Italian Neorealism Essay

Italian Neorealism was a movement in film from 1944-1952. This paper will focus on three influential directors and their films. To understand Italian Neorealism and the movement as a whole, it is important to note the birth of it. During the 1930’s cinema in Italy was an entire different movement, which represented a completely different idea than that of Neorealism. “Moreover, the bulk of the films produced during the era, including the so-called telefoni bianchi (upper-class comedies named for their inclusion of a white telephone in the boudoir) are not easily relegated to the position of mere frivolous and vacuous texts serving the Facist cause by diverting audiences from political and social realities” (Landy 50). Taken from the comedies and Hollywood concepts this era of film was being used

During the dictatorship all forms of media written or on televised was highly censored and or edited by someone in charge of keeping a strict code. By the end of World War II Mussolini and the Italian govenemrnt fell, causing the only exsisting film industry to lose its center. Infrastructure in Italy as a whole was very poor, the war had destroyed many towns and cities, and almost all industries were in complete shambles. The actual style of Neorealism was created by a group of critics that ran a film magazine called Cinema at the time. Members of this group incuded Luchino Visconti, Cesare Zavattini, and Giuseppe De Santis. Being fed up with what was being shown to the people of Italy, they sought out to change this. A slight problem in their way was Vittorio Mussolini son of the dictator Benito. As the editor of the magazine, he was strict, and writing about politics or sensitive subjects was a big red flag. They started writing about telefoni bianchi, and how much of a disgrace it was to Italian cinema of the