Neorealismo: Reviving Realism in Italian Cinema

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, PietroGermi 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 Italy’s 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 PietroIngrao. • 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, Cittaaperta • Roma, Cittaaperta (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, Cittaaperta 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, Cittaaperta 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 Sant’Elena 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

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 actor’s 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, Cittaaperta Montage • Pina’s 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 Hitchcock’s 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 Pina’s 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.