Rome: Open City. 1945. Dir Roberto Rossellini

Rome: Open City. 1945. Dir Roberto Rossellini

Under Construction

Roma città aperta (Open City) is widely regarded as the most important film in Italian cinema history...At the time it was first shown, the film must have seemed utterly different from anything that had gone before. when it is looked at more closely, however, what is most striking is its overwhelming similarity to previous cinema. (Brunette, Peter; 1996 p 41) 

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As a visual depiction of the divided city, the film has at once the value of a testimony and the status of a rhetorical construction. It is a testimony because, for all its artifice - actors, scripted performances, built sets - it records on celluloid how parts of Rome looked at the end of the Second World War. Including sites of memorable events. (Forgacs in Gottlieb 2004 p 107)

The one opposition on which Rome Open City does not insist, however is that between realism and melodrama....Instead of trying to rescue the authentic visual feel of the film from its story, realism from melodrama , it is better to see how the latter enabled the former....Rome Open City's counter-Hollywood offered up the lived experience of the wartime Resistance and the Popular Front . (Rogin, M.P. in Gottlieb 2004 pp132-133)

Open City is a labyrinth of clichés. Foremost amongst these clichés is the presentation of a narrative "plot" that dramatises the struggle against the  conspiratorial powers of Nazism and Fascism... In its investigation of the criminal acts of the Nazis and the Facsists, draws on melodramatic clichés in relation to its construction of character and plot, uses of misé en scene, and dialogue. These clichés involve representations of femininity and masculinity in the context of perverse sexuality, deception and misrepresentation in probing questions of belief, responsibility and judgement. (Landy, Marcia in Gottlieb 2004 p 86) 

I sought only to picture the essence of things. I had absolutely no interest in telling a romanticized tale along the usual lives of film drama. The actual facts were each more dramatic than any screen cliche.”—Roberto Rossellini, 1960 - cited e-Jump-Cut

It is a fascinating paradox that Roma città aperta continued many of the stylistic characteristics of cinema produced during the Fascist era, but it embodied, at the same time , a clear antifascist ideology that attempted to reconcile all of the different and conflicting political positions of the various groups making up the Italian antifascist resistance. (Bondanella in Gottlieb 2004, p 43)

Introduction

Currently this is a straight forward webliography and bibliography for the film. The Google entries have been researched down to page 26 looking for decent quality articles that aren't simply repetitive. A fuller analysis of the film will appear in due course however this page should still be of use to interested visitors.

Another YouTube Extract. Here the fascists are about to conduct a raid. (Italian Only)

Webliography

Gottlieb, Sidney. Ed. PDF Intro to Rossellini's Rome Open City. Cambridge: CUP

Scope Book Review on  Forgacs: Rome Open City. London: BFI

Rai TV on Roma Citta Aperta

Wikipedia on Roma Citta Aperta

The Films of Roberto Rossellini by Peter Bondanella. Author(s) of Review: Barbara Odabashian (JSTOR article)

Celluloide Dir: Carlo Lizzani, 1996 A Review by Luca Prono, University of Nottingham, UK Scope

Representations of Modern Italy. University of Warwick includes Roma Citta Aperta and work on neorealism

The Homosexualisation of Nazism  

Film Philosophy Rebuilding the Cinematic City Review PDF 

Film Philosophy Tocce on Bondanella's Films of Rossellini 

History Channel Programme for March 2008

Bibliography 

Brunette, Peter. 1996 2nd Ed. Roberto Rossellini. Berkeley: California University Press(Originally Oxford: Oxford University Press)

Bondanella, Peter. 2002 3rd Ed. Italian Cinema: From Neorealism to the Present. New  York / London: Continuum. This is the first book to get on Italian cinema for anybody unfamiliar with the overview. Whilst one may have disagreements with certain aspects of it it is one of  the best introductions to the whole period.  

Bondanella, Peter. 1993. The Films of Roberto Rossellini. Cambridge: CUP. This has a complete chapter on Roma Citta Aperta

Forgacs, David.2000. Roma Citta Aperta. London: British Film Institute Paperback ISBN: 0851708048

Forgacs, David. 2004. Space Rhetoric and the Divided City in Roma città aperta. Gottlieb, Sidney. Ed. 2004. Cambridge . A fascinating essay building on some ideas which had to remain underdveloped in his BFI 2000 monograph. Here Forgacs explores several aspects of the way Rome as a city is represented through visual rhetoric (film language). The essay looks at the way the city is framed, at vertical divisions and horizontal movements and the use of mise en scene as a rhetorical device.

Forgacs, David  Lutton,Sarah and  Nowell-Smith Geoffrey. 2001. Roberto Rossellini: Magician of the Real.London: BFI

Gallagher, Tag. 1998. The Adventures of Roberto Rossellini: His Life and Films. New York: Da Capo Press. A large biographical account of Rossellini and his work.  Much of the account is based upon interviews and is therefore imbricated with memories which are clearly of greater or lesser reliability and at times seems to slip into anecdotalism. The book has a chapter on the making of Rome Open City.

Gottlieb, Sidney. Ed. Rossellini's Rome Open City. Cambridge: CUP. This is an affordable and very useful book of essays by several of the most prominent scholars of Italian cinema and comes highly recommended.

Hipkins Danielle. 'Francesca's Salvation or Damnation? Resisting recognition of the prostitute in Rossellini's Paisà (1946)', Studies in European Cinema, 3.2 (2006), 153-69. Hipkins has been studying the role of the prostitute in Italian films and in Roma citta aperta the role of Marina as temted, temptress and traitor and how she affords to keep herself is of importance.  Rossellini's use of homosexuality as a perversion linked to Nazism is also an interesting area to discuss. 

