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Italian Neorealism (1944-50s)
HISTORICAL-POLITICAL BACKGROUND
Overthrow of Mussolini’s fascist regime
Monarchy abolished in June of 1946
Battle for power:- Italian Communist Party (PCI) - Italian Socialist Party (PSI)- Christian Democratic Party (DC)
Divided country:- North – Republicans- South – Monarchists (migration north)
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Italian Neorealism (1944-50s)
HISTORICAL-POLITICAL BACKGROUND
Christian Democrats won 1946 general election
Italian Communist & Italian Socialist parties united in 1948 to form Popular Democratic Front (FDP)
Europe & US feared Italy would become Communist
US National Security Council & CIA launched propaganda campaign
10 million letters from Italian Americans
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Italian Neorealism (1944-50s)
HISTORICAL-POLITICAL BACKGROUND
Christian Democrats won 1948 general election
Strong support in rural areas by Vatican
Communists still had supporters in Northern industrial areas (working class)
“Miracolo economico” of the 1950s: extraordinary economic reforms
US/European aid sped recovery
Socialist Party continued to play role inItalian politics
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Italian Neorealism (1944-50s)
HISTORICAL ZEITGEIST
Economy in shambles; high unemployment (25%)
Thousands of orphaned children
Emergence of Socialist and Communist parties
Terrorism and extremism
Corruption
“Extremely distrustful and fatigued public”
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Italian Neorealism (1944-50s)
ITALIAN FILM INDUSTRY
1937-1945: Fascists controlled cinema(founded Cinecitta--largest studio in Europe)
Government-funded film school
“White telephone films”—American-style, escapist romantic comedies
Propaganda films
Mussolini issued imperial edicts commenting on aspects of Italian life he did and did not like
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Italian Neorealism (1944-50s)
ITALIAN FILM INDUSTRY
After WWII, Socialists and Communists in government tolerated Neorealism’s left-wing ideology (former resistance movement)
Cost of studio production, film, lighting, etc.became prohibitive
Reflected desire for social reform
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Italian Neorealism (1944-50s)
Response to artificiality of cinema of the Fascist period (white telephone films)
Influenced by French and American literary naturalism (e.g., Dreiser, Zola)
Impact of urban/industrial environment
Experiences of poor and socially marginalized
“Slice of life”; things and facts in time and place (versimo)
Ambivalence of everyday experience
Some took strong Marxist stance, with a hopeful, humanistic dimension
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Italian Neorealism (1944-50s)
Infused by a “democratic spirit”
Focus on ‘the value of ordinary people”
Compassionate point-of-view
Refusal to make moral judgments on behavior of common people as they deal with life’s struggles
Often anti-authority (bureaucracy of the church, government, politics)
“The tawdry, the ordinary, the insignificant”
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Italian Neorealism (1944-50s)
CINEMATIC CHARACTERISTICS
Environment as important as actors
Sense of actuality and immediacy
On-location shooting
Natural light
Long takes and pans
Medium and long shots
Tracking shots
Negative space
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Italian Neorealism (1944-50s)
CINEMATIC CHARACTERISTICS
Rough, unpolished look
Unknown, non-professional actors
Ordinary events, ordinary people
Representative of a class of people, not individual heroes
Loose, unresolved plots
Conversational speech, not literary dialogue
Post-production dubbing
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Italian Neorealism (1944-50s)
CESARE ZAVATTINI:
“Some Ideas on the Cinema” (1953)
1. Portray real or everyday people, using nonprofessional actors in real settings
2. Examine socially significant themes
3. Promote the “organic” development ofsituations--the “real flow of life”--in which
complications are rarely resolved
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Italian Neorealism (1944-50s)
CESARE ZAVATTINI:
“Identification with the common man in the crowd.”
“Take dialogue and actors from the street.”
“Reality in American films is unnaturally filtered.”
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Italian Neorealism (1944-50s)
CESARE ZAVATTINI:
The ideal film:
“Ninety minutes of the life of a man to whom nothing happens.”
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Italian Neorealism (1944-50s)
CESARE ZAVATTINI:
“The world goes on getting worse because we are not truly aware of reality.”
The job of the director is to “observe reality, and not extract fictions from it.”
“The frequent habit of identifying oneself with fictional characters will become very dangerous.”
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Italian Neorealism
DE SICA:
“Film makers, when they depict human social problems, instinctively seek the causes and effects of the disequilibrium in human relationships. They are led to conclusions, a sort of commentary in images, which are more or less partisan. There is none of this in my work.”
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Italian Neorealism
DE SICA:
“My films are a struggle against the absence of human solidarity. . .against the indifference of society towards suffering. They are a word in favor of the poor and unhappy."
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The Bicycle Thief
Awarded honorary Academy Award in 1949
Inaugural issue of Sight and Sound (BFI journal, now on Web) called it “the greatest movie ever made”
Sergio Leone was an assistant directorFistful of DollarsGood, Bad and UglyOnce Upon A Time in America (1984)
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Italian Neorealism (1944-50s)
Roberto Rossellini
Luchino Visconti
Guisippe DeSantis
Giovanni Verga
Vittorio De Sica
Federico Fellini
Michelangelo Antonioni
Bernardo Bertolucci
Francesco Rosi
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Italian Neorealism (1944-50s)
The pregnancy caused a huge scandal in the United States. It even led to her being denounced on the floor of the U.S. Senate by a Democratic senator, who referred to her as "a horrible example of womanhood and a powerful influence for evil." In addition, there was a floor vote, which resulted in her being made persona non grata.
