinema and so the starting point of the Nouvelle Vague
and the Modern Cinema
can be found in the post world-war II Italian cinema and in the neorealism experiences.
In particular,
Neorealism (art)
In art, neorealism was established by the ex-Camden Town Group painters Charles Ginner and Harold Gilman at the beginning of World War I. They set out to explore the spirit of their age through the shapes and colours of daily life...
is a style of film characterized by stories set amongst the poor and working class
Working class
Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...
, filmed on location, frequently using nonprofessional actor
Actor
An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...
s. Italian neorealist films mostly contend with the difficult economic and moral conditions of post-World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
Italy, reflecting the changes in the Italian psyche and the conditions of everyday life
Everyday Life
Everyday Life is the first solo album made by Life MC of the British Hip Hop group Phi Life Cypher....
: poverty and desperation.
Development
The neorealist style was developed by a circle of film critics that revolved around the magazine Cinema, including Michelangelo AntonioniMichelangelo Antonioni
Michelangelo Antonioni, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI was an Italian modernist film director, screenwriter, editor and short story writer.- Personal life :...
, Luchino Visconti
Luchino Visconti
Luchino Visconti di Modrone, Count of Lonate Pozzolo was an Italian theatre, opera and cinema director, as well as a screenwriter. He is best known for his films The Leopard and Death in Venice .-Life:...
, Gianni Puccini
Gianni Puccini
Gianni Puccini was an Italian screenwriter and film director. He wrote for 32 films between 1940 and 1967...
, Cesare Zavattini
Cesare Zavattini
Cesare Zavattini was an Italian screenwriter and one of the first theorists and proponents of the Neorealist movement in Italian cinema.-Brief biography:...
, Giuseppe De Santis and Pietro Ingrao
Pietro Ingrao
Pietro Ingrao is an Italian politician, and was for many years a senior figure in the Italian Communist Party .-Political career:Ingrao was born at Lenola, in the province of Latina....
. Largely prevented from writing about politics (the editor-in-chief of the magazine was none other than Vittorio Mussolini
Vittorio Mussolini
Vittorio Mussolini was an Italian film critic and producer. He was also the second son of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. However, he was the first son of Mussolini with his second wife Rachele.-Biography:...
, son of Benito Mussolini
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....
), the critics attacked the telefono bianco
Telefono Bianco
Telefoni Bianchi films were made in Italy in the 1930s in imitation of American films of that time. For example, there would be expensive Art Deco sets featuring white telephones , and children would have Shirley Temple curls...
films that dominated the industry at the time. As a counter to the poor quality of mainstream films, some of the critics felt that Italian cinema should turn to the realist
Realism (arts)
Realism in the visual arts and literature refers to the general attempt to depict subjects "in accordance with secular, empirical rules", as they are considered to exist in third person objective reality, without embellishment or interpretation...
writers from the turn of the century.
Key elements are an emphasis on real lives (close to but not quite documentary style), Both Antonioni and Visconti had worked closely with Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent era to the end of the 1960s...
. Additionally, many of the filmmakers involved in neorealism developed their skills working on calligraphist films (though the short-lived movement was markedly different from neorealism). Elements of neorealism are also found in the films of Alessandro Blasetti
Alessandro Blasetti
Alessandro Blasetti was an Italian film director who influenced Italian neorealism with the film Quattro passi fra le nuvole...
and the documentary-style films of Francesco De Robertis. Two of the most significant precursors of neorealism are Toni
Toni (film)
Toni is a 1935 film by Jean Renoir. It is notable for its use of non-professional actors and location shooting. It is also generally considered the major precursor to the Italian neorealist movement. Luchino Visconti, one of the founding members of the neorealist movement, was assistant director on...
(Renoir
Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent era to the end of the 1960s...
, 1935) and 1860
1860 (film)
1860 is an Italian film directed by Alessandro Blasetti, released in 1934. The movie presages Italian neorealism in that it was shot wholly on location. Also, most contemporaneous historical epics used a star to focus on grand historical characters...
(Blasetti
Alessandro Blasetti
Alessandro Blasetti was an Italian film director who influenced Italian neorealism with the film Quattro passi fra le nuvole...
, 1934).
Characteristics
There are a number of traits that make Neorealist films distinct. They are generally filmed with nonprofessional actors (though, in a number of cases, well known actors were cast in leading roles, playing strongly against their normal character types in front of a background populated by local people rather than extras brought in for the film). They are shot almost exclusively on location, mostly in poor neighborhoods and in the countryside.The subject matter involves life among the impoverished and the working class. Realism is always emphasized, and performances are mostly constructed from scenes of people performing fairly mundane and quotidian activities, completely devoid of the self-consciousness that amateur acting usually entails. Neorealist films generally feature children in major roles, though their roles are frequently more observational than participatory.