Marcus, Millicent. 1986. Italian Film in the Light of Neorealism. Princeton: Princeton University Press. As well as being a useful introduction to the ideas underlying neorealism there is a complete chapter on Rome Open City. The book itself is a powerful thesis showing the influence that neorealism has and continues to have within Italian cinema. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in Italian cinema and is probably the best one to get after the Bondanella mention above. Here there is greater depth working through a range of case studies. 

Rossellini, Roberto. The War Trilogy. Open City. Paisan. Germany-Year Zero. Edited and with an Introduction By Stefano Roncoroni. Translated from the Italian By Judith Green. NY: Grossman, 1973.

Shiel,Mark. 2006. Italian Neorealism: Rebuilding the Cinematic City. London: Wallflower Press

: 18 Feb 2008 13:12 |  Tags: Italian Cinema Italian Directors Neorealism Roberto Rossellini Rome Open City |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Roberto Rossellini: 1906–1977

Roberto Rossellini

Roberto Rossellini with Ingrid Bergman

Under Construction

Return to Italian directors hub page

Introduction

This article will be giving an overview of the work of Roberto Rossellini from Roma citta aperta until about 1963. This is when what are usually considered to be his most important films were made and include his classic neorealist films as well as his post-neorealist films many made with Ingrid Bergman and considered by many left-wing critics of the time to be a betrayal of neorealism. Given the scandal around the relationship between Rossellini and Bergman at a time when the Italian right-wing had become resurgent around Andreotti and the concommitant influence of the Roman Catholic Church it isn't hard to see why these films bombed at the box office however their influence on future filmmakers such as Truffaut was enormous. The overview will provide an introduction to the individual works which will have separate articles. There will also be an article about the general developments in Italy. Sadly the best part of one which was written has been the victim of hard disc crashes (yes plural). This kind of article is always important as films are usually deep participants in the SPECT (Social / Political / Economic / Cultural / Textual complex.  

Written as far back as 1986 Brunette's preface on Rossellini notes that he is perhaps the greatest unknown director who ver lived. As a central figure within neorealism and then moving on in his films with Ingrid Bergman to work with antinarrative methods and the use of deadtime Rossellini was ahead of his time preceding the work of Antonioni. Whilst he was to have enormous influence on filmmakers such as Godard and Truffaut it seems extraordinary that in a time when so many film directors have most of their work available on DVD very little of Rossellini's work is available. Even his neorealist films aren't all available. As for his later work Voyage to Italy is available from the BFI but other important work such as Stromboli is not. Hopefully by writing about him this will help stimulate demand for these works to become readily available. As can be seen from the bibliography below there is a large amount of critical writing in English readily available on Rossellini but without readily available texts this is not very helpful. By comparison most of Visconti's films are available although he is very underwritten by English speaking critics.

Rossellini and Neorealism

Rossellini made three films which are central to the cinematic tendency called Neorealism. These films are Rome Open City, Paisá, and Germany Year Zero.

Rossellini's main ideological thrust through these films was an emphasis on humanism ideas which ranged from an emphasis on solidarity between seemingly opposed idological positions of communism and catholicism against the common enemy of Nazism to a moral appeal for children in the former Nazi Germany to break with the amoralistic and anti-human ideas encapsualted in Nazism in Germany Year Zero. Paisá focused upon the cultural difficulties between Americans and Italians as the Allies gradually beat back Nazism in Italy.

,

Rome Open City 1945

Rome Open City 1945

Rome Open City 1945

Paisa 1946

Paisa 1946

Paisa 1946

Paisa 1946

Germany Year Zero 1948

Germany Year Zero 1948

Germany Year Zero 1948

The Rossellini & Ingrid Bergman Collaboration

After the famous neorealist trilogy Rossellini is probably best remembered for the films he made with Ingrid Bergman. The full length feature films were: Stromboli (1949), Europa '51 (1952), Voyage to Italy (1953), Giovanna d'Arco al Rogo (1954), La Paura (Fear) (1954/55).

Bergman was to become Reossellini's wife. The story of how they first met and then started their cinematic collaboration seems extraordinary. According to Brunette (1996) Bergman and her then husband Petter Lindstrom saw Rome Open City in a small art cinema which by then was three years old. Bergman was thoroughly impressed If there there is such a man who can put this on the screen, he must be an absolutely heavenly being (Cited Brunette 1996 p 109). A few months later Bergman saw Paisà in an almost empty cinema for it was not popular in the US. Still excited by the director's work she was convinced that Rossellini's films would do much better if they had a named star in a leading role. This led to her famous letter to Rossellini:

Dear Mr Rossellini,

I saw your films Open City and Paisan and enjoyed them very much. If you need a Swedish actress who speaks English very well, who has not forgotten her German, who is not very understandable in French, and who in Italian only knows "ti amo" I am ready to come and make a film with you. (Cited Brunette 1996 p 109)

Rossellini's response was very enthusiastic and he outlined his ideas for the film which was to become Stromboli. Eventually he visited the Lindstrom home in California and fell in love with Bergman. Howard Hughes who was enthusiastic about Bergman ventually agreed to finance the film. Bergman duly went to Italy to shoot the film.

Ingrid Bergman photographed on the island of Stromboli

Rossellini's filmmaking methods were somthing of a surprise to Bergman who was used to working to thoroughly prepared scripts and only working with professional actors. By comparison Rossellini was using many non-professional actors and his scripts wre loose and there was much expectation of improvisation. During the filming Bergman and Rossellini fell in love and Bergman wrote to her husband that she was going to stay with Rossellini. This caused a huge scandal in the USA.

Ingrid Bergman in Stromboli

The film was made in two versions one in English and one in Italian. Rossellini disowned the American version which was 20 minutes shorter and had been edited by the  RKO  studio totally undermining  Rossellini's intentions.

Whilst the Bergman films wre critically badly received by many critics at the time with the excption of the writers of Cahiers du Cinema critics such as Pter Bruntte and Laura Mulvey consider them to be the strongest and most innovative work of Rossellini.

