TCF112/Italian Neorealism
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Overview of Italian Cinema Before Neorealism
- 'Teens: "Golden Era"
- Cabiria
- WW I ended the Golden Era
- '20s: costume dramas
- '30s: Mussolini/fascism
- Apolitical
- "white telephone"
- bourgeois melodrama
Neorealism
- "neo" = "new"
- Peaked after WW II (1945)
- Luchino Visconti
- Vittorio DeSica
- Roberto Rossellini
- 1930s Antecedents
- Sole ("sun"), Alessandro Blassetti
- 1930, social issues
- 1943 "neorealism" coined
- Umberto Barbaro
- 1942 first true neorealist film: Ossessione ("obsession")
- Directed by Luchino Visconti
- James M. Cain, Postman Always Rings Twice
- Style
- Outside studio - on location
- Content
- Poverty/suffering in Po River Valley
- Open City
- Directed by Roberto Rossellini
- Sep. '43 Italy broke w/Germany
- Oct. '43 Italy declared war on Ger.
- June '44 Rome liberated
- Spring '45 Fighting Ends
- Apr. '45 Mussolini executed
- Sep. '45 Open City released
- Directed by Roberto Rossellini
- Bicycle Thieves (1948)
- Directed by Vittorio DeSica
- Probably the purest neorealist film
- La Terra Trema (1948)
- Directed by Luchino Visconti
- Neorealist Characteristics
- Content/subject Matter
- Contemporary social issues
- German occupation during WW II
- Unusual wartime alliances
- Marxists and Catholics
- Poverty
- Rampant inflation
- Unemployment
- Contemporary social issues
- Neorealist Narrative Structure
- Cesare Zavattini (scriptwriter)
- No "story," no "plot"
- Different from Hollywood classical narrative
- Loosely connected links in the narrative chain
- Cesare Zavattini (scriptwriter)
- Neorealist Style
- Mise-en-scene
- Location shooting
- "non-studio"-style lighting
- Non-professional actors
- E.g., in The Bicycle Thief: Lamberto Maggiorani (steelworker) as Aldo and Enzo Staiola as his son
- Cinematography
- Black & White
- Odds & ends of film reels
- Grainy, poor quality
- Editing
- Rough, not smooth, not invisible editing
- Sound
- Inaccurately dubbed
- Mise-en-scene
- Content/subject Matter