Development Of Italian Neorealism Film Studies Essay

Development Of Italian Neorealism Film Studies EssayItalian neorealism positive as a p stratagemicular trope of cinematic expression during the percentage point when Italy was ruled by the Fascists. Italian neorealism developed under onerous fate and became a form by which Italian consumemakers could express themselves in a new way. Essenti eithery, the early neorealist shoot d stimulatemakers were doing what they could with the overlyls at hand and doing it under the watchful look of an antagonistic ruling class, From the tensions this arrangement produced, they created something distinctive, allowing them to develop ideas and to do so in a new cinematic style. At the measure, Italy was ruled by fascists, who viewed art as valuable only to the degree it was uptakeful. Yet, these films were non made in service of fascist ideas simply as a counter to them. The forces that helped circumstance these films, the style that was produced by these tensions, and some of the ess ence(p) examples demonstrate the vitality achieved by Italian handlers as World War II ended.One of the known of what would be called the neo-realist approach to film was Roberto Rossellinis Open urban center (1945), and m whatever of the characteristics of the operation were evident in this film. These films had an anti-establishment, subverter attitude. They had an extemporaneous, documentary quality enhanced in the early era by the materials from which they were madewarfare-time film stock, cobbled-together equipment, non-professional actors, and location shooting. Open City is a good example of this early period in neorealism, time Vittorio De Sicas The motorcycle Thief (1948) is an expression of the fully developed tradition from the period later the expulsion of the fascists and after the end of World War II.These 2 films display a challenge to the establishment of the time and a loving consciousness that delves into the reality kinda than the image of the nation. F or this reason, neorealism encountered hostility from the established forces because these films portrayed Italy in a realistic and dilettanteal way that was not the human beingnikin of image the establishment wanted for the country, particularly to be presented to the outside solid ground.Bondanella casts the t for each oneing of neorealism as a high point in the history of the film and one that would be highly influential to later works and movements. Bondanella cites critic Andre Bazin, who called neorealism a cinema of fact and reconstituted reportage which offered a message of fundamental humane solidarity fostered by the anti-fascist Resistance. Bazin says that these works often embodied a rejection of both(prenominal) handed-down dramatic and cinematic conventions. The filmmakers most often employed on-location shooting rather than studio sets and used nonprofessional actors and documentary make. Leprohon emphasizes that this cannot be considered a logical movemen t in the smell that it created rules or even theories followed by the filmmakers. Rather, the filmmakers were b arly trying to express themselves individually in a way that was in the airEssentially, neo-realism was a product of governmental and fond circumstances. And it is in this revolutionary aspect of neo-realism that I should like to discuss first of all. Before it existed in its own right, with definite cloggyls and sectarian interests, neo-realismwhich was still namelesswas opposed to a assign of affairs which increasingly stifled and oppressed the expression of trutha state of affairs that existed . . . long out front the Fascist era.Leprohon notes that the neorealistic style had as its profound aim making the cinema an extension of the literary realism that had developed at the end of the 19th century. Leprohon looks back at this literary history and rallys a precedent for the new form of cinematic expression Neo-realism was thus a revival of the Risorgimento, t he unfinished revolution which the young polemicists intended to complete, while at home and abroad the regime was giving increasingly clear signs of its imminent collapse. Neorealism was itself a revolution.Liehm breaks m both of the young filmmakers of the time as conscious revolutionaries pursuance artistic truth in cinema because the literary delineation was too disorganized and scattered to be an effective vehicleThe struggle had to set forth where the strongest weapon was, carried out by film artists whose work was centered in the major cities, mainly in Rome. After twenty-seven years of fascism, no otherwise medium had the stamina to create a social mount for a new artistic movement.Visconti brought the setting of Italy to life, and setting would be an important component in neorealistic films. He made diverges from the original Cain story that are significant in showing the intent of the filmmaker. Cains story is naturalistic, with characters encountering the acciden tal and failing in the face of arbitrary but not divine justice. For Visconti, this is not the way the universe operates instead, he sees a tragic outcome ancestry from the necessary logic of the spot into which the characters are thrownTurning Cains parable of arbitrariness into a demonstration of necessity required, however, more than a guileless alteration of plot mechanics. It meant creating a new bodily structured framework in which to define the actions of the characters, and consequently making the characters themselves disparate.Though the Fascists had selected the story, they did not accept the finished product, and the censor refused to pass it. The young filmmakers objected and approached Mussolini, who saw nothing offensive and