Filmography

• Beaubourg, centre d'art et de culture Georges Pompidou (1977)
• Il messia (1976)
• Anno uno (1974)
• The World Population (1974)
• Concerto per Michelangelo (1974)
• Agostino d'Ippona (1972)
• Intervista a Salvador Allende: La forza e la ragione (1971)
• Rice University (1971)
• Da Gerusalemme a Damasco (1970)
• Les Carabiniers (1963)
• Ro.Go.Pa.G. (segment: "Illibatezza") (1963)
• Benito Mussolini (1962)
• Anima nera (1962)
• Uno sguardo dal ponte (1961)
• Vanina Vanini (1961)
• Viva l'Italia! (1961)
• Era Notte a Roma (1960)
• Il generale Della Rovere (1959)
• India: Matri Bhumi (1959)
• Giovanna d'Arco al rogo (1954)
• La Paura (1954)
• Viaggio in Italia (1954)
• Dov'è la libertà...? (1954)
• Amori di mezzo secolo (segment: "Napoli 1943") (1954)
• Siamo donne (segment: "Ingrid Bergman") (1953)
• Europa '51 (1952)
• La macchina ammazzacattivi (1952)
• Les Sept péchés capitaux (segment: "Envie, L'Envy") (1952)
• Medico condotto (1952)
• Francesco, giullare di Dio (1950)
• Stromboli terra di Dio (1950)
• L'Invasore (1949)
• Germania anno zero (1948)
• L'Amore (segments: "Il Miracolo" and "Una voce umana") (1948)
• Paisà (1946)
• Desiderio (1946)
• Roma città aperta (1945)
• L'Uomo dalla Croce (1943)
• La nave bianca (1942)
• Un Pilota ritorna (1942)
• Il Ruscello di Ripasottile
• Fantasia sottomarina (1940)
• La Vispa Teresa (1939)
• Il Tacchino prepotente (1939)
• Luciano Serra pilota (1938)
• La Fossa degli angeli
• Prélude à l'aprés-midi d'un faune (1937)
• Dafne (1936)

Webliography

Intute Arts and Humanities records on Rossellini

BBC 4 Profile of Rossellini 

Senses of Cinema on Rossellini  

Senses of Cinema Rossellini's Germany Year Zero

Roberto Rossellini and his Italian Cinema: The Search for Realism

Malcolm: The rise to Power of Lousi the XVI

Rossellini at UCLA

Rai TV on Rossellini  

Dr. Adrian Martin Review of Tag Gallagher's Biography of Rossellini 

Jump Cut. Re-evaluating Rossellini by Martin Walsh  

Bibliography 

Ben-Ghiat, Ruth. ‘The Facist War Trilogy’. Forgacs, David , Lutton, Sarah and Nowell-Smith Geoffrey.Eds. Roberto Rossellini: Magician of the Real . London: BFI

Bernadi, Sandro. 2000. ‘Rosselini’s Landscapes: Nature, Myth,History’. Forgacs, David , Lutton, Sarah and Nowell-Smith Geoffrey.Eds. Roberto Rossellini: Magician of the Real . London: BFI

Bondanella, Peter. 1993. The Films of Roberto Rossellini. Cambridge: CUP

Brunette, Peter. 1996. Roberto Rossellini. University of California Press: Berkley. (First publishd by OUP 1987)

Forgacs, David. 2000. ‘Introduction: Rossellini and the Critics’. Forgacs, David , Lutton, Sarah and Nowell-Smith Geoffrey.Eds. Roberto Rossellini: Magician of the Real . London: BFI

Forgacs, David , Lutton, Sarah and Nowell-Smith Geoffrey.Eds. 2000. Roberto Rossellini: Magician of the Real. London: BFI

Gallhaer, Tag. 1998. The Adventures of Roberto Rossellini. New York: Da Capo Press

Gottlieb, Sidney. Ed. Rossellini's Rome Open City. Cambridge: CUP

Gottlieb, Sidney. Ed. PDF Intro to Rossellini's Rome Open City. Cambridge: CUP

Hipkins Danielle. 'Francesca's Salvation or Damnation? Resisting recognition of the prostitute in Rossellini's Paisà (1946)', Studies in European Cinema, 3.2 (2006), 153-69.

Marcus, Millicent. 1986. Italian Film in the Light of Neorealism. Princeton: Princeton University Press

Muscio, Giuliana. ‘Paisa / Paisan’. Bertellini, Giorgio Ed. 2004. The Cinema of Italy. London: Wallflower Press

Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey. 2000. ‘North and South, East and West’: Rossellini and Politics. Forgacs, David , Lutton, Sarah and Nowell-Smith Geoffrey.Eds. Roberto Rossellini: Magician of the Real . London: BFI

Restivo, A. 2002. The Cinema of Economic Miracles: Visuality and Modernisation in the Italian Art Film. Durham and London: Duke University Press

Rohdie, Sam. 2000. ‘India’ Forgacs, David , Lutton, Sarah and Nowell-Smith Geoffrey.Eds. Roberto Rossellini: Magician of the Real. London: BFI

Rossellini, Roberto. The War Trilogy. Open City. Paisan. Germany-Year Zero. Edited and with an Introduction By Stefano Roncoroni. Translated from the Italian By Judith Green. NY: Grossman, 1973.

