Italian Neorealism

Directors leave the studio for the ruined streets of postwar Italy and film real people, real light, and the day as it is.

When: 1943–1952
Where: Italy
Films: 6 · 3 guided
Named by: 56 guides

Where it sits

Poetic RealismItalian NeorealismFrench New Wave · Free Cinema and the British New Wave

Context

What was happening

Italy at the end of the Second World War: fascism fallen, cities bombed, the country occupied and then liberated. Under the regime, the film industry had favoured escapist comedies and polished studio dramas. After the war there was little money, little film stock and a great deal to look at. The ruins cost nothing to film.

The method had a precedent. Visconti had assisted Jean Renoir, whose Toni, shot in 1935 on location with non-actors, is the bridge to Visconti's own Ossessione. What the war added was necessity and urgency. Cesare Zavattini turned the habit into a programme: point the camera at ordinary people and invent no more than you must.

The signature

What you see on screen

1The real streetBombed streets, working-class flats and fishing villages, filmed where they stand.
2Ordinary facesNon-professional actors and local dialects; faces that belong to the place.
3Small storiesA lost bicycle, a pension, a debt: ordinary needs carry the whole plot.
4A plain lookAvailable light, simple framing, a camera that observes rather than decorates.

The people

Who made it

RRRoberto RosselliniFounder of the movement's look. Rome, Open City and Paisan.
VDVittorio De SicaDirector of its most humane films. Bicycle Thieves, Umberto D.
LVLuchino ViscontiRenoir's former assistant, first to take the camera outdoors. Ossessione, La Terra Trema.
CZCesare ZavattiniScreenwriter and theorist. Wrote Bicycle Thieves and Umberto D. with De Sica.

The films

Defining films, in order

Its constellation

Where it came from, what it led to

Came from

Poetic Realism

Led to

French New Wave Free Cinema and the British New WavePolish Film SchoolCinema NovoThird CinemaIranian New WaveCommedia all'italianaItalian political cinema of the 1970sDogme 95Romanian New Wave

Parallel

Japanese post-war golden age

Open the galaxy of movements

Legacy

Where you still see it

Wherever a film goes out with little money, non-actors and a real street, this movement is nearby. French critics took its lessons into the New Wave; British kitchen-sink drama, Brazil's Cinema Novo, Kiarostami's Iran and the Romanian New Wave all learned from it, and Dogme 95 restated Zavattini's programme. At home it turned into bitter comedy, and later into political cinema that questioned the state.

Ask the Cine Guide about Italian Neorealism