Realist Film Movements
Neorealismo (1)
Films of Roberto Rossellini
Table of Contents
1) Neorealismo
2) Roberto Rossellini
3) Roma, Citta Aperta and Other Films
'… as the theatrical sense of drama stems
from reality, people in real situations will
produce drama…' Richard Leacock
Neorealismo
Documentary Films and Fiction Films
DIFFERENCE?
• Documentary Films → To be true to the
reality that they depict; to reflect truthfully
the issue they raise
Neorealismo
• Fiction Films → free to shape and alter
reality in the way it suits the needs of the
story. We cannot ask whether they are true
to facts and circumstances outside
themselves, but we can ask whether they
create a convincing make-believe.
Neorealismo
Italian NEOREALISMO
• One of the first conscious attempts in the fiction
film to be true to facts and circumstances
– Classical American Films - conscious attempts to
create a convincing make-believe
• Filmmaking ‘movement’ in the mid- and late
1940s.
Neorealismo
• One of the first significant alternatives to the
Hollywood-style realism and the grammar in
filmmaking.
• Neorealismo - the name given by hindsight to the
films of such directors as Roberto Rossellini,
Vittorio De Sica, Giuseppe di Santis, Pietro Germi
and Luchino Visconti
• Documentary-style rendering of actual lives in
actual circumstances
Neorealismo
• The Parma Conference on Neorealismo in 1953
COMMON FEATURES - ideological
• a new democratic spirit, with emphasis on the
value of ordinary people
• a compassionate point of view [towards the poor
and the oppressed] and a refusal to make facile
(easy) moral judgements
Neorealismo
COMMON FEATURES - ideological
• a preoccupation with Italy‘s Fascist past and the
aftermath of the wartime devastation
• a blending of Christian and Marxist humanism
• an emphasis on emotions rather than abstract
ideas
Neorealismo
• COMMON FEATURES - sylistic
• an avoidance of neatly plotted stories in favor
of loose, episodic structures
• a documentary visual style
• the use of actual locations--usually exteriors-rather than studio sites
• the use of nonprofessional actors, even for
principal roles
Neorealismo
COMMON FEATURES - sylistic
• The use of conversational speech, not
literary dialogue
• The avoidance of artifice in editing,
camerawork, and lighting in favor of a
simple "styless" style
Roberto Rossellini
• Roberto Rossellini
• Father of Italian Neorealismo
• 1906-1977
• Director and
screenwriter
Pre-Roberto Rossellini
• Italian realism before Neorealismo and
Rossellini
Realist impulse in literature and cinema
• ‘We are convinced that one day we will create
our most beautiful film following the slow and
tired step of the worker who returns home.’ Di
Santis and Mario Alicata (1941)
• Reaction to the filmmaking tradition in Italy historical epic, fantasy and romantic melodrama
(‘telefono bianco’)
Pre-Roberto Rossellini
• Historical and Biblical epics
• Cabiria (1914) Quo Vadis (1913)
Pre-Roberto Rossellini
• Neorealist and
neorealistic films before
Rossellini
• Alessandro Blasetti’s
Four Steps in the Cloud
(1942), Vittorio De
Sica’s The Children Are
Watching Us (1943),
Ossessione (1943)
Roberto Rossellini
• War-time trilogies made with Federico Fellini Propaganda films
Roberto Rossellini
• Two months before the liberation of Rome,
Rossellini prepared for making the selffinanced film, Roma, Citta Aperta with the
help from Fellini (script writer) and Aldo
Fabruzzi (who played the role of Rome
priest in it)
Roma, citta aperta
• Roma, Citta Aperta
(Rome, Open City,
1945) The (half-)
true story of the
struggle against the
German troops
occupying Rome and
a priest executed by
Nazis.
Roma, Citta Aperta
IMPROVISATION AND SCRIPT
Rossellini never used a script in a
conventional sense. His script was
collectively written and contained only its
narrative outline. The film is based on
blended pieces of the true stories which
took place in the winter of 1943-44.
Roma, Citta Aperta
LOCATION SHOOTING
• 'Take the camera out into the streets' Rossellini
avoided studios whenever possible.
• (Imaginary) geography created out of various
settings and places. Roma, Citta Aperta was one
of the rare films which kept to the correct streets
and directions of the city in which it was filmed.
• Once the imaginary geography was established,
the narrative events and characters’ movements
faithfully stack to it.
Roma, Citta Aperta
Roma, Citta Aperta
Roma, Citta Aperta
NON-PROFESSIONAL ACTORS
• Mainly amateur actors with some professionals
in the key roles.
‘… In order to really create the character that
one has in mind, it is necessary for the director
to engage in a battle with his actor which
usually ends with submitting to the actor’s wish.
Since I do not have the desire to waste my
energy in a battle like this, I only use
professional actors occasionally.’
Roberto Rossellini
Roma, Citta Aperta
• Only professional actors used
• Anna Magnani and Aldo Fabrizi
Roma, Citta Aperta
GRAINY PHOTOGRAPHY
• Documentary feel
• The film owes its uneven look to the stock,
some of which was given by the American
occupation army or other was bought from
street photographers.
Grainy and out-of focus photography
Washed-out colour
Roma, Citta Aperta
Montage
• Pina's death scene: the imitation of our real
experience. We hear a crack (though, we do
not see the one who has shot her) - we see
her fall - we make connection. Briefness,
the episode told by sound.
Roma, Citta Aperta
REALITY EFFECT
• Non-diegetic scenes and realistic details
• Small incidental details → a choirboy kicks
a German soldier; another soldier molests
Pina; a long ladder in Pina's stockings must
be noticed.
Roma, Citta Aperta
'This is the way things are.’
Roberto Rossellini
-- A motto of neorealismo
War-time Trilogy
Paisa (1946)
• Six episodes of the Allied
advance from the South
at the end of WWII.
Germania, Anno Zero
(1948)
• A story of a German boy
in Berlin under
occupation.