Italian Post Neorealist Cinema

This book brings to the surface the lines of experimentation and artistic renewal appearing after the exhaustion of Neorealism, mapping complex areas of interest such as the emergence of ethical concerns, the relationship between ideology and representati

"The end of the Second World War saw the emergence in Italy of the neorealism movement, which produced a number of films characterized by stories set among the poor and working class, often shot on location using non-professional actors. In this study Christopher Wagstaff provides an in-depth analysis of neorealist film, focusing on three films that have had a major impact on filmmakers and audiences around the world: Roberto Rossellini's Roma città aperta and Paisà and Vittorio De Sica's Ladri di biciclette. Indeed, these films are still, more than half a century after they were made, among the most highly regarded works in the history of cinema. In this insightful and carefully researched work, Wagstaff suggests that the importance of these films is largely due to the aesthetic and rhetorical qualities of their assembled sounds and images rather than, as commonly thought, their particular representations of historical reality.The author begins by situating neorealist cinema in its historical, industrial, commercial, and cultural context. He goes on to provide a theoretical discussion of realism and the merits of neorealist films, individually and collectively, as aesthetic artefacts. He follows with a detailed analysis of the three films, focusing on technical and production aspects as well as on the significance of the films as cinematic works of art.While providing a wealth of information and analysis previously unavailable to an English-speaking audience, Italian Neorealist Cinema offers a radically new perspective on neorealist cinema and the Italian art cinema that followed it."

This volume addresses the influence of Italian neorealist films on world cinema well beyond the post-World War II period associated with the movement. Despite its lack of organization and relatively short life span, the Italian neorealist movement deeply influenced directors and film traditions around the world. This collection examines the impact of Italian neorealism beyond the period of 1945-52, the years conventionally connected to the movement, and beyond the postwar Italian film industry where the movement originated. Providing a refreshing aesthetic and ideological contrast to mainstream Hollywood films, neorealist filmmakers demonstrated not only how an engaging narrative technique could be brought to bear upon social issues but also how cinema could shape and redefine national identity. The fourteen essays in Italian Neorealism and Global Cinema consider films from Italy, India, Brazil, Africa, the Czech Republic, postwar Germany, Hong Kong, the United States, France, Belgium, Colombia, and Great Britain. Each essay explores neorealism's complex relationship to a different national film tradition, style, or historical period, illustrating the profound impact of neorealism and the ways it continues to complicate the relationship between ideas of nation, national cinema, and national identity. Many of the essays identify similar themes or motifs adapted from neorealism, and several essays address a politicized national film tradition that developed in opposition to a monolithic Western aesthetic. In all, Italian Neorealism and Global Cinema provides a novel critical understanding of the wide-ranging international impact of a short period in Italian cultural history. Film scholars and students of film history will appreciate this insightful text.

Contributions by Nathaniel Brennan, Luca Caminati, Silvia Carlorosi, Caroline Eades, Saverio Giovacchini, Paula Halperin, Neepa Majumdar, Mariano Mestman, Hamid Naficy, Sada Niang, Masha Salazkina, Sarah Sarzynski, Robert Sklar, and Vito Zagarrio Intellectual, cultural, and film historians have long considered neorealism the founding block of post-World War II Italian cinema. Neorealism, the traditional story goes, was an Italian film style born in the second postwar period and aimed at recovering the reality of Italy after the sugarcoated moving images of fascism. Lasting from 1945 to the early 1950s, neorealism produced world-renowned masterpieces such as Roberto Rossellini's Roma, città aperta (Rome, Open City, 1945) and Vittorio De Sica's Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves, 1947). These films won some of the most prestigious film awards of the immediate postwar period and influenced world cinema. This collection brings together distinguished film scholars and cultural historians to complicate this nation-based approach to the history of neorealism. The traditional story notwithstanding, the meaning and the origins of the term are problematic. What does neorealism really mean, and how Italian is it? Italian filmmakers were wary of using the term and Rossellini preferred "realism." Many filmmakers confessed to having greatly borrowed from other cinemas, including French, Soviet, and American. Divided into three sections, Global Neorealism examines the history of this film style from the 1930s to the 1970s using a global and international perspective. The first section examines the origins of neorealism in the international debate about realist esthetics in the 1930s. The second section discusses how this debate about realism was “Italianized” and coalesced into Italian “neorealism” and explores how critics and film distributors participated in coining the term. Finally, the third section looks at neorealism’s success outside of Italy and examines how film cultures in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the United States adjusted the style to their national and regional situations.

This study argues that neorealism’s visual genius is inseparable from its almost invisible relation to the Fascist past: a connection inscribed in cinematic landscapes. While largely a silent narrative, neorealism’s complex visual processing of two decades of Fascism remains the greatest cultural production in the service of memorialization and comprehension for a nation that had neither a Nuremberg nor a formal process of reconciliation. Through her readings of canonical neorealist films, Minghelli unearths the memorial strata of the neorealist image and investigates the complex historical charge that invests this cinema. This book is both a formal analysis of the new conception of the cinematic image born from a crisis of memory, and a reflection on the relation between cinema and memory. Films discussed include Ossessione (1943) Paisà (1946), Ladri di biciclette (1948), and Cronaca di un amore (1950).

Italian Neorealism: Rebuilding the Cinematic City is a valuable introduction to one of the most influential of film movements. Exploring the roots and causes of neorealism, particularly the effects of the Second World War, as well as its politics and style, Mark Shiel examines the portrayal of the city and the legacy left by filmmakers such as Rossellini, De Sica, and Visconti. Films studied include Rome, Open City (1945), Paisan (1946), The Bicycle Thief (1948), and Umberto D. (1952).

This is an attempt, through essays and interviews, to chronicle what happened to neorealism after the disappearance of the forces that produced it - World War II, the resistance, and liberation, followed by the postwar reconstruction of a morally, politically, and economically devastated society.

Italian Neorealism: Rebuilding the Cinematic City is a valuable introduction to one of the most influential of film movements. Exploring the roots and causes of neorealism, particularly the effects of the Second World War, as well as its politics and style, Mark Shiel examines the portrayal of the city and the legacy left by filmmakers such as Rossellini, De Sica, and Visconti. Films studied include Rome, Open City (1945), Paisan (1946), The Bicycle Thief (1948), and Umberto D. (1952).