"The end of the Second World War saw the emergence in Italy of the neorealism movement, which produced a number of films characterized by stories set among the poor and working class, often shot on location using non-professional actors. In this study Christopher Wagstaff provides an in-depth analysis of neorealist film, focusing on three films that have had a major impact on filmmakers and audiences around the world: Roberto Rossellini's Roma città aperta and Paisà and Vittorio De Sica's Ladri di biciclette. Indeed, these films are still, more than half a century after they were made, among the most highly regarded works in the history of cinema. In this insightful and carefully researched work, Wagstaff suggests that the importance of these films is largely due to the aesthetic and rhetorical qualities of their assembled sounds and images rather than, as commonly thought, their particular representations of historical reality.The author begins by situating neorealist cinema in its historical, industrial, commercial, and cultural context. He goes on to provide a theoretical discussion of realism and the merits of neorealist films, individually and collectively, as aesthetic artefacts. He follows with a detailed analysis of the three films, focusing on technical and production aspects as well as on the significance of the films as cinematic works of art.While providing a wealth of information and analysis previously unavailable to an English-speaking audience, Italian Neorealist Cinema offers a radically new perspective on neorealist cinema and the Italian art cinema that followed it."
This volume addresses the influence of Italian neorealist films on world cinema well beyond the post-World War II period associated with the movement.
Italian Neorealism: Rebuilding the Cinematic City is a valuable introduction to one of the most influential of film movements.
The book addresses the casting, performance, and labour of non-professional actors, particularly children, their cultural and economic value to cinema, and how their use brought ideas of the ordinary into the discourse of stars as ...
The author does close readings of seventeen films that tell the story of neorealism's evolving influence on Italian postwar cinematic expression.
SPECTACULAR. SUFFERING. De Sica's Bodies and Charity's Gaze VITToRIo DE SICA DESCRIBED his film Bicycle Thieves as “dedicated to the suffering of the humble.”1 He said that his Shoeshine arose from the desire to bring attention to “the ...
A new collection of posthumous writings by André Baz
The traditional story notwithstanding, the meaning and the origins of the term are problematic. What does neorealism really mean, and how Italian is it? Italian filmmakers were wary of using the term and Rossellini preferred "realism.
In this boldly revisionist book, Vincent F. Rocchio combines Lacanian psychoanalysis with narratology and Marxist critical theory to examine the previously neglected relationship between Neorealist films and the historical spectators they ...
Rohdie, Sam (2001), Promised Lands: Cinema, Geography, Modernism, London: British Film Institute. Rondi, Brunello (1956), Il neorealismo italiano, Parma: Guanda. — (1957), Cinema e realtà, Rome: Edizioni Cinque Lune.
cineasta definisce la “tragica recita” del pranzo finale per il compleanno della ricca padrona (con annesso primo piano di un ... per l'umanità un'epoca nuova, che la pace sarebbe durata per sempre, ma ecco, quel sogno è stato tradito.