passed it. However, when the last Mussolini government took refuge in the North, its members took the film with them in a cut version and destroyed the negative. The prints in existence today are from a duplicate possessed by Visconti. Ir onically, the film was long unprocurable in the West for quite a different reasoncopyright problems because of Cains novel.This section of the social statement was an important component in the leading neo-realist films, and indeed this element was feared by the fascists, who did not want their society depicted in any but the best light. With the end of Italian fascist rule, a different set of critical rulers was put in place. Roberto Rossellinis Open City is a film some Rome during the period of the German billet, and the modifys under which the film was shot mirror the situation in the film itself.The film was in addition important for what it said to the world of filmIt so completely ruminateed the lesson and psychological atmosphere of this historical moment that it altered both the customary and the critics to a new direction in Italian film. The conditions of its production (relatively elfin shooting in the studio, film stock bought on the black mart and developed wit hout the normal viewing of daily rushes, postsynchronization of sound to avoid laboratory expenses, limited financial backing) did untold to create many of the myths concerning neorealism.Rome at the time was a just- chip ined city, in that the Germans had just left, and the effects of the Nazi wrinkle were all the way still felt and contributed to the metaphoric meanings attached to the film. Much of the sense of the title is ironic, in that Rome was not yet an open city at all in the time frame of the film, though that was the condition wished by the people and newly experienced by the filmmakers, who had themselves prayed for that release from the landmark of the Nazi occupation.The period of the occupation is evoked as a time of great difficulty and trouble, and the terminal figure open city then had a different meaning, in that the police wore armbands proclaiming Rome an open city, meaning it was not to be a military target based on the transnational rules of war. Alth ough the police proclaimed the city open, it was actually a city tightly enclose by martial law under the Germans. The penalty for approximately every infraction was death, giving the city the aura of an en close grave much of the time. Openness thus sometimes has a literal meaning, sometimes a metaphoric meaning, and sometimes an ironic meaning, in that the actuality belies any receptivity at all.The contrary nature of the title is evident in the American release version of the film, which begins with an explanation of the problems facing the filmmakers when they made the film, including having to shoot without becoming equipment, behind locked doors, and out of sight of the remaining Nazis until the Germans were finally gone from the city. Certainly, this comment does not imply desolation at all, but it does imply an commence on the part of the filmmakers to create an openness through their art.In the commencement scene, as the Italian partisan, Giorgio, flees his home whe n the Nazi soldiers arrive, Rossellini contrasts the interior and the exterior, the intrusion of the Germans and the take to the woods of Giorgio, in a way that challenges different ideas about openness. Giorgio has been enclosed in his home, though viewers first see him emerging into the openness of the exterior. He peers down through a crack in the roof to see the Germans as if they were in a small box. In truth, they are rest before his door. The interior of the apartment seems dwarfed by their presence, and they are therefore all the more enclosed by the walls and doorways that seem too small to use up them as they search the apartment. Ironically, the man hunted, a man clearly not free, is out in the open air, while the hunters, who presumably are free, are enclosed at heart the confines of his apartment.Immediately after this sequence, the explanation of the term open city is given as the commander of the German occupation uses a subroutine to explain that the open city i s divided into 14 zones, making fakeling the populace with a minimum of force easier. The map itself encloses the open city, and the way the Nazis live in the city also belies its openness as far as they are concerned. Major Bergmann is asked how he met Giorgio, and he says in the usual wayhe met him when he was across the desk from him in the same room, for Bergmann takes congratulate in being able to bring anyone to his office that he wishes and in himself never leaving that office. He indeed states that he takes a perambulation through the city every afternoon without leaving his desk. He is enclosed in his warped task and keeps himself as widely separated from the city and the people as possible.The Nazis in general treat the city as something they pass through, not something of which they are a part. They clearly do not belong, just as they seem out of place in Giorgios apartment, squeezed by the walls as if the walls want them out. The office of Bergmann is no more hospitab le, although it is much larger, and he and the Police Commissioner stand and talk together awkwardly, stiffly, with the map of Rome amidst them, the map divided up by the boundaries of the 14 zones. The Nazis have closed themselves off from the city they occupy, maintaining quarters distant from the people of Rome, avoiding contact, and indeed financial backing separately because that is a mandate imposed on them by their leadership, dread(a) of fraternization and collaboration on any scale.Scene after scene creates an ironic contrast