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Film History and Criticism lecture 3

Film History and Criticism lecture 3. Italian Neo-Realism (1944-49). Week 3, January 26 th. Post-War Cinema: Italian Neorealism: Rossellini, De Sica, Visconti et. al. Readings : Thompson & Bordwell Chapter 16 Neorealism and its Context pp 353-372.

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Film History and Criticism lecture 3

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  1. Film History and Criticism lecture 3 Italian Neo-Realism (1944-49)

  2. Week 3, January 26th Post-War Cinema: Italian Neorealism: Rossellini, De Sica, Visconti et. al. Readings: Thompson & Bordwell Chapter 16 Neorealism and its Context pp 353-372. Supplementary Readings: Hayward, S. Key Concepts:Italian Neo-Realism pp191-2. Robin Wood “Ideology, Genre, Auteur” in Mast pp 475-485 (library reserve.)

  3. Introduction Key Questions: • When did it begin and end? • What were its sources? • Characteristics? • Was it new/neo? • How Italian was it? • How realistic?

  4. Responses • Term as a movement closely tied to social-political situation in post-war Italy. Neo-realism coined by Italian Critic Umberto Barbaro. 2. French poetic realism Marcel Carne’s late films: Port of Shadows (1938) Daybreak (1939) and Jean Renoir, Rules of the Game (1939), and Grand Illusion (1937).

  5. 3. Characteristics of neo-Realism a) Location shooting b) Post-synchronized sound shooting c) Use of non-professional actors d) Not interested in entertainment e) A commitment to representation of social reality/actuality f) The narrative reflects actual duration g) Racked focus and long takes c.w. Renoir

  6. 4. Major Figures Roberto Rossellini (1906-1977) Rome Open City,(1945); Paisan (1946) , Germany Year Zero (1947). Vittorio De Sica (1902-1974) and Script writer Cersare Zavattini (1902-1989) ShoeshineBicycle ThievesMiracle in Milan and Umberto D (1952) Luchiano Visconti (1906) Ossessione (Obsession 1942), The Earth Trembles (1948) Guiseppe de Santis (b1917) Riso Amaro (Bitter Rice 1949) Tragic Hunt (1948), No Peace for Under the Olives (1950)

  7. Characteristics continued 5. Was it New as the term Neo suggests – yes and no for the reasons cited earlier. 6. How Italian? Very, although there are also similar elements in earlier French cinema within poetic realist films. 7. How realist? With emphasis on location shooting more so than studio cinema. 8. To the Italian neo-Realists, reality and truth are not the same: reality (considered that which is possible to observe in everyday life) is the way to truth, and truth is the set of production relationships that rules society - the Marxist inspiration is evident here.

  8. Roberto Rossellinib. May 8, 1906, -d. June 3, 1977, Rome, Italy.“The father of neo-realism”

  9. Biographical details: Roberto Rossellini was born in Rome May 8, 1906 the eldest son of a prominent Italian architect, had a younger brother named Renzo and sisters Marcela and Micaela. By all accounts Roberto lived a fairly life in a bourgeois – middle class home which enabled him to secure a good education and prospects for a career.

  10. General Guide to his films: 1) The Fascist period (1941-1944): Being 16 when Mussolini took power, Rossellini's formative period as a film maker was under fascism. He started his directorial career with three fascist propaganda features: La nave bianca(The White Ship)(1941) Un piloto ritorna(A Pilot Returns) (1942) L'uomo della crocce(The Man with the Cross) (1943) 2) Postwar trilogy (1945-1947): Only two years after his last fascist feature, Rossellini completed Roma, città aperta (1945), one of the most important - and immediate - antifascist films, considered by many the beginning of Italian neo-Realism. This direction was emphasized in his following Paisà (1946), but Germania, anno zero(1947), the

  11. 3) His 'Modern' film period (1949-1954):Stromboli (1949), a period is marked by his marriage to Ingrid Bergman and her participation in his work. 4.) Disenchantment (1957-1962): After his divorce from Ingrid Bergman, Rossellini traveled to India in 1957, where he completed a ten-part documentary series on 16mm. for Italian television and a 90-minute 35mm. feature. Later he began a four year period producing war films, and he also began exhibiting disenchantment with cinema.

  12. Rossellini's films are as much documentaries as they are fiction. Roma, città aperta (1945) is based on a narrative focusing upon three martyrs of the second world war. As Rossellini had few resources the film was shot on the actual locations, using different film stocks, in conditions that made lighting difficult, thus providing a documentary visual style. This, added to the colloquial dialogue, and very naturalistic acting, represented the core of this new "style" - Italian neo-Realism. The national and international success of the film earned Rossellini the title of "father of neo-Realism".

