Realist Film Movements Neorealismo 2 Films of Vittoria

Realist Film Movements Neorealismo (2) Films of Vittoria De Sica

Table of Contents 1) Neorealismo as personal film 2) Films of Vittorio De Sica 3) Ladri di biciclette 4) Cesare Zavattini

Neorealismo as Personal Film • Traditional films - studio bound; genre bound; star bound: the studio, genre and star dictate the way a film is made. • Films made according to the studio’s production interest and plan; to genre requirements; and to the demand of stars. • Personal films reflect film makers’ personal concerns. Neorealists’ PERSONAL CONCERNS and INTERESTS are …

Neorealismo as Personal Film • Ordinary lives in the post-war era; • Social issues - unemployment, immigration, poverty, social and moral decay, political corruption • Lives of ordinary people in ordinary situation

Neorealismo as Personal Film • Influence of French Poetic Realism • Films in the 1930 s by Julian Duvivier, Jean Renoir, Marcel Carné, Jean Vigo, Jacques Feyder and others • Ordinary people living in ordinary situation involves in tragic affairs. • Ordinary lives of ordinary people are portrayed in lyrical images and the impossibility of happiness demonstrated in tragic endings.

Neorealismo as Personal Film • What is realism in literature? ‘… more extensive and socially inferior human groups to the position of subject matter [in literature]. ’ (Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, p. 491)

Neorealismo as Personal Film • Jean Renoir, La Bête humaine (1938) • Based on Emile Zola’s naturalist novel, it is a story about an engineer who murders his wife’s godfather.

Neorealismo as Personal Film • Jean Renoir, Toni (1935) • Based on a police dossier, it is about a crime of passion. An Italian immigrant worker in a Provencal quarry is entangled in complicated love affairs and jealousy.

Neorealismo as Personal Film • Marcel Carné, Le Jour se leve (1939) • A foundry worker is forced to murder a man who betrays and tricks him.

Neorealismo as Personal Film • A captain of a canal verge is estranged from his wife but they reunite after a sad separation in Jean Vigo’s L’Atalante

Neorealismo as Personal Film • Subject matters – ordinary people who are in ordinary situation but fail to gain ordinary happiness. • Stories of ordinary people in authentic settings • No idealization, no flattery, not larger-thanlife portraying

Films of Vittorio De Sica • Vittorio de Sica (19021974) • A matinée idol turned into a film director. • The collaboration with Cezare Zavattini lead to the three great neorealist films

Films of Vittorio De Sica • Sciusciá (Shoeshine, 1946) - two shoeshine boys save money by delivering black-market goods to buy a horse. They are caught and sent to overcrowded boys prison. One boy betrays the other and after their release the latter kills the former by mistake.

Films of Vittorio De Sica • Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves, 1948) - a man in Rome found a job after two years’ waiting on the condition that he has his own bike. It is stolen on the very first day in his job. He searches all over Rome with his son. In desperation he himself turns to a bicycle thief.

Bicycle Thieves Elements which made Bicycle Thieves a ‘realist’ film in its day ① subject matters ② narrative strays ③ the use of non-actors and location shooting ④ no facile solution to the problem illustrated ⑤ other aforementioned techniques (casual composition, no fancy mise-en-scène or montage, grainy photography, documentary style

Bicycle Thieves • Subject matters: Unemployment, poverty, petite crime, disintegration of the society in the post-war Italy

Bicycle Thieves • Narrative strays • Bruno tries to pee during the hot chase of the thief who may have stolen his father’s bike.

Bicycle Thieves • Lamberto Maggiorani was a factory worker found by De Sica.

Bicycle Thieves • Bicycle Thieves was shot entirely on location in various places in Rome – Piazza Vittoria, Porta Portese market, and the River Tiber.

Bicycle Thieves • No facile solution made though it looks as if father might restore his son’s trust in him. Father will remain unemployed and the family will face more difficulties. Typical open ending.

Films of Vittorio De Sica • Umberto D (1952) - a retired civil servant, pensioner, finds difficult to make end meet in ridiculous inflation. He is kicked out of his apartment and has to abandon his dog, his only possession and companion.

Umberto D Elements which made Umberto D a ‘realist’ film in its day ① subject matters ② narrative strays ③ the use of non-actors and location shooting ④ no facile solution to the problem illustrated ⑤ other aforementioned techniques (casual composition, no fancy mise-en-scène or montage, grainy photography, documentary style

Umberto D • Subject matters: hyper-inflation after WWII, poverty, disintegration of the community, aging, animal welfare

Umberto D • Narrative strays: a moment of solace. Maria, a maidservant of the lodgings is the only person who understands and care for Umberto.

Umberto D • Umberto was played by Carlo Battisti, the linguistics professor (dialects) at University of Florence, had no acting experience before and after the film.

Umberto D • Umberto D was shot entirely in Rome. The begging sequence was shot at Piazza Rotondo in historic centre of the city.

Umberto D • No facile solution. Umberto failed to kill himself and his dog and more problems are expected to torment them. Another typical open ending.

Ceare Zavattini • Screenwriter, director, painter, writer and theorist • Collaborated with Vittorio De Sica in Sciusciá, Ladri di biciclette and Umberto D • Teacher at Centro Sperimentale di Cinema • Critic at Bianco e nero PURIST

Ceare Zavattini • ‘A well-know American producer told me, “This is how we would imagine a scene with an airplane. The plane passes by … a machine gun fires … the plane is crashed. And this is how you would imagine it. The plane passes by … the plane passes by once more. ”’ • Cezare Zavattini, ‘Some Ideas on Cinema’

Cesare Zavattini • ‘The dream of Zavattini is just to make a ninety-minute film of the life of a man to whom nothing ever happens. ’ (Andre Bazin on Cesare Zavattini) • The duration of actual time is equal to that of film’s narrative time. • ‘Little-man' principle’ – ‘a hole in the wall of a family house in order to peep inside. ’