How Neorealism before 1950 Affected Film History - Essay Example

?How Neorealism before 1950 affected film history. Realism is a term that is most often applied to novels and paintings in the nineteenth century which depict the ordinary details of human life in detail. It was a reaction to the excessive emotions of Romanticism. Neorealism is more often used in connection with cinema in Europe immediately after the Second World War. Once again it was a reaction against excessive emotion, but in this case it had more to do with political movements such as Fascism in Germany and Italy, and a desire to depict some kind of stable and realistic order in a society that had been morally and economically devastated. Instead of overblown and idealistic propaganda films celebrating the ideals of a fascist state, film makers turned to the simple lives of rural peasants, and the struggles of ordinary workers in the cities. The three most famous neorealist directors are Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio De Sica and Luchina Visconti. One critic notes that the neorealist movement is widely regarded to have started with Rossellini’s gritty and unsentimental about a resistance prieced Rome, Open City in 1945. This kind of film became famous for “a sparse style of shooting on actual locations, with mostly nonprofessional players, and emphasizing themes of basic human problems and issues.” (Hamilton, 2006, p. 61) Children often feature, as in the film Shoeshine by Vittorio De Sica, which tells the at times harrowing tale of two boys who dream of owning a horse and fall into the hands of some corrupt policemen. The realistic portrayal of the sufferings of the boys in prison, raises issues about the kind of society that Italy can and should be setting up now that the war is over. Another critic notes: “neorealism became the repository of partisan hopes for social justice in the postwar Italian state.” (Marcus, 1986, p. xiv) The films of Rossellini deal with the devastation that has been caused by the war in Europe, and he made a trilogy which explored how the poorer people in Italy and German came to terms with the turmoil. These films do not have a traditional narrative line, but show episodes which between them build up a picture of life in those difficult days. Small visual items can have symbolic meaning far beyond the immediate context of the film, and the skill of Rossellini and others was to use the camera to illuminate deeper issues through images. The camera work is the opposite of Hollywood’s slick and artificial interiors, preferring the rather stark and ugly landscape of the war-torn countryside, and the dirty streets where people have to scratch a living any way they can. The films were popular at the time, despite their lack of a clear plot. People learned to look at the films in a new way, as a window on life itself: “Even the Italian neorealist directors, who stress everyday reality in their films and deny the validity of invented stories, argue that their particular brand of everyday reality is not boring because of its complex echoes and implications” (Boggs and Petrie, 2000, p. 37) Another feature of the neorealist directors’ work was that it had universal appeal, despite being very firmly tied to local scenery. Rossellini’s vision of a bombed and derelict Berlin in Germany, Year Zero, for example, juxtaposes a blond child and the colossal ruins of the city, with tragic consequences. The overwhelming message of the film is the destruction and futility of war. Heaps of rubble obliterate the civilization that was there before, leaving the boy adrift and hopeless, with no past and no future. The second film in Rossellini’s trilogy, Paisan, depicts the American soldiers’ encounter with demoralized Italian rural people in different regions, distilling the experiences of the war years in to the faces and conversations of unsophisticated farm workers. The human cost of the war is depicted starkly, and there is newsreel footage interspersed with the fictional episodes. The director makes every effort to present the material in a clear, unadorned way, so that it has maximum impact on the audience. Visconti’s film, The Earth Trembles, about Sicilian fisherman uses no professional actors, but instead has actual crowds and individuals going about their business in an incredibly beautiful, but unforgiving landscape. The rich narration overlays socio-political comment from a vaguely Marxist perspective, but there is no clear moral to the tale: life is hard for the fishermen and their families, no matter what political system they follow. The film becomes a universal commentary on the human condition rather than a debate about communism in Italy. This rather slow, reflective type of cinema is not so much entertainment, as education and food for thought. There is little in the way of plot or action, but plenty of ideas and some very arresting visual work, using the camera to change our view of the recent past. There is no glorification of war, as in the American war films of this period, and instead there is a genuine sympathy for the defeated people. The films are black and white, since they were made before the use of color film became widespread, and the grainy texture of some of the outside shots on location add to their documentary feel. The influence of neorealism on film history has been immense. Once Italy and other European countries started to rebuild, and regain some of their former prosperity and confidence, the filmmakers were there with their incorruptible camera watching and recording both the surface developments and their deeper significance. French new wave cinema in the later 1950s drew on the ground-breaking techniques of the neorealist directors to shake up cinema in their country. Traditional notions about narrative and structure were tossed aside, and more experimentation with chance meetings, static cameras, and unscripted dialogue were used. Many ater Italian directors such as Antonioni also owe a debt to the neorealists. These movements let the image tell the story, and promote an intellectual, and rather arty style of filming. They changed film-making worldwide, because of these techniques, and left a haunting record of one of the most traumatic periods in Western social history, and for these reasons the neorealist directors will never be forgotten. [1028 words] References: Films De Sica, V. (1946) Shoe Shine. De Sica, V. (1948) Bicycle Thieves. Rossellini, R. (1945) Rome, Open City. Rossellini, R. (1946) Paisan. Rossellini, T. (1948) Germany, Year Zero. Visconti, L. (1948) The Earth Trembles. References: Secondary Literature: Boggs, Joseph and Petrie, Dennis W. (2000) The Art of Watching Films. 5th edition. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield. Hamilton, J.R. (2006) Communism and the Ironic Value of Property in Italian Neo-Realist Cinema. Journal of Libertarian Studies 20 (4), pp. 61-69. Marcus, M.J. (1986) Italian film in the light of neorealism.Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Shiel, M. (2006) Italian neorealism: Rebuilding the cinematic city. London: Wallflower Read More