amidst the idea of Rome as an open city and the reality of different kinds of closure. The people mass in the streets before shops trying to buy food, yet those shops are closed, with nothing to sell. The streets are open, but the buildings are truly closed, with no provisions and little hope of a changed situation in the near future.The film presents a certain tension, however, between the realism of its city streets and the underlying attitude tak en by the director toward the materialThe tone of the work is thus far more indebted(predicate) to Rossellinis message of Christian humanism than it is to any programmatic attempt at cinematic realism. The good characters are set sharply apart from the corrupt ones by their belief in what Francesco calls an impending springtime in Italy and a bankrupt tomorrow Marina is corrupted by Ingrid not because of political convictions but because she lacks assurance in herself and is therefore incapable of loving others.Cesare Zavattini, who co-wrote The Bicycle Thief with De Sica, is state as the theoretical founder of Neo-Realism. As early as 1942 he called for a new kind of Italian film that would abolish project plots, take to the streets for its material, and do away with professional actors. According to Zavattini, plot was spurious because it imposed an artificial structure on everyday life. The unemployed family man in The Bicycle Thief and his son are the lead characters and bo th are non-actors who were coached by De Sica.Vittorio De Sica directed The Bicycle Thief in 1948, and, although this was after the war and after the expulsion of the Fascists, the film is infused with De Sicas bitterness that few things had changed in societyWhile Rossellini was searching for subjective freedom of facts, De Sica tried to find their human face. He discovered it not in the exceptional sorrow of the war but in the misery of daily life where the war was just one aspect of the human lot.De Sica had trouble interesting any producers in a story about so trifling a subject as the theft of a bicycle, and he had to raise the livelihood himself by traveling all over Europe.Though the film is clearly critical of the social conditions of the time and challenged the authorities as a consequence, it is much more than a social document or tract. De Sica sees the problem in the psychology of the people as much as in the structure of their society. He shows bureaucrats, police of ficials, and church people who have no spirit of the main characters dilemma in having lost his bicycle, and he also shows that members of the mans own class are no more sympathetic towards him.Bondanella states that De Sica sees a world in which economic solutions are ultimately ineffective in solidifying what is a meaningless, absurd, human predicament De Sicas carefully contrived visual effects underline the hopelessness of Riccis struggle, not merely the economic or political aspects of Italian society which have supposedly produced his dilemma.This is a double bill of indictment of society, including as it does the people themselves as well as the establishment, and such a bleak view had to have an effect on the viewer. Certainly, this was not the watch of Italy that the authorities wanted to have presented to the world. In truth, De Sicas view was not that the authorities themselves were to blameSocial reform may transform the immediate situation De Sica described in 1948. Economic development will indeed change a society in which a stolen bicycle may hint hunger and deprivation. But no amount of social engineering or even revolution, De Sica seems to imply, will alter the basic facts of lifesolitude, loneliness, and alienation of the individual within the amorphous and unsympathetic body of humanity.Alfred Bazin was one critic who did not hold in with De Sica on this point and who saw The Bicycle Thief as an indictment of the authorities. Bazin called the film the only valid Communist film of the whole past tense decade. Bazin also said the film represented a new form of pure cinema, a cinema with no actors, no sets, and no storyline in the traditional sense. Open City before had made use of real locations but had included actors and a more traditional storyline. The Bicycle Thief is thus the film that most represents what the world would come to see as the essence of neo-realism. It was also the beginning of a tradition that would be followed b y others.The post-war government did not try to exercise the kind of control the fascists had wielded, and the establishment must have felt some ambivalence about a film that, on the one hand, criticized the establishment and all of Italian society in a stark and effective fashion and, on the other hand, brought acclaim and attention to the Italian film industry when it was praised and rewarded more or less the world. Italian neorealistic directors expressed their antipathy to either the structure of their society or the ways in which that society was controlled and directed in a strain of ways. Rossellini in Open City and De Sica in The Bicycle Thief each created a new form of cinematic expression, related in their underlying intentions and in certain stylistic elements that link them even as other stylistic and thematic elements make them very different from one another. all challenged the prevailing establishment, however, and involved images and themes that many in authority believed did not reflect well on Italian society.These two films taken together contributed to the mythic view taken of the neorealist period. Open City was shot in a way that was new and different and that inspired a generation of filmmakers, including De Sica, who carried aspects of neorealism to a logical end.