Neorealismo: The Italian Realism Movement in Film

1. Realist Film Movements Neorealismo (1) Films of Roberto Rossellini

2. 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

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

4. Neorealismo Italian NEOREALISMO • One of the first conscious attempts in the fiction film to be true to facts and circumstances • Classical American Films - conscious attempts to create a convincing make-believe • Film making ‘movement’ in the mid- and late 1940s.

5. Neorealismo • One of the first significant alternatives to the Hollywood-style realism and the grammar in realist 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

6. 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 judgments

7. Neorealismo COMMON FEATURES - ideological • A preoccupation with Italy’s fascist past and the aftermath of the wartime devastation • A blending of Christian and Marxist humanism • An emphasis on emotions rather than abstract ideas

8. Neorealismo • COMMON FEATURES - sylstic • 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

9. Neorealismo COMMON FEATURES - style • The use of conversational speech, not literary dialogue • The avoidance of artifice in editing, camerawork, and lighting in favour of a simple ‘style-less’ style

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

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) • Reaction to the filmmaking tradition in Italy - historical epic, fantasy and romantic melodrama (‘telefoni bianchi’)

12. Pre-Neorealismo • Historical and Biblical epics • Cabiria(1914) Quo Vadis (1913)

13. Pre-Neorealismo • Cinema ‘telefoni bianchi’ – subgenre of comedy made between 1936 and 1943 • Imitating the styles of American comedies of the time, they are shot in expensive art deco sets featuring typically white telephone and children with Shirly Temple hair cut –status symbol

14. Pre-Neorealismo • Conservative films idealizing the Italian middle-class family values, promoting respect for authority, protecting a rigid class hierarchy in line with the fascist ideology

15. Pre-Neorealismo • Neorealist and neorealistic films emerged during the war before Rossellini • Alessandro Blasetti’s Four Steps in the Cloud (1942), Vittorio De Sica’s The Children Are Watching Us (1943), Ossessione (1943)

16. Roberto Rossellini • War-time trilogies made with Federico Fellini - Propaganda films

17. Roberto Rossellini • Two months before the liberation of Rome, Rossellini prepared for making the self-financed film, Roma, Citta Aperta (Rome, Open City, 1945) with the help from Federico Fellini (script writer) and Aldo Fabrizi (who played the role of Roman priest in it)

18. Roma, cittaaperta • Roma, CittaAperta • 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. A story about a resistance fighter captured and tortured to death, and his fiancée and priest friend who help him

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 stack to it.

21. Roma, Citta Aperta

22. Roma, CittaAperta

23. Roma, CittaAperta 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

24. Roma, CittaAperta • Only professional actors used • Anna Magnani and Aldo Fabrizi

25. Roma, CittaAperta 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.

26. Grainy and out-of focus photography

27. Washed-out colour

28. 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.

29. Traditional Montage • More traditionally an assassination scene is shown in the inter-cutting of an assassin, his target, surroundings seen from various points of view – god’s point of view • Shots in Rossellini’s montage shown strictly from one point-of-view – third-person

30. Roma, CittaAperta 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.

31. Roma, CittaAperta ‘This is the way things are.’ Roberto Rossellini -- A motto of neorealismo

32. Roma, CittaAperta • The film graphically shows something horrendous and shocking without compromise – the torture of Francesco and the execution of the father • Graphic depiction of violent actions and killing were not allowed in Hollywood

33. Roma, CittaAperta • Though torture, killing, execution are now not ordinary affairs, they were during the war time. • The film was shot in 1944 when Rome was still occupied by the Nazi • A fiction film still trying to be true to reality

34. 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.