Shiel, Mark. 2006. Italian Neo Realism: Rebuilding the Cinematic City. London: Wallflower Press

Wagstaff, Christopher. 2000. ‘Rossellini and Neo-Realism’. Forgacs, David , Lutton, Sarah and Nowell-Smith Geoffrey.Eds. Roberto Rossellini: Magician of the Real . London: BFI

: 02 Feb 2008 02:15 |  Tags: Germany Year Zero Italian Directors Paisa Paisan Roberto Rossellini Rome Open City Stromboli Voyage To Italy |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Italian Neorealism: An Introduction

Italian Neorealism: An Introduction

Introduction

Immediately after the war Italy was deluged with Hollywood films which controlled between two thirds to three quarters of the Italian market 1945-1950. The importance for a strong relationship with the US government in the post-war stabilisation phase ensured that Hollywood wasn’t challenged by calls for protectionism or other measures to curb the flow. Eventually in 1951 an agreement was signed which capped the level of Hollywood imports to 225 per annum. The same period saw the flowering of  an Italian film movement called neorealism. This movement has become an important part of film history although it was based upon a relatively small number of films. The influence of these films has been out of all proportion to both the numbers of them made and their impact at the box-office at the time, for it was the Hollywood films which were pulling in the audiences. It was powerful aesthetic approach allied to a loose politically left position movement in Italy which has influenced film styles there for decades afterwards but it had a profound influences on other national cinemas particularly in Europe. It influenced French New Wave practitioners such as Godard and Truffaut and it also influenced the makers of the British new wave based upon social realism such as Lindsay Anderson and Tony Richardson.

Sitney (1995) has identified Italy as having two intensely productive periods when its cinema earned the respect of the world. He has named these periods as ones of ‘Vital Crises’ after the description of these by Pier Paolo Pasolini. The first period is identified as that of neorealism which is commonly understood as being a movement of the 1940s and is associated primarily with notions of Resistance and solidarity. The second period is associated with reflections upon the Italian ‘Economic Miracle’ which took place in the late 1950s until 1963. Sitney suggests that by 1964 this central vitality was beginning to wane. For Pasolini neorealism was a contradictory phenomenon: It is useless to delude oneself about it: neorealism was not a regeneration; it was only a vital crisis, however excessively optimistic and enthusiastic at the beginning...’ (Pasolini cited Sitney 1995: p 1).

Contemporary films in other coutries 

The Italian contribution to cinema as a whole needs to be set against the best of the American and European films of the time. US films of the time includedspellbound, The Best Years of Our Lives, Lady from Shanghai, Letter From an Unknown Woman. In the rest of Europe Britain made films from Powell and Pressburger such as Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes. But these were based upon a studio inspired professionalism as were films by Bresson and Cocteau The Ladies of Bois du Boulogne and Beauty and the Beast respectively. In France Clement’s Battle of the Railroad bears a direct stylistic comparison as well as one by content but nevertheless the Italian contribution to original cinema:

lies in their stylistic organisation of elements of apparent rawness, their emotional intensity and their focus on current political and social problems. Sitney (1995: p 6)

The Political Background to Postwar Italy

Political background to postwar Italy

Throughout the late 1940s the possibility of revolutionary change from the Communists was perceived of as a constant threat by the incumbents of the Italian government and their backers in the US and GB. The Parri government of late 1945 had seen the Prime Minister also serve as Interior Minister. This was a strong indicator of the primary concerns of the government of the time. Parri was followed by the Christian Democrat leader De Gasperi in December 1945. Initially De Gasperi had a Socialist Interior minister who had suppressed Communist inspired revolts, however De Gasperi took over the job himself in his second government of July 1946 - Jan 1947. In May 1947 De Gasperi was able to form the first Italian postwar government without any participation of the far Left. The post of Interior Minister then went to the Sicilian Mario Scelba through the next 6 cabinets until 1953.

The coalition governments based upon the Christian Democrats as the largest party meant working with a range of right-wing parties including Liberals, Monarchists, and Uomo Qualunque (The Common Man) who were anti-centrist and largely composed of southern ex-Fascists.

Scelba organised a special anti-riot police force armed with sub machine-guns. They were used to good effect during the election campaign of 1948 when left inspired demonstrations were frequently broken up with demonstrators occasionally killed. It was at this time that the Uomo Qualunque movement dissolved itself and the MSI a nationally based neo-Fascist party was formed.

The 1946 elections had seen the socialist and communist parties gain nearly 40% of the vote. For the 1948 election they had decided to pool their resources in a popular front. However the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia in 1948 lost them support as did a split in the Socialist Party itself. Spiritual threats from the Vatican and rather more materially based ones from the United States served to weaken the communist party's electoral base still further.

Sicily was a case study in its own right. The US had incorporated the use of gangster links through the Mafia to facilitate the invasion putting Mafiosa in political power. Ironically this undid the efforts of the Mussolini government to control and eradicate the Mafia. The Mafiosa tended towards separatism. This was overcome by De Gasperi by offering considerable concessions to them in terms of autonomy. When it was clear coming up to elections that the left still had the majority the Mafia supported the De Gasperi government but at a price of ensuring that anti-Mafia activities were minimised.

The Christian democrats maintained power throughout the 1950s. This had largely alienated the intellectual and artistic forces which had been so prominent during Italy’s immediate postwar period. In parallel the Communist Party of Italy (PCI) was also losing the moral standing and respect which they had earned during the Resistance. Elio Vittorini broke with the PCI in 1947 and in 1949 Pier Paolo Pasolini was expelled for his homosexuality. Cultural Stalinism was exercising its grip. Eventually the revelations from Khruschev at the 20th Party Congress in Moscow in 1956 lost it a lot of support. This was followed by the suppression of the uprising in Hungary in 1956. Following that the great writer Italo Calvino left the party in 1957.

The Christian Democrats didn’t benefit from this breakdown in the left. Its habitual use of excessive force to suppress strikes and demonstrations was alienating its own supporters. In 1953 the CD still led by De Gasperi tried to push through what became known as ‘The Swindle Law’. It was designed to allow a simple majority vote at an election to be translated into a two thirds majority at the National Assembly. It was eventually defeated by the slimmest of majorities - a minuscule 0.15%. It was the disturbingly fast growth of the neo-Fascists which helped to defeat this proposal. The CD managed to control Parliament until 1957 without the support of the neo-Fascists. But the price of this was what Ginsborg has described as ‘Immobilism’. This featured on the one hand, steady economic growth as postwar recovery through the Marshall plan came to fruition. On the other hand the ‘Byzantine’ system of public agencies controlled everything from transport and natural resources to culture and sport. This became a fundamental feature of the period. At the same time there was much evidence of scandal and corruption at the highest levels of the CD elites.

