Neorealism

Official ‘launch’ with Roberto Rossellini & “War Trilogy” (Open City, Paisan, and Germany, Year Zero) 

Like Visconti, Rossellini felt the first task of this ‘new’ or ‘neorealist’ cinema was to tell the story of the Occupation and fascism.  In August 1944, just two months after the Allies had forced the Nazis to evacuate Rome, Rossellini, Fellini, and Amidei began working on the script for the film which deals with events taking place in the winter of 1943/44. 

Rossellini stated that “the situation of the moment guided by my own and the actors’ moods and perspectives” dictated what they shot, and he relied more on improvisation than on a script. He also stated that the film was “a film about fear, the fear felt by all of us but by me in particular. I too had to go into hiding. I too was on the run. I had friends who were captured and killed.”[2] 

1945 – OPEN CITY (not to be fought through/bombed due to international rules of war—but the Nazis believed this applied AFTER they had already taken over and imposed brutal martial law) The film deals with alliance of the Communists and Catholics to undermine the vicious Nazis.                         

Reportedly Rossellini shot some of the footage while the Nazis were evacuating the capital, resulting in the need to shoot the film silent for speed, then post-dub the sound in later.  Too, due to bombings at Cinecitta studios only two sets were involved in the film, resulting in the rest being shot on location in the streets.  It was claimed that Rossellini had to buy inferior newsreel stock in small pieces which, with its grainy image, was thought to add to the sense of journalistic immediacy and authenticity (***though recently an original print of the film was found to be beautifully preserved and unscratched, suggesting the former film was merely a bad copy).

Rossellini relied on traditional devices of melodrama, such as encouraging identification with the film’s sympathetic central characters and creating a clear distinction between good and evil characters.

***In the tradition of Marxist thought then, the neorealist films repeatedly show that unjust and perverted social structures threaten to warp and pervert the essential and internal human values.

After Open City and other early Neorealist works clearly established the ‘heroic’ struggle against Fascism, later films dealt with the trauma of the Individual–dealing with the fallout from war–trying to recover then ‘start over’—whatever that means…This new ‘existentialist’ strain of Neorealism featured uneventful stories of loneliness and isolation—manifest in de Sica’s Umberto D and Rossellini’s Germany, Year Zero)

WATCH: opening of Germany, Year Zero (to approx. 12 min mark)

             Watch the ending:

Main thematic/ideological characteristics of NEOREALISM:

1. Aesthetic commitment to “reality”

Not décor…but actual buildings reduced to rubble on the streets. There are times when the film cannot ‘just show real things…but show how things really are” (way characters deal w reality) Director Vittorio De Sica’s frequent screenwriter Cesare Zavattini claimed that Neorealism should show ‘ninety minutes in life of a man to whom NOTHING happens) 

Life consists of trying to get a place to live, something to eat, transportation 

2. Emphasis on ordinary and everyday as the main business of cinema, so there is an emphasis on the value of ordinary people like laborers, peasants, and factory workers. It was precisely the dignity and sacredness of everyday life of ordinary people, so alien to the heroic idea of fascism, which Z demanded that the new realism capture. 

            It’s not difficult to die, the difficult thing is to live

3. Theme is man’s suffering

            The result of the conflict w. sociological forces beyond their control                       

first the war, (Fascist Mussolini’s non -aggression pact with Hitler which stopped honoring and invaded

after it the means of making a living and the struggle to keep a home and family together.

4. Pre-occupation w. Italy’s Fascist past and its aftermath                       

5. Compassionate point of view

(‘what we had to do to get through the War.’  For example, Open City’s Pina is living with guilt with the guilt of an illicit pregnancy resulting from her relationship with communist fiancé Francesco whom she chose to be a father figure for her son Marcello.

6. Issue of emotion vs. ideas. To write fictions about the human side of the representative social, political, and economic conditions. 

Stylistic features:

1. Zavattini’s concept of ideal film
   •  –contended that ‘plot’ imposes an artificial structure on everyday life so favored loose, often open-ended, and episodic structures that evolve organically from situations of the characters.

2. documentary visual style – Zavattini maintained artistry should be invisible, the materials ‘found’ rather than shaped or manipulated
3. use of actual locations (real bombed out streets) which added greater sense of reality–usually exteriors–rather than studio sets since latter in short supply
4. use of professional and nonprofessional actors to capture and reflect reality with little or no compromise
5. conversational vs literary dialogue
6. simple ‘style less’ style – of simple editing, camerawork, and lighting
7. post-synch dubbing for speed and immediacy