The cinema of Italian Neorealism
breaks away from the pure ‘entertainment’ and ‘escapist’ films which were shown
to the public under the control of the fascist regime until then in order to
distract the people from what was going on towards the end of/after the war,
and to keep things in strict order. The true picture was presented – Italy
in a state of chaos, sadness and solitude – with traditional values no longer
meaning anything, much to the shock of the nation. Neorealism turned to social issues
and the pursuit of subjects and themes reflecting the life of ordinary Italian
people.
‘Ossessione’
(1943) by Luchino Visconti was made at a time when Italy
was still at war, and the fascist regime was losing popularity. Filmed away
from Rome and immediate government
control, it was the first realist film, presenting how “poverty, over-crowding,
and sordid living-conditions affect the humanity[1]”
of the people. Until then the principle of films in the 1930s and 40s had been
entertainment in forms of musicals, comedies and melodramas etc, ‘white-telephone
films’ with no propaganda contexts. They were films under the control of the
fascist authoritarian regime used to distract and brain-wash the people.
Therefore the film was a controversy, “it was like a bomb exploding in the
cinema. Filmmakers “felt compelled to undertake a civic project of historical
and socio-cultural revelation after years of fascist propaganda and deceptive distractions.[2]” People
saw a film which they had not thought possible[3]”,
with huge uproar and criticism from the fascists (Mussolini's
son Vittorio received the film as a deliberate act of provocation, and stormed
out of the cinema shouting “This is not Italy!”[4]) who, being obsessed with control and order, believed
the film promoted an unstructured society. The ‘tramp’ was an American idea,
one which the fascists would have objected to, as the country was supposed to
be constantly improving, with nobody unemployed, no crime, - nothing ‘wrong’
going on. However what we see is far from the ‘perfect’ society, as young men
are wandering the streets on a morning/afternoon of a weekday in the town
square – why aren’t they working? The gossipy atmosphere and crowd gathering
the moment Gino slaps Giovanna and dismissing as soon as it’s over shows that
these people are bored and have nothing better to do. A picture of lust and
greed of the working-class people has been presented, with Gino and Giovanna
having sex within minutes of meeting, and going on to murder Giovanna’s husband
Bregana for freedom, who is a fascist, evident from when he says to Gino, “we
comrades (camarata – a fascist term)”, though this is not in the subtitled
text. This symbol of ‘killing off the fascist’, who is obese and a joke-like
character, along with the general atmosphere of rebellion in the film, infuriated
the fascists. Visconti himself was a leftist, and he seems to introduce the
left-wing character of the Spaniard (he is not in The Postman Always Rings Twice
by James M. Cain, which Ossessione was based on)
to disguise his messages. He offers Gino a helping hand inside the train, and
continuously tries to persuade him to live ‘freely’ like himself. Also, Anita
is obviously a prostitute, which is something that would have not been talked
about – a taboo issue considering the fascist censorship. Ossessione
focused on revealing the details of human behaviour, and to contribute to the achieving
the ‘real’ effect, non-professional actors have been used – this is used in
many neorealist films. Visconti stated that “unless the cinema is nourished by
a profoundly human idea, it is empty.[5]” Also to make
the film seem real in time, there is no hurrying up or concentrated seconds –
what happens is present as it is. The neorealist films that followed Ossessione
in the post-war years were answers to Vittorini’s question, “Shall we ever have
a culture capable of protecting people against suffering instead of just
comforting them?”
The broken down society of Italy can be seen clearly in Vittorio De Sica’s Sciuscia
(1946) through the portrayal of the distorted lives of boys who lived on the
streets shining shoes for a living after the liberation, and became corrupt by
being drawn into the black market. There is a picture of displacement (especially
of youth) as nothing seems to be functioning normally - the children are homeless
and are involved in crime (a large amount of the film is set in a juvenile
prison). Other boys have committed crimes from armed robbery and even
shooting their father - realistically, boys on the streets were likely to
become involved in crime. The institutions of
authority are corrupt, although, the question of whether it is the institutions
themselves or the people in it that are corrupt can be raised. For example
inside the juvenile prison, the prison warden trades cigarettes for matches
with one of the inmates, and by the swiftness of the action we are meant to
assume that this is something that happens all the time. In the court room,
Pasqual’s lawyer is appointed by the court, simply performing his duty with no
interest or will. His character is completely ridiculous, taking forever to put
his coat on, get up, and say not very much at all – to a comical extent. The
message appears to be that if one has money, they are bound to get a better outcome.