The first neorealist film was Ossessione
Ossessione
Ossessione is a 1943 film based on the novel, The Postman Always Rings Twice, by James M. Cain. Luchino Visconti’s first feature film, it is considered by many to be the first Italian neorealist film, though there is some debate about whether such a categorization is accurate.- Historical context...
by Luchino Visconti
Luchino Visconti
Luchino Visconti di Modrone, Count of Lonate Pozzolo was an Italian theatre, opera and cinema director, as well as a screenwriter. He is best known for his films The Leopard and Death in Venice .-Life:...
(1943). Neorealism became famous globally in 1946 with Roberto Rossellini's Roma, città aperta (Rome, Open City), when it won the Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival as the first major film produced in Italy after the war. Despite containing many elements extraneous to the principles of neorealism, it depicted clearly the struggle of normal Italian people to live from day to day under the extraordinary difficulties of the German occupation of Rome, consciously doing what they can to resist the occupation. The children play a key role in this, and their presence at the end of the film is indicative of their role in neorealism as a whole: as observers of the difficulties of today who hold the key to the future. Vittorio De Sica
Vittorio de Sica
Vittorio De Sica was an Italian director and actor, a leading figure in the neorealist movement....
's 1948 film Ladri di biciclette is also representative of the genre, with non-professional actors, and a story that details the hardships of working-class life after the war.
At the height of neorealism, in 1948, Luchino Visconti adapted I Malavoglia
I Malavoglia
I Malavoglia is the best known novel by Giovanni Verga. It was first printed in 1881. An English translation, The house by the medlar-tree by Mary A...
, a novel by Giovanni Verga, written at the height of the 19th century realist verismo movement (in many ways the basis for neorealism, which is therefore sometimes referred to as neoverismo), bringing the story to a modern setting, which resulted in remarkably little change in either the plot or the tone. The resulting film, La terra trema
La terra trema
La terra trema is a 1948 Italian dramatic film directed by Luchino Visconti...
(The Earth Trembles), starred only non-professional actors and was filmed in the same village (Aci Trezza) as the novel was set in. Because the local dialect differed so much from the Italian spoken in Rome and the other major cities, the film had to be subtitled even in its domestic release. The celebrated 1952 film Umberto D.
Umberto D.
Umberto D. is a 1952 Italian neorealist film, directed by Vittorio de Sica. Most of the actors were non-professional, including Carlo Battisti, who plays the title role...
, by De Sica, about an elderly, impoverished retired civil servant struggling to make ends meet is often cited as a classic neo-realist effort.
Italian Neorealism virtually ended in 1952. Liberal
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...
and socialist parties were having a hard time presenting their message. Levels of income were gradually starting to rise and the first positive effects of the Ricostruzione period began to show. As a consequence, most Italians favored the optimism shown in many American movies of the time. The vision of the existing poverty and despair, presented by the neorealist films, was demoralizing a nation anxious for prosperity and change. The views of the postwar Italian government of the time were also far from positive, and the remark of Giulio Andreotti
Giulio Andreotti
Giulio Andreotti is an Italian politician of the now dissolved centrist Christian Democracy party. He served as the 42nd Prime Minister of Italy from 1972 to 1973, from 1976 to 1979 and from 1989 to 1992. He also served as Minister of the Interior , Defense Minister and Foreign Minister and he...
, who was then a vice-minister in the De Gasperi
Alcide De Gasperi
Alcide De Gasperi was an Italian statesman and politician and founder of the Christian Democratic Party. From 1945 to 1953 he was the prime minister of eight successive coalition governments. His eight-year rule remains a landmark of political longevity for a leader in modern Italian politics...
cabinet, about neorealist movies (dirty laundry that shouldn't be washed and hung to dry in the open) remains famous to this day.
Italy's move from individual concern with Neorealism to the tragic failure of the human condition can be seen through Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI , was an Italian film director and scriptwriter. Known for a distinct style that blends fantasy and baroque images, he is considered one of the most influential and widely revered filmmakers of the 20th century...