The cinema at this time was also a centre of scandal and gossip. In 1950 the pregnancy and subsequent marriage of Ingrid Bergman to Rossellini ‘attracted more attention than any of his films’ suggests Sitney. Cinecitta became an extension of Hollywood with its lower cost labour attracting producers to make extravagant spectaculars like Ben Hur.

The steady economic growth of the mid and early 1950s meant that Italy’s GDP was growing at a rate of 5.5% p.a. From 1959-1963 the years of the ‘economic miracle’ this leapt to a growth rate averaging 6.3 % seeing a doubling of industrial production.

Literary Origins of the Term Neorealism  

The term was coined by Arnaldo Bocelli in 1930 to describe the style which arose in reaction to elegiac introversion of the contemporary Italian letters. By comparison it offered a dramatic representation of a tormented human condition including the conventions of bourgeois life and the emptiness and boredom of existence. Some of Italy’s most illustrious pre and post war writers were associated with this movement including Alberto Moravia, Elio Vitorini, Cesar Pavese, and Vasco Pratolini .

Bondanella draws on the wider cultural milieu particularly in literature to note that there were several major works of neorealist fiction published between 1941-51 including Vittorini’s In Sicily (1945) Carlo Levi’s Christ Stopped at Eboli (1945). The novels had in common the resort to an aesthetic of social reality which drew on myth and symbol and used subjective narrators. This was in sharp contrast to the naturalist style of 19th century literary realism. Pavese paid homage to American fiction and its influence suggesting that the American novelists readjusted:

‘... Language to the new reality of the world in order to create in effect a new language, down-to-earth and symbolic...’ (Pavese, Cesar, cited Bondanella, 2002, p 34.)

What is Neorealism in Cinema?

The moment of ‘neorealism’ is consider by most critics as a very important moment in the development of cinema. Bondanella (2002 p 31) notes that neorealism is a confusing term and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith (2003 pp27-28) notes that to characterise neorealism is very difficult. He argues that critics have settled upon five key characteristics of the films which belonged to the moment of what is described as the neorealist movement.

Nowell-Smith emphasises that few films ‘satisfied all these conditions together’. In summing up the key aspects of neorealism Nowell-Smith locates the resistance movement as the key focus of neo-realism. The conditions are:

• A realist treatment of the story

• A popular setting

• Social content

• Historical actuality

• Political commitment

Henry Bacon (1998) also highlights that an essential aspect of neorealism was its anti-facist stance in which this new aesthetic movement and the new multi-party postwar government of Italy were linked. Bacon (1998 p 26) cites Alberto Lattuada a leading scriptwriter of the time:

The actor's costumes were those of the man on the street. Actresses became women again, for a moment. It was a poor but strong cinema, with many things to say in a hurry and in a loud voice without hypocrisy, in a brief vacation from censorship; and it was an unprejudiced cinema, personal and not industrial, a cinema full of real faith in the language of film, as a means of education and social progress.

Millicent Marcus prefers to go beyond technical considerations and sees neorealism as primarily a moral movement of the moment which finds a genuine consensus amongst the artists of the period.

However, if we go beyond technical considerations to the ethical impetus behind neorealism , we are apt to discover far more of a consensus among artists of the period and to find ample reason for grouping them together as upholders of a certain school , tendency, or style, broadly construed’. Indeed for many critics, neorealism is first and foremost a moral statement , “una nuova poesia morale” whose purpose was to promote a true objectivity - one that would force viewers to abandon the limitations of a strictly personal perspective and to embrace the reality of the ”others” , be they persons or things, with all the ethical responsibility that such a vision entails. (Marcus, Millicent, 1986: p23)

Marcus notes the neorealism has had vast cultural and ideological reverberations which:

may explain the seemingly disproportionate impact of a movement that lasted only seven years, generated only twenty-one films, failed at the box office, and fell short of its didactic and aesthetic aspirations. (Marcus:1986 :p xvi).

The films which can be described as neorealist have frequently been categorised as a ‘film movement’. The critic Andre Bazin has claimed that the development of the use of deep-focus photography in neorealism allowed a greater democracy for the eye by being closer to ‘reality’. Bazin associated an ontology or ‘beingness’ with the combination of the long take and the use of deep focus. Whilst as early as Visconti’s Ossessione this cinematic technique had come into use there is little evidence of a concerted attempt by the directors to do this. The exception is the scriptwriter Zavattini who wrote several statements espousing realism with its associated use of non-professional actors. Bondanella argues that too much has been made of the relationship to Italian social problems minimising the importance of the artifice that directors had added to the films.

Bondanella draws on the wider cultural milieu particularly in literature to note that there were several major works of neorealist fiction published between 1941-51 including Vittorini’s In Sicily (1945) Carlo Levi’s Christ Stopped at Eboli (1945). The novels had in common the resort to an aesthetic of social reality which drew on myth and symbol and used subjective narrators. This was in sharp contrast to the naturalist style of 19th century literary realism. Pavese paid homage to American fiction and its influence suggesting that the American novelists readjusted ‘... Language to the new reality of the world in order to create in effect a new language, down-to-earth and symbolic...’ (Pavese, Cesar cited Bondanella 2002, p 44).

Bondanella argues that neorealism wasn’t strictly a movement although the emphasis has been that the films deal with real problems, with believable characters found in everyday life:

However the great neorealist directors never forgot that the world they projected upon the silver screen was one produced by cinematic conventions rather than an ontological experience, and they were never so naive as to deny that the demands of an artistic medium such as film might be just as pressing as those from the world around Them. (My  emphasis; Bondanella, 2002, p 34).