  13. Roma, città aperta differs from the neo-realist corpus (even from Rossellini's Paisà, his closest to neo-Realism) in significant ways. One of them, not the most important though, is the use of professional actors in the leading roles

  14. A few book titles for further research Bazin, André, Qu'est-ce que le cinéma? Paris, Editions du Cerf, 1962. Bergala, Alain (ed)., Le cinéma révélé. Paris, Editions de l'Etoile, 1984. Bergala, Alain et Narboni, Jean (eds.), Roberto Rossellini. Paris, Editions de l'Étoile/Cahiers du cinéma, 1990. Brunette, Peter, Roberto Rossellini. New York, Oxford University Press, 1987. www.robertorossellini.it/

  15. Vittorio de Sica 1902- 1974 Began as an actor who starred in some 150 films. Over 50 years De Sica also directed 34 feature films, for which he won numerous international prizes. Four Academy Awards: two Special Awards, preceding the creation of the Best Foreign Film category, for Shoeshine (1947), and The Bicycle Thief in 1949, and Best Foreign Film Awards for Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1964), and The Garden of the Finzi-Continis in 1971.

  16. De Sica was born in 1902 in Sora, near Rome, grew up in Naples in a middle-class family. His father, Umberto a bank clerk with a love of show business, who encouraged his handsome son to pursue a stage career. De Sica first appeared at age 16 in the film The Clemenceau Affair and his career took off in the 1920s when he joined a local theater company and became a matinee idol. He later formed his own company, producing plays and co-starring with his first wife, Giuditta Rissone. Began making films during the war years.

  17. The first four films that he directed were routine light productions fifth, The Children Are Watching Us, has been described as a mature, perceptive, and deeply human work about the impact of adult folly on a child's innocent mind. This film marked the beginning of De Sica's important collaboration with author and screenwriter Cesare Zavattini, a creative relationship that was to give the world two of the most significant films of the Italian neo-realism movement, Shoeshine and The Bicycle Thief.

  18. Bicycle Thief (Ladri di biciclette). 1948

  19. With no money available to produce his films, De Sica initiated the use of real locations and non-professional actors. Using available light and documentary effects, he explored the relationship between working and lower-class characters in an indifferent, and often hostile social and political environment. Vittorio De Sica died in 1974 at the age of 72.

  20. Luchino Visconti di Modrone, Count of Lonate Pozzolo

  21. Visconti Luchino Visconti di Modrone, of Lonate Pozzolo (November 2, 1906 - March 17, 1976) was an Italian theatre and cinema director and writer, best known for films such as The Leopard (1963) and Death in Venice. He died in Rome of a stroke at the age of 69. There is a museum dedicated to the director's work in Ischia.

  22. Visconti was born in Milan into a wealthy family (one of the richest of northern Italy). Visconti’s father was the Duke of Grazzano, and Visconti had six siblings. Due to his upbringing, Visconti was able to be exposed to high culture, to art, music and theater, and met some of the major Italian figures in each discipline, including the composer Giacomo Puccini, the conductor Arturo Toscanini, and the writer/poet Gabriele D'Annunzio. After World War II Visconti joined the Italian Communist Party.

  23. Together with Roberto Rossellini, Visconti joined the salotto of Vittorio Mussolini (the son of Dictator Benito Mussolini, who was during the fascist period the national arbitrator for cinema and other arts) and here presumably met also Federico Fellini. With Gianni Puccini, Antonio Pietrangeli and Giuseppe De Santis he wrote the screenplay for his first film as director: Ossessione (Obsession) (1943), the first neorealist movie and an adaptation of the novel The Postman Always Rings Twice.

  24. ViscontiNeo -RealistFilms Ossessione (1943, based on James M. Cain's 1934 novel The Postman Always Rings Twice) La Terra trema (1950) Bellissima (1951) Siamo donne (We, the Women) (1953) (episode Anna Magnani) Senso (Livia), 1954 Le notti bianche (White Nights), 1957 Rocco e i suoi fratelli (Rocco and His Brothers), 1960

  25. Films continued Boccaccio '70 (1961, based on Boccaccio's Decameron). (episode Il lavoro) The Leopard (Il Gattopardo), 1963 - based on Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's novel Il Gattopardo) Vaghe stelle dell'Orsa (Sandra of a Thousand Delights), 1965)

  26. Vaghe stelle dell'Orsa (Sandra of a Thousand Delights), 1965) The Stranger (Lo straniero), 1967 - based on Albert Camus' novel L'Étranger) Le streghe (The Witches), 1967 (episode La strega bruciata viva) The Damned (film) (La caduta degli dei), 1969 (TV movie, 1970) Death in Venice (Morte a Venezia), 1971 - Based on Thomas Mann's novel) Ludwig (1972) Conversation Piece (Gruppo di famiglia in un interno, 1974) L'Innocente (1976)

  27. Visconti Quote “I believe in life, that is the central point ... I believe in organized society. I think it has a chance”.

  28. Next week • Film Noir: Thompson & Bordwell (2nd edition) • pp 228, 233-235; and Chapter 17 pp 373-390. • Supplementary Readings: Leo Braudy “Genre: The Conventions of Connection” (613-629) • Screening: Scarlet Street(1945) Fritz Lang; The Big Sleep (1946) Howard Hawks; Rebel without a Cause (1955) Nicholas Ray.

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