Film Industry: Melodrama in Roma Città Aperta and Riso Amaro

1123 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Cinematic characteristics of the italian neo-realist film movement

To begin with, the occurrence of melodrama in these canonical neorealist films may seem surprising, because neorealism is often classified as a reaction against the melodramas of the time. Before the Second World War, Italian melodramas, created in an attempt to steer the Italian public away from imported American films, dominated the market at all levels and in all regions in Italy. These films followed classical narrative techniques and did little to reflect the reality of working class Italians. After the war, the problem multiplied as Hollywood imports, known for glamour and melodrama, threatened to monopolise the Italian consumer market. Neorealism was born out of a response to the overwhelming amount of melodrama as well as an attempt by Italian filmmakers to corner the domestic market with new, culturally honest films. Not only did this new movement focus on the plight of the everyday person rather than the glamorised drama of the bourgeoisie, but it also brought revolutionary changes to the formal elements of film. To name some of these introduced formal elements, neorealist films feature on-location filming, understated expressionism of lighting, eye-level camera placement, non-professional actors, and dialectical dialogue.
Clearly, these qualities contrasted with the contrived sentiment and showy formal techniques of Hollywood imports and the previously popular Italian melodramas. This raises the question not only of how elements of melodrama can coexist so well in neorealist films such as Roma città aperta and Riso amaro, but also of why the directors made the choice to incorporate those elements into their films. Some critics, such as Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, explain the appearance of melodramatic elements in the...

... middle of paper ...

... Millicent. "Pina's Pregnancy, Traumatic Realism, and the After-Life of Open City."Italica 85.4 (2008): 426-38. JSTOR. Web. 10 Apr. 2014.
Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey. “Introduction.” Hollywood and Europe: Economics, Culture, National Identity: 1945-95. Ed. Geoffrey Nowell-Smith and Steven Ricci. London: British Film Institute, 1998. 1-18. Print.
Paisà. Dir. Roberto Rossellini. Organizzazione Film Internazionali, 1946. DVD.
Riso Amaro. Dir. Giuseppe De Santis. Perf. Silvana Mangano, Doris Dowling, and Vittorio Gassman. Lux Film, 1949. DVD.
Roma Città Aperta. Dir. Roberto Rossellini. Perf. Aldo Fabrizi and Anna Magnani. Excelsa Film, 1945. DVD.
Wagstaff, Christopher. “Italian genre films in the world market.” Hollywood and Europe: Economics, Culture, National Identity: 1945-95. Ed. Geoffrey Nowell-Smith and Steven Ricci. London: British Film Institute, 1998. 74-85. Print.

Show More
Related

  • FIL110 WA7

    641 Words  | 2 Pages

    Lewis, J. (2008). American Film: A History. New York, NY. W.W. Norton and Co. Inc. (p. 405,406,502).

    Read More

  • The Pros and Cons of Life in Communist East Germany in Goodbye, Lenin

    2212 Words  | 5 Pages

    German Cinema since Unification. Edited by David Clarke. Continuum, in association with University of Birmingham Press. 2006

    Read More

  • Sunset Boulevard: The Culture Of Hollywood Film

    1240 Words  | 3 Pages

    A new edition to the course lineup, this week's film classic, Sunset Boulevard. This film will focus on the culture and environment of the Hollywood studio system that produces the kind of motion pictures that the whole world recognizes as "Hollywood movies." There have been many movies from the silent era to the present that either glamorize or vilify the culture of Hollywood, typically focusing on the celebrities (both in front of and behind the camera) who populate the "dream factories" of Hollywood. But we cannot completely understand the culture of Hollywood unless we recognize that motion pictures are big business as well as entertainment, and that Hollywood necessarily includes both creative and commercial

    Read More

  • Masterpiece or moral authority; analysing the critical receptions of Spielberg's Schindler's List (1993)

    1766 Words  | 4 Pages

    Grainge, P., Jancovich, M., & Monteith, S. (2012). Film Histories; An introduction and reader. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

    Read More

  • The Use of Classical Hollywood Theory in Die Hard

    574 Words  | 2 Pages

    Beginning the mid 1920s, Hollywood’s ostensibly all-powerful film studios controlled the American film industry, creating a period of film history now recognized as “Classical Hollywood”. Distinguished by a practical, workmanlike, “invisible” method of filmmaking- whose purpose was to demand as little attention to the camera as possible, Classical Hollywood cinema supported undeviating storylines (with the occasional flashback being an exception), an observance of a the three act structure, frontality, and visibly identified goals for the “hero” to work toward and well-defined conflict/story resolution, most commonly illustrated with the employment of the “happy ending”. Studios understood precisely what an audience desired, and accommodated their wants and needs, resulting in films that were generally all the same, starring similar (sometimes the same) actors, crafted in a similar manner. It became the principal style throughout the western world against which all other styles were judged. While there have been some deviations and experiments with the format in the past 50 plus ye...

    Read More

  • Beverly Hills Cop, The Rock, Armageddon, and Top Gun

    3486 Words  | 7 Pages

    In this paper I will offer a structural analysis of the films of Simpson and Bruckheimer. In addition to their spectacle and typically well-crafted action sequences, Simpson/Bruckheimer pictures seem to possess an unconscious understanding of the zeitgeist and other cultural trends. It is this almost innate ability to select scripts that tap into some traditional American values (patriotism, individualism, and the obsession with the “new”) that helps to make their movies blockbusters.