Here one can note the  dramatic treatment of  the  Nazis  trying to catch an anti-fascist in the block of flats in Roma  citta aperta.  The intercutting between Nazi troops rushing up the stairs and the priest  hiding the anti-fascist  was using film language to heighten the drama. similarly in this film the overly Germanis mise en scene of the Gestapo cell block and the representation of the Gestapo officer as gay with his subordinate a vampish lesbian was the start of an association of Nazism with sexual perversion which Rossellini also explored in Germany Year Zero with a key character an unreconstructed Nazi pedophilic teacher. 

It is useful to note that the number of films which can be defined as neorealist produced 1945-1953 was about 10% of the total number of films produced which equates to about 90 out of the 822 produced overall. The critical and historical discourses have focused upon these as the key films aesthetically of the period however they were not that important in the context of the industrial system as a whole. The films were not great box office hits at the time despite becoming described as masterpieces now. Rossellini’s Rome, Open City achieved first place in the box office 1945-1946, after that even the most popular of the neorealist films slipped down the box office lists as the wartime concerns receded. By 1949 de Sica’s Bicycle Thieves could only achieve 11th place in the annual box-office returns. The films were often praised by critics abroad; this helped to create a small but financially useful internationalo market for these directors.

The Shift Towards Neorealism

The Italian neorealist movement is effectively bracketed by two films made by Visconti, Ossessione made in 1942 loosely based upon James Cain’s novel The Postman Always Ring’s Twice. This film transposed an American popular crime novel into an Italian setting with an aesthetic influenced by French Poetic Realism.  Visconti had worked with Renoir during his great poetic realist period of the interwar years and had gained some of Renoir's political outlook from this period. However, Nowell-Smith (2003 p 13) notes that the stylistic debt to Renoir was confined to this one film.

Visconti follows Renoir in a naturalistic way when he establishes the relationship of the character to the landscape. Where Renoir’s naturalism was influenced by Maupassant and Zola, Visconti’s was influenced by Giovanni Verga the Sicilian writer of the late 19^th century who wrote in a style called Verismo which was a form of naturalism and a part of Italian regional literature. The beginning of the end of the neorealist movement is marked by La Terra Trema (1948).

Nowell-Smith argues that despite the many claims to associate Ossessione with neo-realism it was marked by realism without the 'neo', rather the film can be seen as a precursor of what was to come for it was missing the essential political elements although the style was present. In a similar vein La Terra Trema is marked by going beyond the central aspects of neo-realism. De Sica’s Umberto D (1952) is usually seen as the film which marks the end of this current. Nowell-Smith emphasises that:

The real heart of the neo-realist movement was the resistance film and the often agonisingly direct contact it re-established between the spectator and recent events, and the decline of this movement can be traced to the moment when this genre lost its immediacy and became at best reflective, at worst sentimental’ (Nowell-Smith, 2003: 29).

Visconti had belonged to an artistic resistance movement that had started to emerge in the early 1940s, although he was on the margins. At that time it seemed vital to go beyond the conformist cinema of Mussolini’s period and there was a growing shift towards the verismo aesthetic of Verga. However at this stage Ossessione was made directly under the government of Mussolini during 1942. The film was subject to the censors when it came out in 1943, although later in this year the invasion of Sicily by the Allies had happened and the Allies were beginning to control parts of the Italian mainland by the end of the year. It was the changing political circumstances which both allowed and demanded a different aesthetic and neo-realism is normally regarded as happening between 1943 -1950.

Ossessione is marked off from most of Visconti’s other films by having a lack of historical and political perspectives which also distinguishes it from most of the neo-realist films as well. However, with the script being written by four politically committed film critics and writers including both Visconti and de Santis, all of whom were based in the journal Cinema, it would be unwise to write it off as an entirely apolitical film. Whilst Cain’s novel appears to have provided the inspiration the story-line, the visual coding of the film and the more realist aesthetic can be interpreted as signs of cultural resistance at a time when Italy was still under full control of Mussolini during its making.

Perhaps, it is possible to read Ossessione as an allegory of the way in which Italy had become seduced by fascism. The crash at the end of the film could be seen to be the disaster that Italy was heading for at the time. Look carefully at the way in which Giovanna changes from a light flowery summery frock into a morbid black dress after making love with Gino the tramp for the first time. This is a powerful visual statement after a moment of high passion, that can be read as highly symbolical given the moment of the film’s production and its release. Note too the association of Gino and the husband frequently described as ‘boorish’, yet he is an affable and generous man and bonds with Gino the tramp when he realises that they have served in the same part of the military together, and were even trained by the same drill sergeant. Perhaps this can be seen as harking back to the national solidarity of the Risorgimento, as reworked into Mussolini’s notion of the ‘national popular’ .

Neorealism Proper

For Marcus (1986), Morandini (1997) and Bondanella (2002) the neo-realist movement proper starts with Rossellini’s Roma, citta aperta (Rome Open City, (1945).  Here the city can be seen as a synecdoche (a part that equals the whole) for the whole of the Italian nation. The film examines the consequences of the Nazi occupation of the city after Italy has declared itself as being on the side of the Allies after the arrest of Mussolini.  Of the neorealist core films two more  are by Rossellini Paisa (1946), Germania anno zero (Germany Year Zero,1947). These three are sometimes known as his war trilogy. to these films can be added to three by de Sica: Sciuscia (Shoeshine, 1946), Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves, 1948), Umberto D (1952). Morandini also includes Visconti’s La Terra Trema (The Earth Trembles, 1948), and Bellissima, 1951) as core films of the movement.