's films. His early works Il bidone
Il bidone
Il bidone is an Italian film directed by Federico Fellini. It features Broderick Crawford, Richard Basehart, Giulietta Masina, among others....
and La Strada
La Strada
La Strada is a 1954 Italian neorealist drama directed by Federico Fellini in which a naïve young woman is sold to a brutish man and goes on the road as a part of his itinerant show....
are transitional movies. The larger social concerns of humanity, treated by neorealists, gave way to the exploration of the individual. His needs, his alienation from society and his tragic failure to communicate became the main focal point in the Italian films to follow in the 1960s. Similarly, Antonioni's Red Desert and Blow-up
Blow-Up
-History:Claudio Camaione and Paolo Cilione came to New York City in the late 1990s, then further on to Southern California to build their studio for recording and film editing in a villa overlooking Silver Lake...
take the neo-realist trappings and internalize them in the suffering and search for knowledge brought out by Italy's post-war economic and political climate.
More contemporary theorists of Italian Neorealism characterize it less as a consistent set of stylistic characteristics and more as the relationship between film practice and the social reality of post-war Italy. Millicent Marcus delineates the lack of consistent film styles of Neorealist film (see Marcus, Italian Film in the Light of Neorealism (Princeton University Press, 1987) ). Peter Brunette and Marcia Landy both deconstruct the use of reworked cinematic forms in Rossellini's Roma: Citta Aperta (see Brunette Roberto Rosellini (Oxford University Press, 1987) and Landy "Diverting clichés: femininity, masculinity, melodrama, and neorealism in Open City" in Roberto Rosellini's Rome Open City (Cambridge University Press, 2004) ). Using psychoanalysis, Vincent Rocchio characterizes Neorealist film as consistently engendering the structure of anxiety into the structure of the plot itself (see Rocchio, Cinema of Anxiety: A Psychoanalysis of Italian Neorealism (UT Press, 1999) ).
Impact
The period between 1943 and 1950 in the history of Italian cinema is dominated by the impact of neorealism, which is properly defined as a moment or a trend in Italian film, rather than an actual school or group of theoretically motivated and like-minded directors and scriptwriters. Its impact nevertheless has been enormous, not only on Italian film but also on French New WaveFrench New Wave
The New Wave was a blanket term coined by critics for a group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. Although never a formally organized movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of...
cinema, the Polish Film School
Polish Film School
Polish Film School refers to an informal group of Polish film directors and screenplay writers active between 1955 and approximately 1963.The group was under heavy influence of Italian neorealists. It took advantage of the liberal changes in Poland after the 1956 to portray the complexity of...
and ultimately on films all over the world. It also influenced several Indian film directors including Bimal Roy
Bimal Roy
Bimal Roy was one of the most acclaimed Indian film directors of all time. He is particularly noted for his realistic and socialistic films like Do Bigha Zamin, Parineeta, Biraj Bahu, Madhumati, Sujata, and Bandini, making him an important director of Hindi cinema...
, who made Do Bigha Zameen
Do Bigha Zameen
Do Bigha Zamin is 1953 Hindi film, directed by Bengali film director Bimal Roy and star Balraj Sahni and Nirupa Roy in lead roles. The film is known for its socialist theme, and is an important film in the early parallel cinema of India and is rightly considered a trend setter...
(1955) after watching, Vittorio De Sica
Vittorio de Sica
Vittorio De Sica was an Italian director and actor, a leading figure in the neorealist movement....
's Bicycle Thieves
Bicycle Thieves
Bicycle Thieves , also known as The Bicycle Thief, is a 1948 Italian neorealist film directed by Vittorio De Sica. It tells the story of a poor man searching the streets of Rome for his stolen bicycle, which he needs to be able to work. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Luigi...
(1948).
Furthermore, as some important studies point out, the abandoning of the classical way of doing cinema and so the starting point of the Nouvelle Vague
French New Wave
The New Wave was a blanket term coined by critics for a group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. Although never a formally organized movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of...
and the Modern Cinema
European art cinema
European art cinema is a branch of cinema that was popular in the 1960s. The formal system that this cinema uses is based on the classical Hollywood cinema; particular a rejection of all tenets and rules of classical Hollywood cinema.-History:...
can be found in the post world-war II Italian cinema and in the neorealism experiences.
In particular,
this cinema seems to be constituted as a new subject of knowledge, which it-self builds and develops. It produces a new world in which the main elements have not so many narrative functions as they have their own aesthetic value, related with the eye that is watching them and not with the action they are coming from.
Precursors and influences
- The works of Giovanni VergaGiovanni VergaGiovanni Carmelo Verga was an Italian realist writer, best known for his depictions of life in Sicily, and especially for the short story "Cavalleria Rusticana" and the novel I Malavoglia .-Life and career:The first son of Giovanni Battista Catalano Verga and Caterina Di Mauro,...
