Cinema of Italy - Neorealism

Neorealism

With the approaching war, many works were produced for propaganda purposes. The term Neorealism was used for the first time for Luchino Visconti’s Ossessione (1943): it is considered by many to be the first Italian neorealist film. Nevertheless, in 1942, Alessandro Blasetti produced his Quattro passi fra le nuvole (Four Steps in the Clouds), the story of a humble employee, considered by many others as the first neorealist work.

Neorealism exploded soon after the war, with unforgettable works such as Rossellini's trilogy Rome, Open City (1945), Paisà (1946), and Germany, Year Zero (1948), and with extraordinary actors such as Anna Magnani, as an attempt to describe the difficult economic and moral conditions of Italy and the changes in public mentality in everyday life. Also, because Cinecittà was occupied by refugees, films were shot outdoors, on the devastated roads of a defeated country. This genre soon also became an important political tool, although in most cases directors were able to keep a distinguishing barrier between art and politics.

Poetry and cruelty of life were harmonically combined in the works that Vittorio De Sica wrote and directed together with screenwriter Cesare Zavattini: among them, Shoeshine (1946), The Bicycle Thief (1948) and Miracle in Milan (1951). The 1952 film Umberto D. showed a poor old man with his little dog, who must beg for alms against his dignity in the loneliness of the new society. This work is perhaps De Sica's masterpiece and one of the most important works in Italian cinema. It was not a commercial success and since then it has been shown on Italian television only a few times. Yet it is perhaps the most violent attack, in the apparent quietness of the action, against the rules of the new economy, the new mentality, the new values, and it embodies both a conservative and a progressive view.