    Read More

  • Paint It Black: The Evolution of Film Noir

    1564 Words  | 4 Pages

    Classic film noir originated after World War II. This is the time where post World War II pessimism, anxiety, and suspicion was taking the world by storm. Many films that were released in the U.S. Between 1939s and 1940s were considered propaganda films that were designed for entertainment during the Depression and World War II. During the 1930s many German and Europeans immigrated to the U.S. and helped the American film industry with powerf...

    Read More

  • Lacome Lucien a Film by Louis Malle

    933 Words  | 2 Pages

    Lacombe, Lucien (The Criterion Collection), 2006. Video recording. Directed by Louis Malle, France : Optimum World Releasing

    Read More

  • Vittorio De Sica's Umberto D: Neorealism In Italian Film

    903 Words  | 2 Pages

    Neorealism had appeared right after the end of World War II and was started by Roberto Rosselini, the father of Neorealism. With his movie, he started a new trend in Italian cinema. (quote) Although it was not specifically “Neorealist”, it was the start of the movement. Some of key characteristics of a neorealist cinema are as follows, “documentary visual style, the use of actual locations--usually exteriors--rather than studio sites, the use of nonprofessional actors, even for principal roles, use of conversational speech, not literary dialogue, avoidance of artifice in editing, camerawork, and lighting in favor of a simple "styless" style” (1.). These characteristics are what embody true neorealist films, such as Bicycle Thief. Although some of these characteristics still linger in Umberto D, the movie that is considered the “death of the neorealism” (2.). It goes without saying that, regardless of the movement these movies are classified under, these are both spectacular contributions to cinema. However it is Bicycle Thief that shows the prime of what neorealist cinema was like during the movement.

    Read More

  • Social Criticism in the Hollywood Melodramas of the Fifties

    1764 Words  | 4 Pages

    Schatz, Thomas. Hollywood Genres: Formulas, Filmmaking, and the Studio System. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981.

    Read More

  • The Influence Of New Hollywood Cinema

    1150 Words  | 3 Pages

    In this essay the following will be discussed; the change from the age of classical Hollywood film making to the new Hollywood era, the influence of European film making in American films from Martin Scorsese and how the film Taxi Driver shows the innovative and fresh techniques of this ‘New Hollywood Cinema’.

    Read More

  • Italian Neorealism

    1434 Words  | 3 Pages

    It was not until the mid 1930s that the brutish dictator truly recognized the potential power of media, where in 1935 a special funding was given to the production of Italian films which was used to open up film institutions like the ‘Centro Sperimenale di Cinematografia’ (CSC) film school, and ‘Cinecitta’ (Cinema City) studios in 1937 (Ruberto and Wilson, 2007). The development of these institutions sparked the appearance of early sound cinema, specializing in genres such as comedies, melodramas, musicals and historical films, but were all categorized as ‘propaganda’ and ‘white telephone’ films by many critics due...

    Read More

  • Postmodern Film

    2291 Words  | 5 Pages

    The postmodern cinema emerged in the 80s and 90s as a powerfully creative force in Hollywood film-making, helping to form the historic convergence of technology, media culture and consumerism. Departing from the modernist cultural tradition grounded in the faith in historical progress, the norms of industrial society and the Enlightenment, the postmodern film is defined by its disjointed narratives, images of chaos, random violence, a dark view of the human state, death of the hero and the emphasis on technique over content. The postmodernist film accomplishes that by acquiring forms and styles from the traditional methods and mixing them together or decorating them. Thus, the postmodern film challenges the “modern” and the modernist cinema along with its inclinations. It also attempts to transform the mainstream conventions of characterization, narrative and suppresses the audience suspension of disbelief. The postmodern cinema often rejects modernist conventions by manipulating and maneuvering with conventions such as space, time and story-telling. Furthermore, it rejects the traditional “grand-narratives” and totalizing forms such as war, history, love and utopian visions of reality. Instead, it is heavily aimed to create constructed fictions and subjective idealisms.

    Read More

  • Classical and Post-Classical Hollywood Cinema

    2472 Words  | 5 Pages

    During the course of this essay it is my intention to discuss the differences between Classical Hollywood and post-Classical Hollywood. Although these terms refer to theoretical movements of which they are not definitive it is my goal to show that they are applicable in a broad way to a cinema tradition that dominated Hollywood production between 1916 and 1960 and which also pervaded Western Mainstream Cinema (Classical Hollywood or Classic Narrative Cinema) and to the movement and changes that came about following this time period (Post-Classical or New Hollywood). I intend to do this by first analysing and defining aspects of Classical Hollywood and having done that, examining post classical at which time the relationship between them will become evident. It is my intention to reference films from both movements and also published texts relative to the subject matter. In order to illustrate the structures involved I will be writing about the subjects of genre and genre transformation, the representation of gender, postmodernism and the relationship between style, form and content.

    Read More

  • The Venice Film Festival and the Cannes Film Festival

    931 Words  | 2 Pages

    Martini, G. (2013) I Festival sono ancora necessari?, Spec. Issue of 8 ½- Numeri, visioni e prospettive del cinema italiano (2013).

    Read More

More about Film Industry: Melodrama in Roma Città Aperta and Riso Amaro

Open Document