Justice is unfair and unbalanced. The figures of authority usually tend to be
old men, suggesting a need for reform. There is no sign of education at all in
the film; there is one brief scene where children recite mathematics, but it is
memorable that one of the children says aloud the wrong answer. Giuseppe is
obviously at an age where he should be in school, yet he is not. The woman who
comes to visit the boy Napoli in his mother’s place appears to be a prostitute
as she appears flirtatious and gives the guard the ‘eye’ – this is another
element of corruption. There is, however, no fundamental ‘brutality’, as for
example in the prison, when Pasquale is threatened to tell them what he knew
thinking that Giuseppe was being whipped, in fact he wasn’t actually being
whipped – the threatening more manipulative than violent or brutal. However the
director of the prison (is he a fascist?) appears only to be interested in
punishment and not welfare, as he ignores the childrens’ complaints about bed
bugs and the inedible soup. The film, made in a time of hope that institutions
will reform, was a response to the human needs at the time. De Sica aimed for
the audience to sympathise with the two boys, and in order to make this easy,
he picked the two actors out from big castings rather than using the two actual
shoeshine boys he and Zavattani (who had collaborated on the screenplay) had
met on the streets which inspired them to make the film, as they were not
‘good-looking’ enough. The film became a hallmark of neorealist social enquiry,
becoming a ‘method’ of attempting to address a social problem. This was
shocking and controversial as people had not been used to this method at all
due to fascism. Sciuscia won a special Oscar in 1947 (the first foreign
film to win an Oscar) the ‘Honorary Award’ with the description: “the high quality of this Italian-made motion picture,
brought to eloquent life in a country scarred by war, is proof to the world
that the creative spirit can triumph over adversity.[6]” There was capacity for new invention in these
neorealist films. Critics of neorealist films have said that neorealist cinema
does not have a solution, but that is not the case, neorealist cinema is “a
complex and vast world, rich in scope and possibilities, rich in practical,
social, economic and psychological motifs.[7]” It is necessary for neorealist cinema to study the
miserable life situations at the time as well as the luxurious, as it was
vividly real. The experience of the film does not stop at the ending credits,
but “continues onto the audience walking out of the cinema, to think about it.[8]” There is no ‘hero’ in neorealist cinema; each
member of the audience is the “true protagonist in life.” The result “would be
a constant emphasis on the responsibility and dignity of every human being.”
The aim of neorealism was “to strengthen everyone, and to give everyone the
proper awareness of a human being.[9]”
Similarly to other neorealist films such as Ladri di biciclette (1948),
also by De Sica, a single event or aim is given extreme detail, reflecting the
way the Italian people at the time felt and lived.
Umberto
D (1952) by Vittorio De Sica tells the story of a pensioner desperately
trying to exist with the little money that he has, stressing the humiliations
he suffers and his self-pity for the sympathy of the audience. A key theme of
this film is that of the loneliness and disillusionment of post-war Italy .
Firstly, Carlo Battisti, who plays Umberto,
despite having never acted before, brings so much emotion into the character –
his facial expressions themselves explain to us the weariness of his life. Umberto’s
desperations to find Flike at the dog pound, “If anything’s happened to him,
I’ll kill her(landlady!)” and excitement to hear that he is downstairs in the
courtyard when Mary comes to visit him at the hospital as he repeatedly chants
“in the courtyard, in the courtyard”, present to us his loneliness and how his
dog is all that he has. The dog could possibly be representing the innocent of
Umberto; while he himself is too proud and embarrassed to hold out his hat to
beg for money, Flike has no problem holding the hat in his mouth and standing
on his heels (though he is made to do it by Umberto). As Umberto’s room lies in
pieces after his return from the dog pound, the furniture upside down and the
wallpaper peeling off, Flike innocently sits on the bed in the centre of the
frame, confused and having no knowledge of what is going on. At the end of the
film when Umberto tries to drag Flike into his suicide attempt, Flike
desperately refuses, whimpering and forcing his way out of his hands,
representing Umberto’s actual will to live, with the force of society and money
on his back telling him he must. Money is what he needs in order to stay in his
room, and money is what he needs in order for Flike to be kept safe at the dog board
house; after deciding not to keep him there after all (as money cannot buy
love) the man says to him, “more money, less talk…you wasted my time.” He is not
even able to give his dog to the little girl who is overjoyed at the thought,
and will blatantly provide the dog with all the love and care in the world –
because of the mother (adult)’s refusal to take responsibility and go through
the practical and financial troubles of doing so. To emphasise this innocent of
childhood, the final cut of the film is that of children running across the
park laughing and playing, as Umberto and Flike, run off into the distance,
lost with no answers left. As Umberto says to Maria, “I’m tired…(of) a little
of everything”, there is not music in the background, but only the sound of
their voices and the clock ticking in the background (could life for these
people simply be minutes of pain passing by until death?) we feel his
desperation. He is aware that he is a social outsider as he says to her – the
only human being he can confide in and ‘talk’ to, “you need to leave too…” She
responds that she will be kicked out and rejected when found out that she is
pregnant, even by her family. The burden Umberto carries is represented by the
shadow of himself that ‘follows’ him down the staircase as he leaves the house
for his journey to his (attempted) suicide. Umberto D is full of small
gestures needless of dialogue which emphasises the desperate loneliness of
Umberto’s situation – for example, the previously mentioned scene where Umberto
cannot bring himself to hold his hand out to beg for money, and, when a
passer-by actually stops to give him some money, pretends he was merely testing
for rain by flipping it over – is simply beautiful and also very sad. The
brutal killing of the dogs and the dog pound, reminiscent of the gas chambers
of the Holocaust, presents the lack of value for life. The lack of value of
life has also been presented in the scene at the hospital where the sons of
Umberto’s fellow patient, who is dying, comes to visit, and though being told
of his closeness to death, immediately starts talking about financial issues as
soon as the nurse walks away.
