Other Filmmakers/Practitioners

VITTORIO DE SICA

Actor in ‘white telephone’ films-known as ‘the Italian Cary Grant.’ In 1940, began directing and collaborating w. Marxist theorist, screenwriter ZAVATTINI which resulted in the fusing of poetry w. politics, feeling w. fact.  De Sica is the most accessible and emotionally powerful of the neorealists, which made his films the most popular w. American audiences.  

Thematically he often contrasted the corruption of poverty (as opposed to Capra’s humble Depression folk in ONE NIGHT) (moral characters reduced to crime in Bicycle Thief, and Shoeshine) with the solidarity of the poor and dispossessed. “My films are a struggle against the absence of human solidarity,” De Sica pointed out, “against the indifference of society towards suffering.  They are a world in favor of the poor and the unhappy.”  ***In other words, we should see these documentary-like depictions of OUR collective suffering and band together to help each other to OVERTHROW any oppressive government causing this suffering. (i.e. Marxism) 

VITTORIO DE SICA/Zavattini & “Trilogy of Solitude”

1946: Shoeshine – Two boys in post-war Rome earn their living shining shoes for American soldiers. Pasquale is 15 years old and homeless. His younger companion, Giuseppe, has a family, but they live as refugees on some square meters in a big apartment where many families are gathered. The two boys have developed a strong bond of friendship and, together, they collect their savings for a common goal: to buy a horse. Giuseppe’s older brother is a criminal. He and his companions persuade the boys to sell some stolen American blankets to a lady on their behalf. The young boys don’t understand that they are used in the gang’s plot to rob the lady. While they are in her apartment, the criminal gang enters masqueraded as policemen, who accuse her of black-market transactions while they steal her money. The gangsters give the boys a large sum of money and tell them to shut up. Now the two boys have enough money to buy the horse, which they house in a stable in the outskirts of Rome. The next day Pasquale and Giuseppe are arrested by real police when the lady recognizes them in the street. They are taken to a jail as juvenile delinquents, and now their long career downwards in this dark part of society begins. They are split in two different cells. The police try to get some information about the criminal gang from them and, with the help of a trick, finally get Pasquale to reveal that Giuseppe’s brother is one of the gangsters. For Giuseppe this betrayal is the end of their friendship. From now on they are driven into a negative spiral of actions against each other until it ends in tragedy.

1948: The Bicycle Thief A family man sells family sheets for a bike for work as bills poster–its stolen on first day–and he and son search for thief in vain. He attempts to steal a bike and is caught. Considered a powerful social doc firmly committed to the reality it portrays, a poignant story of the relationship between a father and his son, and a modern parable of alienated man in a hostile and dehumanized environment…the next yr.won special Oscar in U.S. as “an Italian production of superlative quality made under adverse circumstances” which became the award for Best Foreign Language Film the next yr. Sight/Sound named it the Greatest Film of all Time.

WATCH: Bicycle Thief  first 20 min(stealing bike)

1952: Umberto D final neo masterpiece. Close to realizing Zavattini’s ideal of pure cinema of everyday life as any film the neorealist movement produced.  It has no plot but is structured around a series of loosely connected incidents in the title character’s life which are initiated by his inability to pay his rent.  Though sentimental, the film works because no attempt to make character appear noble…he is simply a little man adrift in an alien environment that continually threatens him.  Though a social document on hypocrisy, cruelty, and the indifference of the bourgeois towards aged members, the film is an examination of emotional relationships similar to those explored between people in De Sica’s earlier Shoeshine and Bicycle Thief.  Umberto D concerns a man and his dog–as if to imply that relationships between human beings have become increasingly difficult–or even impossible–in our emotionally attenuated modern society.

WATCH:

Umberto D (final sequence @ 1hr 16 min- End)

(The awesome) LUCHINO VISCONTI –

Like Welles Citizen Kane, Visconti is a paradox in that he was both a Marxist and an aristocrat! 

Most overtly political. Strongly humanistic. Outspoken critic of Fascists & member of Resistance.  Championed cause of oppressed peoples.  Emphasis on effects of the social reality on the characters

Philosophy: portrayal of ordinary people only FIRST step, next step was to analyze the corruption of RULING CLASS

In opposition to Zavattini’s ideas of a ‘styleless style’ Visconti is very much a stylist—championing the artistic use of mise-en-scene in staging formal & complex…character movements elegantly choreographed in careful compositions, Costumes and settings are profoundly ideological, symbolizing psychological and social values within a precisely defined economic milieu. Thus, the trappings of the wealthy are unnatural and useless and constricting, for they need not work in them.

1943: Ossessione

1948: La Terra Trema (The Earth Trembles) of paradoxical neo nature but enduring legacy.

–first part of never-completed trilogy V. had planned on the econ probs of fishing, mining, and agriculture in post-war Sicily.  Relates the story of the downfall of a proud family of peasant fishermen thru economic exploitation by wholesalers and market men. THEME emerges that fundamental change can come only w. collective action.  On location w. non-actors and Marxist interp of novel.

-PARADOX in that while some improvisation BUT-masterful formal structure, sumptuously composed and photographed w. panning and tracking shots which integrate figs, decor, and landscape. Visconti achieves for his peasant tragedy a visual grandeur which is not at all at odd w. its social polemic, but which lends it an almost mythic resonance–‘operatic cinema verite’–later work also revealed this tension between visual lushness and social realism 

 But in black and white???  For Visconti black-and-white was the medium for depicting poverty, deprivation, and raw passion; color was the medium for depicting the rich, the elegant, and the more complex and contradictory thoughts and feelings.  This was the result of his philosophical differences from the other Neorealists: ‘’

As stated earlier, Visconti believed that the simple portrayal of ordinary life was only the FIRST STEP in analyzing what was wrong with Italian society.  The next step was to analyze the RULING CLASS, believing that great wealth and power contain the seeds of their own destruction.  In short, many of his movies he turned against a part of himself–hence their tortured ambivalence (THINK Citizen Kane!).

1954: Senso – elaborate historical drama amongst Venetian aristocracy which examines class conflict.  Also fit into genre expectations of new Italian film industry, industry officials, as well as most audiences simply saw Senso as another high-class ent w. big stars (Farley Granger and Alida Valli) and a story of a love affair between an Italian countess and a young Austrian officer, complicated by the countess’ betrayal of her husband, her brother, and her political allegiance for her new lover.