Italian Neorealism , 1945-1951 Part two

1. Italian Neorealism, 1945-1951Part two Lecture 24

2. Italian Neorealism: Style • *Mise-en-scene* • Location shooting • Non-professional actors • Vernacular dialogue • Natural lighting • Editing • Continuity editing • Unobtrusive • Camerawork • Long takes • Stable camera • Medium and long shots

3. Italian Neorealism: Narrative and Storytelling • Loosening of plot linearity and causal links • Chance encounters • Missing causes for events (ex: Paisá; Rome Open City) • Unresolved endings • Ex: Rome Open City; Paisá; Bicycle Thieves, Umberto D • Episodic (dictated by passage of time rather than importance of events to the action) • Ex: Bicycle Thief • Dead time/dwelling on “microactions” • Ex: Umberto D • Consequences of the loosening of plot linearity • Dedramatization: “Big events” and “small events” become indistinguishable • Treated in the same way with the same care • The daily and familiar become the object of scrutiny • Generic/tonal mixing (ex: Rome Open City—comedy and tragedy)

4. Rome Open City (Rossellini, 1945): Not a paradigm exemplar of Italian neorealism • First film of the movement • Manichean poles of good and evil • Plot linearity and tight causal links • Retains dramatic/melodramatic effects • Constructs a unified national myth and a sense of Italian solidarity • Optimistic ending • Commercial success

5. Rome Open City: Catholic undertones

6. Umberto D (Vittorio de Sica, 1951):Stylistically Paradigm Case • André Bazin: “In Umberto D one catches a glimpse, on a number of occasions, of what a truly realist cinema of time could be, a cinema of “duration.” • André Bazin: “…what is so unsettling about Umberto D is primarily the way it rejects any relationship to traditional film spectacle.”

7. Umberto D (Vittorio de Sica, 1051):Paradigm case • One of the last films of the movement • Stylistic severity • Dead time • dedramatization • Episodic plot structure • Dissolution of the sense of solidarity after the war • Pessimistic about the postwar period • City defined by alienation and separation • Commercial failure

8. Italian Neorealism: Narrative and Storytelling • Loosening of plot linearity and causal links • Chance encounters • Missing causes for events • Unresolved endings • Ex: Rome Open City; Paisá; Bicycle Thieves, Umberto D • Episodic (dictated by passage of time rather than importance of events to the action) • Ex: Bicycle Thief • Dead time/dwelling on “microactions” • Ex: Umberto D

9. Italian Neorealism: Narrative and Storytelling • Consequences of the loosening of plot linearity • Dedramatization: “Big events” and “small events” become indistinguishable • Treated in the same way with the same care • The daily and familiar become the object of scrutiny • Generic/tonal mixing (ex: Rome Open City—comedy and tragedy)