- Poetic realismPoetic realismPoetic realism was a film movement in France of the 1930s and through the war years. More a tendency than a movement, Poetic Realism is not strongly unified like Soviet Montage or French Impressionism. Its leading filmmakers were Jean Renoir, Pierre Chenal, Jean Vigo, Julien Duvivier, and Marcel...
- 18601860 (film)1860 is an Italian film directed by Alessandro Blasetti, released in 1934. The movie presages Italian neorealism in that it was shot wholly on location. Also, most contemporaneous historical epics used a star to focus on grand historical characters...
(Alessandro BlasettiAlessandro BlasettiAlessandro Blasetti was an Italian film director who influenced Italian neorealism with the film Quattro passi fra le nuvole...
, 1934) - An Inn in Tokyo (Yasujirō OzuYasujiro Ozuwas a prominent Japanese film director and script writer. He is known for his distinctive technical style, developed during the silent era. Marriage and family, especially the relationships between the generations, are among the most persistent themes in his body of work...
, 1935) - ToniToni (film)Toni is a 1935 film by Jean Renoir. It is notable for its use of non-professional actors and location shooting. It is also generally considered the major precursor to the Italian neorealist movement. Luchino Visconti, one of the founding members of the neorealist movement, was assistant director on...
(Jean RenoirJean RenoirJean Renoir was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent era to the end of the 1960s...
, 1935) - La nave bianca (Roberto RosselliniRoberto RosselliniRoberto Rossellini was an Italian film director and screenwriter. Rossellini was one of the directors of the Italian neorealist cinema, contributing films such as Roma città aperta to the movement.-Early life:Born in Rome, Roberto Rossellini lived on the Via Ludovisi, where Benito Mussolini had...
, 1941) - Aniki-BóbóAniki-BóbóAniki-Bóbó is a 1942 Portuguese film directed by Manoel de Oliveira. It is his first feature-length film. Mostly children, from Oliveira's hometown, Porto, play in its story. The script was adapted by Manoel de Oliveira from a short story by José Rodrigues de Freitas, Meninos Milionários...
(Manoel de OliveiraManoel de OliveiraManoel Cândido Pinto de Oliveira, GCSE is a Portuguese film director born in Cedofeita, Porto. He began working on films in the late 1920s, but did not receive international recognition until the early 1970s. Since the late 1980s he has been one of the most prolific working film directors and...
, 1942) - Cristo si è fermato a EboliCristo si è fermato a EboliChrist Stopped at Eboli is a memoir by Carlo Levi, published in 1945, giving an account of his exile from 1935-1936 to Grassano and Aliano, remote towns in southern Italy, in the region of Lucania which is known today as Basilicata...
(novel, Carlo LeviCarlo LeviDr. Carlo Levi was an Italian-Jewish painter, writer, activist, anti-fascist, and doctor.He is best known for his book Cristo si è fermato a Eboli , published in 1945, a memoir of his time spent in exile in Lucania, Italy, after being arrested in connection with his political activism...
, 1947) - OssessioneOssessioneOssessione is a 1943 film based on the novel, The Postman Always Rings Twice, by James M. Cain. Luchino Visconti’s first feature film, it is considered by many to be the first Italian neorealist film, though there is some debate about whether such a categorization is accurate.- Historical context...
(Luchino ViscontiLuchino ViscontiLuchino Visconti di Modrone, Count of Lonate Pozzolo was an Italian theatre, opera and cinema director, as well as a screenwriter. He is best known for his films The Leopard and Death in Venice .-Life:...
, 1943)
Main Works
- Roma, città aperta (Roberto RosselliniRoberto RosselliniRoberto Rossellini was an Italian film director and screenwriter. Rossellini was one of the directors of the Italian neorealist cinema, contributing films such as Roma città aperta to the movement.-Early life:Born in Rome, Roberto Rossellini lived on the Via Ludovisi, where Benito Mussolini had...
, 1945) - Sciuscià (Vittorio De SicaVittorio de SicaVittorio De Sica was an Italian director and actor, a leading figure in the neorealist movement....
, 1946) - PaisàPaisàPaisà is a 1946 Italian film directed by Roberto Rossellini, the second of a trilogy by Rossellini. It is divided into six episodes. They are set in the Italian Campaign during World War II when Nazi Germany was losing the war against the Allies, using themes such as the difficulty of communication...
