Italian neorealism made a significant impact on Italian cinema as a whole (The Tree with the Wooden Clogs by Ermano Olmi, 1978), and on many other international cinematic traditions as well, starting with that of Iran and ending with Croatia.



Many things had to coincide after WW II for the poetics of the neorealist movement to form in a spontaneous way. As a result, some of the most famous Italian authors made many great films. Firstly, the pre-war Italian cultural public was fed up with domestic pseudo-historical and Biblical spectacles and disgusted by the so-called white telephone films (superficial salon melodramas and comedies). Secondly, as well-acquainted experts claim, besides the shallow and ideological exploitative products that prevailed at the time, neorealism came into being by way of many different poetic tendencies and author opuses such as verismo in literature, Italian verismo film school from the 1910s, Soviet films from the 1920s and 1930s, French poetic realism, Italian war films with pseudo-documentary tendencies, Chaplin’s silent films…

Nevertheless, the crucial moment that defined the new form of realistic portrayal of post-war (demolished, demoralized, hungry) Italy was the emergent need of Italian filmmakers to bear witness to the moral and social misery that overwhelmed the country. They did this either directly in documentaries or indirectly in feature films, even though the conditions for making films were close to nonexistent; even Mussolini’s film studio Cinecitta was demolished!

The first important film of the neorealist movement Rome, Open City (1945) by Roberto Rosselini, which contains all the most important postulates of the new poetics, was supposed to, according to the original idea, be a documentary that would reconstruct the true story of the brave priest Don Luigi Morosini. However, the documentary material spontaneously grew into an improvised and shallowly developed narrative story that anticipated some of the basic rhetoric elements of the new poetics: to make films as an embodiment of life with the focus on utter realism of scenes under the circumstances of the so-called realistic found story, as well as found (mostly demolished) interiors and exteriors. In the film, which was, owing to circumstances, recorded on various film materials, most characters were played by unprofessional actors and long continuous shots, characteristic of documentaries, prevailed.

Mostly dealing with the ranks of marginal society, neorealist films, besides the aforementioned, preferred spontaneity, reduced narration (with an emphasis on slower story development and attempts to portray action in a realistic timeframe), fragmentation and focused criticism; they tended to use the so-called global metaphor that would raise the entire film to the level of symbolism. The outcome is to reveal some abnormal social process and society as a whole.

Besides the aforementioned Rosselini (and the ideologist of the movement Cesarea Zavattini), the leading directors of the neorealist movement were Vittorio de Sica (The Bicycle Thieves, 1948; Umberto D, 1951) and Luchino Visconti (The Earth Trembles, 1948). Others include Giuseppe De Santis, Pietro Germi, and in their early phases Michelangelo Antonioni and Federico Fellini. After 1950, when the potential of this novelty had already been exhausted, there appeared a variation of the original movement, neorealism of the soul, which shifted the focus from social issues to psychological ones.

Italian neorealism had a significant impact on Italian cinema as a whole (The Tree with the Wooden Clogs by Ermano Olmi, 1978), as well as many other international cinematic traditions, starting that of Iran and ending with Croatia. (Petar Krelja)