De Sica and the early Rossellini films although not strongly politically motivated like the work of De Santis still were attuned to the specifically politically sharpened moment of their making:

In Rossellini’s case his interest in the immediate realistic representation of actions and events attached itself to a situation that was one hundred per cent political, in which political action was immediate to an exceptional degree’ (Nowell-Smith, 2003:27)

Bondanella argues that the conditions of production under which Rossellini worked during the making of Roma citta aperta helped to create many of the myths surrounding neorealism. There was little studio work, the film stock was bought on the black market , often in short strips. The development of the film was done without the use of rushes and the post-synchronisation of the sound were all contributory factors to the myth-making of neorealism.

Roma citta aperta in its style was far more than just naturalistic including a range of styles moods through the use of documentary to the ‘most blatant melodrama’ comments Bondanella:

Beneath the surface of the work, which often seems to possess the texture of a documentary and frequently seems closer to a newsreel than to a fictional narrative there is a profoundly tragicomic vision of life which juxtaposes melodramatic moments or instances of comic relief and dark humour with the most tragic of human experience which reconstructs the reality of a moment in Italian history. (Bondanella, Peter. 2002, 38-39).

By comparison Paisa is closer to the conventions of a newsreel style documentary whilst going beyond the straightforward depiction of events. It is organised around several episodes going through the Allied invasion of Italy. It starts with the landings in Sicily, then moving to episodes in Naples and Rome, the struggle between the partisans and the Fascists for Florence, a visit of American chaplains to a monastery in the Apennines and finishing with the capture of a group of partisans and allied advisers in the Po valley.

The name Paisa was a colloquial form of the word paesano meaning countryman, kinsman, neighbour or even friend. It was typically used as a form of greeting between the American GI’s and the local Italians. For Rossellini the deeper meanings become a route for exploring the Italo-American relationships in which ‘...linguistic barriers ...give way in the face of moral commitment.’ Suggests Bondanella in which the self-sacrifice of an American for his partisan comrades demonstrates a love of fellow man which links with Rossellini’s Christian humanism. Interestingly the episodes set in Florence and on the Po have an anti-British sentiment within them.

Germany Year Zero (1946) is dedicated to Rossellini’s young son who died in that year. It is based on the story of a young boy Edmund in his early teens. Edmund ultimately murders his sick father and eventually commits suicide. The film shows the breakdown in morality announced in a voice-over at the start of the film.

Bondanella argues that comparison of these three seminal works of neorealism by Rossellini  with the work of De Sica shows that:

it becomes abundantly clear that thee was no single or aesthetic programmatic approach to society in their works. (Bondanella, 2002 p 54)

Neorealism can be understood in both cinema and literature as a reaction against the classical and rhetorical stance of the arts of the Fascist period. In La Terra Trema Visconti chose as a model not only Verga but also the realism of the American 1930s. The naturalism and verismo fundamental to Ossessione are absent from La Terra Trema beyond the use of Verga for the initial story. Visconti’s had by then become influenced by Flaherty and Eisenstein. A fuller account of this film is present in a separate posting on this blog. Suffice it to say here the film is frequently understood as the last film made which can be attributed to the neorealist movement and moment. 

The Shift Away from Neorealism

Neorealism, never a film movement based upon a manifesto of strict conventions, began to decisively shift away from its aesthetic roots through films by De Sica and Rossellini which incorporated a realm of fantasy and imagination rather than a naturalistically based ‘reality’. De Sica’s Miracle in Milan (1950) for example sees an escape from poverty symbolised by flying over Milan cathedral on a broomstick.

Other filmmakers like Visconti and Lizzani chose to explore the historical legacy of Italy and as such began to engage with the historical processes which brought about the fascist state through adaptations of literary texts. Visconti’s Senso (1954) is a film which is exploring history through a Gramscian inflected lens going beyond a reportage of events during the Risorgimento (the Italian movement for national liberation and unity of the 19th century) to explore the ideological differences and the outcomes of these in the form of fascism.

Visconti uses the format of operatic melodrama to explore this using the lives of individuals to intersect with what he envisioned as the motor of history. The use of Verdi in the opening scene was used to great effect to connect with the artist who in Italy best exemplifies notions of Italian patriotism and nationalism. Here Bazin’s critique of the film suggested that viewers were forced to engage more with their intellect rather than their emotions. Bondanella suggests that this disjunction was achieved through the creation of a sumptuous and meticulously researched mise en scene which lends ‘...the film a certain sterile splendour...  (Bondanella, Peter. 2002, 98).

The original release of Senso was very controversial, for Visconti had made it with the intention of drawing parallels between the failure of the Risorgimento and the antifascist resistance. The film was released at the Venice film festival whereupon the Ministry of Defence forced an important cut on the original:

...which confused Visconti’s original comparison of the Risorgimento and the Resistance, thus weakening much of the film’s political impact upon its public’. (Bondanella, Peter. 2002, p 99.)

As far as neorealism as a style was concerned the film was a combination of spectacle, melodrama and critical realism and represented a distinct shift away from the idealist version espoused by Zavattini.

Zavattini: Major scriptwriter within the neorealist framework often thought of as a purist as far as neorealism is concerned.

There are some interesting issues concerned with the film in terms of the general development of Italian cinema as an institution. It was the first colour film made by an Italian director, and marked a shift towards a level of dependence upon American financing. An American star Farley Granger was imposed upon Visconti - he had originally wanted Ingrid Bergman and Marlon Brando. Despite these attempts to make an international package the film failed to attract large overseas audiences. This seems largely due to their ignorance of the Risorgimento.

One important underlying issue is revealed by this. Lack of wider historical knowledge especially amongst American audiences vitiates against the success of even more expensively and well made films in the American marketplace. Some level of de-historicisation and a greater focus on the romance and melodrama might well be necessary to impress a genre constructed audience.

Perhaps the most obvious indicator of the shift away from neorealism came with the production of Love in the City (1953) made by Zavattini in conjunction with several other directors each doing an episode. Whilst Zavattini was the defender of the neorealist faith, trying to promote the film as something close to cinematic journalism, the contributions from Antonioni and Fellini pointed towards the move into highly abstract psychological representations of love affairs through the suicides of several women from Antonioni. Fellini’s contribution was based on a story-line about a client who wished a marriage bureau to advertise for wife willing to marry a werewolf.

