DECLINE OF NEOREALISM

1. times changed, and economic conditions began to improve
2. Neorealist films were increasingly unpopular with domestic audiences, then in 1949 American films began to be imported on a mass scale.
3. To compete with American imports, Italy began to make popular films to compete with the Americans. These were financed in part by the government’s imposing a tax on the American films. The government also began requiring greater screen time be accorded to Italian films.

Then, with the passing of Andreotti Law the government began to sponsor only scripts that were found ‘suitable’ and to ban from both domestic screening and exportation films deemed inimical to the best interests of Italy–so neorealism and its Marxist orientation (showing Italy as a depressed country lacking justice for its citizens) not favored–esp w. coming join w. NATO in 1949

4. Lack of drama: plots began to degenerate into stereotype because strong narratives defied the illusion of present tense AND reconstructing the atmosphere and ambiance of a contempo reality

THE IMPACT of NEOREALISM:

SIGNIFICANTLY, it is said that Neorealism never really ended but was merely ‘turned inward’ by Fellini and Antonioni in the 1950s, so that the object of attn becomes not society but the human self–‘introspective neorealism.’  Individual needs, alienation from society and the tragic failure to communicate became the main focal point in the Italian films to follow in the 1960s. One critic maintains that the strength of the Italian cinema lay precisely in its inability to escape the neorealist heritage.

Neorealism was the first postwar cinema to liberate filmmaking from the artificial confines of the studio, and, BY EXTENSION from the Hollywood-originated studio system.