(Roberto Rossellini, 1946) - Germania, anno zero (Roberto Rossellini, 1948)
- Ladri di biciclette (Vittorio De Sica, 1948)
- La terra tremaLa terra tremaLa terra trema is a 1948 Italian dramatic film directed by Luchino Visconti...
(Luchino ViscontiLuchino ViscontiLuchino Visconti di Modrone, Count of Lonate Pozzolo was an Italian theatre, opera and cinema director, as well as a screenwriter. He is best known for his films The Leopard and Death in Venice .-Life:...
, 1948) - Bitter RiceBitter RiceBitter Rice is a 1949 Italian film made by Lux Film, written and directed by Giuseppe De Santis. Produced by Dino De Laurentiis, starring Silvana Mangano, Raf Vallone, Doris Dowling and Vittorio Gassman, Bitter Rice was a commercial success in Europe and America. It was a product of the Italian...
(Giuseppe De Santis, 1949) - StromboliStromboli (film)Stromboli is a 1950 Italian-American film directed by Roberto Rossellini and featuring Ingrid Bergman...
(Roberto Rossellini, 1950) - BellissimaBellissima (film)Bellissima is an Italian neorealism film by Italian director Luchino Visconti. The film is about and was shot at Cinecittà. Alessandro Blasetti, the film director, appears as himself....
(Luchino Visconti, 1951) - Umberto D.Umberto D.Umberto D. is a 1952 Italian neorealist film, directed by Vittorio de Sica. Most of the actors were non-professional, including Carlo Battisti, who plays the title role...
(Vittorio De Sica, 1952) — filmed in 1951, but released in 1952. Many film historians date the end of the Neorealist movement with the public attacks on the film. - I VitelloniI VitelloniI vitelloni is an Italian comedy drama film directed by Federico Fellini. Recognized as a pivotal work in the director's artistic evolution, the film has distinct autobiographical elements that mirror important societal changes in 1950s Italy....
(Federico FelliniFederico FelliniFederico Fellini, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI , was an Italian film director and scriptwriter. Known for a distinct style that blends fantasy and baroque images, he is considered one of the most influential and widely revered filmmakers of the 20th century...
, 1953)
Major figures
- Vittorio De SicaVittorio de SicaVittorio De Sica was an Italian director and actor, a leading figure in the neorealist movement....
- Federico FelliniFederico FelliniFederico Fellini, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI , was an Italian film director and scriptwriter. Known for a distinct style that blends fantasy and baroque images, he is considered one of the most influential and widely revered filmmakers of the 20th century...
- Roberto RosselliniRoberto RosselliniRoberto Rossellini was an Italian film director and screenwriter. Rossellini was one of the directors of the Italian neorealist cinema, contributing films such as Roma città aperta to the movement.-Early life:Born in Rome, Roberto Rossellini lived on the Via Ludovisi, where Benito Mussolini had...
- Luchino ViscontiLuchino ViscontiLuchino Visconti di Modrone, Count of Lonate Pozzolo was an Italian theatre, opera and cinema director, as well as a screenwriter. He is best known for his films The Leopard and Death in Venice .-Life:...
- Cesare ZavattiniCesare ZavattiniCesare Zavattini was an Italian screenwriter and one of the first theorists and proponents of the Neorealist movement in Italian cinema.-Brief biography:...
See also
- Cinema of ItalyCinema of ItalyThe history of Italian cinema began just a few months after the Lumière brothers had patented their Cinematographe, when Pope Leo XIII was filmed for a few seconds in the act of blessing the camera.-Early years:...
- French New WaveFrench New WaveThe New Wave was a blanket term coined by critics for a group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. Although never a formally organized movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of...
- Japanese New Wave
- L.A. RebellionL.A. RebellionL.A. Rebellion film movement, sometimes referred to as the "Los Angeles School of Black Filmmakers", refers to the time from roughly the late-1960s to the late-1980s when a new generation of young African and African American filmmakers emerged from UCLA Film School to produce works that provided...
- Indian Parallel CinemaParallel CinemaThe Indian New Wave, commonly known in India as Art Cinema or Parallel Cinema as an alternative to the mainstream commercial cinema, is a specific movement in Indian cinema, known for its serious content, realism and naturalism, with a keen eye on the sociopolitical climate of the times...
- Polish Film SchoolPolish Film SchoolPolish Film School refers to an informal group of Polish film directors and screenplay writers active between 1955 and approximately 1963.The group was under heavy influence of Italian neorealists. It took advantage of the liberal changes in Poland after the 1956 to portray the complexity of...