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End of Italian Neorealism
Criticized for negative depiction of Italy
Lack of positive heroes
Negative displays of human flesh
Catholic Church: “forbidden for believers”
Leaders disliked desolate images portrayed by neorealism
Giulio Andreotti, vice-minister in the De Gasperi cabinet:
“Dirty laundry that shouldn't be washed and hung to dry in the open”
Leftists: Do not go far enough in suggesting social reforms
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End of Italian Neorealism
Leftist parties defeated at the polls
Massive US aid speeded recovery
Democracy took root
Personal income surpassed pre-War levels
Italians liked American cinema & optimism
Only 10% of the 800 films made in Italy between 1945 and 1953 were Neorealist
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End of Italian Neorealism
New focus on “the inner man”:
Moral and spiritual decline
Alienation
Psychology of relationships
BUT the movement did influence the French New Wave, Hollywood and TV—even today
On the Waterfront (1954)
Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
Mean Streets (1973)
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Neorealism Today
Influence of Italian Neorealism
French New Wave
British Social Realism
Scorcese: New York street life
Ken Loach: UK working class
Common Topics
Immigrant experience in U.S.
Exposure of social injustices
Oppression of working class
Crime and corruption
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Neorealism & Marxist Tradition
Film as a medium for social reform
Expose the shallowness of modern capitalistic society
How people exploited by the system
Real-life problems of the common man
Poverty, crime, social injustice common themes
Ideal society is classless
Social change requires mobilization of groups of workers, minorities, etc.
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Siefried Kracauer (1889-1966)
CINEMATIC REALISM : Philosophy
Critic of “modernity” (Frankfurt School)
Human condition characterized by alienation
Mass culture/society manipulates individuals
Materialistic values have replaced religion, metaphysical, romantic convictions, resulting in disenchantment
People live distracted lives
Film as a “redemptive” experience that can show man damaged condition of modernity and help him transcend materialism
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Siefried Kracauer (1889-1966)
CINEMATIC REALISM
Foreshadowed and predicted dehumanizing power of mass media
“Mass ornaments”--film, military parades and sporting events
“Real” world of the individual desubstantiated by spectacle and empty rituals
Film must “reengage” individual with nature and the Kantian real world
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Andre Bazin (1918-1958)
Views cinema as a “redemptive” art
The role of cinema is to help man in his search for truth and understanding in an ambiguous and uncertain world
Man can transcend alienation and modernity
Film can be a religious experience
“Love” and “state of grace”
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Andre Bazin (1918-1958)
Bergson’s concept of “creative evolution”
Catholic phenomenologist
The liminal image
Close experiential scrutiny reveals deep structures/meanings behind phenomena
Under scrutiny of inquiry [artistic analysis]these deep structures are brought into the light
Cinema and photography are media that an artist can utilize to review the deeper meanings behind the phenomena of existence
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Andre Bazin (1918-1958)
“We know that under the image revealed there is another which is truer to reality and under this image still another and yet again still another under this last one, right down to the true image of reality, absolute, mysterious, which no one will ever see.”
Michelangelo Antonioni
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Andre Bazin (1918-1958)
Film image “embalms” time & wrenches phenomena from the flux of life
Symbolic power of cinematic imagery combined with empirical density of cinematic realism
The spirit behind the “real” object
The “long hard gaze”
Disliked over-expressive, over-ornamental, or overuse of montage
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Andre Bazin (1918-1958)
“Montage...chops the world up into little fragments, and disturbs the natural unity in people and things.”
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Andre Bazin (1918-1958)
“German expressionism did violence to the image by ways of sets and lighting.”
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Andre Bazin (1918-1958)
Francois Truffaut
Erich von Stroheim
Roberto Rossellini
Vittorio De Sica
Robert Bresson
Jean Renoir
Orson Welles
William Wyler
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Andre Bazin (1918-1958)
Depth of focus & long takes
Respect for the continuity of dramatic space and the flow of time
Composition in depth
“Dramatic effects for which we had formerly relied on montage were created out of the movements of the actors within a fixed framework.”
Ambiguity of expression closer to reality; viewer must choose
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Andre Bazin (1918-1958)
“The principle responsibility is to document the world before attempting to interpret or criticize it. For Bazin, this moral duty is ultimately a sacred one—the photographic media are, in effect, preordained to bear witness to the beauty of the cosmos.”
Peter Matthews, Sight and Sound, August 1999
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Andre Bazin (1918-1958)
“Bazin distrusted montage on the grounds that its dynamic juxtaposition of images hurtles the viewer along a predetermined path of attention, the aim being to construct a synthetic reality in support of a propagandist message.”
Peter Matthews, Sight and Sound, August 1999
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Andre Bazin (1918-1958)
“De Sica…humbly renounced the hubristic display of authorial personality and thus enabled the audience to intuit the numinous significance of people and things.”
Peter Matthews, Sight and Sound, August 1999
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Andre Bazin (1918-1958)
“At no other period in its history has cinema been so enslaved by escapist fantasy—and never have we been less certain of the status of the real. Now the digitization of the image threatens to cut the umbilical cord between photograph and referent on which Bazin founded his entire theory.”
Peter Matthews, Sight and Sound, August 1999
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Andre Bazin (1918-1958)
“At no other period in its history has cinema been so enslaved by escapist fantasy—and never have we been less certain of the status of the real. Now the digitization of the image threatens to cut the umbilical cord between photograph and referent on which Bazin founded his entire theory.”
Peter Matthews, Sight and Sound, August 1999
Kracauer: “Mass ornaments distracting society.”
Baudrillard: “We live in hyperreality”