The ‘realness’ key to the neorealist
genre has also been present clearly here. There are several scenes in the film which do
not drive the narrative forward but are simply of the characters fulfilling
daily tasks, which are given extreme description and are presented to us in
‘real’ time. For example, the scene where Maria is walking around the kitchen
in the morning, boiling the water as a daily routine, is so memorable because
of its ‘realness’. The grave, slow and haunting cello music in the background
with clear diagetic sounds of the water drops give us a taste of the sense of
‘doom’ that the characters are faced with. The dullness of the daily routines
and the slowness of passing time are presented. A tear rolls down her cheeks,
bringing the emotion to a climax, and as she hurriedly wipes it away when the
doorbell rings, it is suggested that this is what everybody – all the
individuals of the disillusioned post-war Italy is secretly going through. The
continuously appearing ants on the walls are another element of a ‘real-life’ nuisance,
making the film so ‘real’.
Paisa (1946) by Roberto Rossellini, is a film
made up of six autonomous episodes which followed the path of the war from the
south to the north, illustrating the state of Italy between 1943 and 1945 during the process of the
Liberation. It attempts to “reveal social truth in humanist stories of
individual misery and social injustice[10]”, using location shooting and non-professional actors
once again. The physical affects of the war have been presented as throughout
the film there are numerous images of houses and monuments bombed and in ruins.
The film is “a dramatic presentation of a grim reality, unveiled in the
most candid and up-front manner[11].”
The suffering of the people is what brings them all together, and it is
suggested that this connection will erase all social and political differences,
as can be seen in the continuous issue throughout all six episodes – that of
the struggle to understand one another because of the issue of language
barriers. Misunderstanding, however, tragically leads to the death of the
American soldier Joe in the first episode set in Sicily ,
and the tragedy continues as Carmela hides his body without the knowledge that
she will be raped by the German soldiers. Religious doubt has also been
presented in the sequence of the monastery, in which religion itself seems to
be an irony, and the Americans seem almost more innocent and sincere than the
Italians. From the ruins and the corruption though, “came the hope of
redemption, as if all this suffering would amend Italians from fascism and from
the historical guilt associated with it[12]”,
as they discovered that they shared and were fighting (and dying) for the same
human values. Indeed, outside the films and inside the cinemas, the people
would see their own stories being presented on the screen, and “their
contribution to the reconstruction of the country from a moral, cultural as
well as a material point of view.[13]”
To conclude, post-war
Italy has been
portrayed as corrupt, distorted and in ruins through neorealist cinema. Contrary
to the ‘distracting’ comedies and melodrama films prior to the introduction of
neorealism, a very true image has been presented, which was shocking and no
doubt ‘grim’, but the realness of these films created a connection between each
individual as they witnessed themselves on screen, and would have built unison
throughout the nation. The everyday problems of the ordinary people have been
presented with an element of beauty – often, spectacles were created from very
ordinary situations (particularly with De Sica films) - the task of the
neorealist artist was to bring the audience to “reflect upon what they are
doing and upon what others are doing – to think about reality precisely as it
is.[14]”
Bibliography
New Cinema in Europe ,
Roger Manvell
http://www.movie-vault.com/reviews/ossessione/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038913/awards
Thesis on Neo-realism by Cesare
Zavattini. Springtime in Italy
Filmography
Ossessione (1943)
Luchino Visconti
Sciuscia (1946) Vittorio
De Sica
Paisa (1946) Roberto
Rossellini
Umberto D (1952)
Vittorio De Sica
[1] New Cinema in Europe ,
pg 18
[2] The Cinema of Italy. Pg 1
[3] as above
[4] http://www.movie-vault.com/reviews/ossessione/
[5] New Cinema in Europe ,
pg 18
[6] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038913/awards
[7] Thesis on Neo-realism by
Cesare Zavattini. Springtime in Italy
[8] as above
[9] as above, page 67
[10] The Cinema of Italy, pg 4
[11] as above, chapter 3, pg
31
[12] The Cinema of Italy,
chapter 3
[13] as above
[14] as above
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