Rossellini often regarded as the core neorealist, along with the younger Fellini and Antonioni, were moving away rapidly from the neorealist ‘mode of production’ based upon using ordinary people instead of actors. They were shifting to stories with more psychologically complex characters which required professional actors.

George Sander and Ingrid Bergman in Rossellini's post neorealist Voyage to Italy

Rossellini was now having a public affair with Ingrid Bergman and made a range of films that were largely vehicles for her such as Stromboli (1949), Europea ’51 (1952) and Voyage in Italy (1953). The content tended to revolve around aspects of contemporary marriage, emotional alienation and despair. Whilst they were failures at the box office they were lauded by the critics of Cahiers du Cinema. Rossellini commented that

..life has changed, the war is over, the cities have been reconstructed. What we needed was a cinema of Reconstruction. (Rossellini cited Bondanella 2002 p 105)

The Cahiers critics considered Voyage in Italy to be one of the twelve best films of all time up to that date. In the recently re-released BFI version on DVD Laura Mulvey who provides a commentary says it is her favourite film. It tells the story of an English couple who visit Italy needing to dispose of an inherited property. It becomes a play on the stuffiness of the middle class English and the deep rooted passions of Italy which are quite literally in the case of a couple in Pompeii embedded in the soil. Alexander makes a visit to Capri renowned for the sexual exploits of Caligua and Tiberius where he fails to seduce an attractive woman he meets. It was a site later visited by Godard in Le Mepris, - perhaps a homage to Rossellini. Eventually the couple become reconciled meeting up at a religious festival. Bondanella suggests that the way the Anglo-Saxon speaking press treated Rossellini’s affair might have been a reason for this denunciation of English morality. The film itself received little critical attention outside of France.

Fellini had been closely involved with writing several scripts for Rossellini including Rome, Open City and Paisan. He also wrote scripts for Lattuada, Without Pity, and Mill on the Po. Fellini became co-director with Lattuada on Lights of Variety (1950). The film explored the seedy underside of the entertainment world, examining the charlatans and the opportunists. The leading female roles were played by Fellini’s wife Giulietta Masina, and Lattuada’s wife Carla Del Poggio. A complete break with any form of naturalism occurs when Checcho the leading impresario who has been trying to seduce Liliana (Del Poggio), has been had an argument with Liliana in which a reconciliation takes places. Checcho leaves the building in the early hours of the morning and walks up some steps to the sound of applause for in his imagination at least he has achieved his aims of making a successful variety show which will star Liliana and be toured in the biggest cities. It is this which will in his desire at least seal a truly loving relationship with Liliana. The laughter turns into the sound of a passing tram bringing the viewer at least back into reality.

The film is the start of one of Fellini’s major concerns of examining the reality behind performance and entertainment in Lights of Variety, celebrity the media and the growth of ‘infotainment’ in La dolce vita, and in 8 1/2 a reflection on filmmaking itself. A theme that was to be continued in the 1980s in Intervista (1987)

Case Studies

Umberto D, 1952: Directed Vittorio de Sica

A case study of Roma citta aperta will be added to this blog in due course. A link will be provided.

Webliography

For a small reference piece on the importance of specific Cinematographers of Neorealism 

You may also find it useful to access the Italian directors hub on this site  

Bibliography

All the references can be found in the Bibliograpy of Italian Cinema on this blog.  

Suggested Core Reading for Neorealism

General approaches

Bondanella, Peter. 2002 3rd Edition. Italian Cinema from Neorealism to the Present . Continuum. Probably your first port of call. Chapters 2 & 3 are useful reviews of the period.

Marcus, Millicent. 1986. Italian Film in the Light of Neorealism. Princeton University Press. Not only does this deal with neorealist films directly with very good chapters on Rome Open City, Bicycle Thief and Umberto D the rest of the book traces the powerful influence upon Italian cinema into the 1980s. There is also a useful discussion about realism as a set of ever changing artistic conventions. It is a very good in depth book.

Musico, Giuliana. 2004. Paisa / Paisan. In Bertellini, The Cinema of Italy . 2004. Wallflower Press is a useful article on Rossellini’s film.

Pierre Sorlin’s Italian National Cinema pp 83 - 114 places neorealism in the context of popular cinema as a whole.

Landy, Marcia. 2000. Italian Film. CUP has an interesting chapter which follows the theme of Landscape and Neorealism, Before and After. This is an engagement with a cinematic geography and is best left until you have more familiarity with the field.

Shiel, Mark 2006: Italian Neorealism: Rebuilding the Cinematic City.  Wallflower Press Short Cuts Series Paperback

Sitney, P. Adams. 1995. Vital Crises in Italian Cinema. University of Texas Press. This provides useful chapters on Visconti, Rossellini de Sica and Zavattini.

Director Studies

Critical reviews of specific directors and their neorealist films include:

Bacon, Henry. 1998. Visconti: Explorations of Beauty and Decay. Cambridge University Press. This has sections on Ossessione, La Terra Trema. Bellissima.

Core films to view:

Roma, citta aperta : Rossellini

Paisa: Rossellini

Germany Year Zero: Rossellini

Bicycle Thieves: De Sica

Sciuscia (Shoeshine): De Sica

Miracolo a Milano: De Sica

Umberto D : De Sica

La Terra Trema: Visconti

Neorealist precursors

Ossessione : Visconti

I bambini ci guardano: De Sica

: 20 May 2007 03:33 |  Tags: Bicycle Thieves De Sica European Cinema History Of European Cinema Italian Cinema Italian Films Kinoeye La Terra Trema Neorealism Ossessione Roma Citta Aperta Rome Open City Rossellini Visconti Zavattini |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem