Neo-Realism In Italian Film

With the end of the war and the fall of Mussolini, the international audiences were introduced to a new film style which is Italian films through a few great works by Rossellini, De Sica, and Luchino Visconti that appeared after 1945. For example, film from Rossellini’s “Roma, città aperta” in 1945 (Rome, Open City, 1945) and “Paisà” in 1946 (Paisan, 1946). For De Sica is “Sciucià” (Shoeshine, 1946), “Ladri di biciclette” (The Bicycle Thieves, 1948), and “Umberto D.” in 1952 and Visconti “La terra trema” (The Eart Trembles, 1948).

Italian neorealist films stressed with social themes such as war, resistance, poverty and unemployment. They seemed to reject traditional Hollywood dramatic and cinematic conventions. Furthermore, Italian neorealist films often privileged on-location shooting rather than studio work. Besides that, many directors preferred the documentary photographic style under the former regime

and they frequently employed non professional actors to shoot the movie.

Unfortunately, Italian film historians tended to speak of neo-realism as if it were a legitimate movement with universally agreed-upon thematic or stylistic principles. Other than that, the controlling fiction works of the best Italian

neorealist was that they could dealt with contemporary stories, believable characters and universal human problems from everyday life. The best neorealist films never thoroughly refused cinematic conventions, nor Hollywood codes. Italian neorealism which marked the basis for the fundamental change in cinematic history was less than an agreement on a unified, single cinematic style than a common aspiration to view Italy without preconceptions and to employ a more ethical, honest, but no less cinematic language and poetic in the process.

Indisputably, these masterpieces produced by Rossellini, Visconti, and De Sica are major and main works of art that remain original contributions to film language and capture the spirit of postwar Italian culture. Nevertheless, the exception of “Rome, Open City in 1945”, the film was essentially unpopular within the audiences in Italy but it achieved primarily success among intellectuals and foreign critics. Back in 1942, when the head of the film industry, Vittorio Mussolini first watched the “Visconti's Ossessione”, he immediately stormed out of the theater shouting, "This is not Italy!". Most Neorealist films essentially elicit exactly the similar reaction from postwar officials. The portrait of a poverty-stricken, desolate country outraged politicians’ anxious to prove that Italy was on the right track to prosperity and democracy. Moreover, the Catholic Church in Italy had condemned many films for their anticlericalism, working-class life and portrayal of sex. Unfortunately, Leftists attacked the films for their lack of explicit political commitment and pessimism. In the mean time, De Sica was criticized as the "washing Italy’s dirty laundry in public" by Giulio Andreotti, a Christian Democratic politician who become one of Italy’s most powerful prime minister later.