Italian neo - realism is a current in post-war Italian cinema , developed under the influence of the poetic realism of Marcel Carnay and Jean Renoir and reached its greatest scope from 1945 to 1955. The main representatives of the movement - Roberto Rossellini , Luchino Visconti , Vittorio de Sica , Giuseppe de Santis - grouped around the film magazine “Cinema”, whose editor-in-chief was Vittorio Mussolini (the son of Duce).
Content
Canon
Although the basic principles of neo-realism (field shooting, natural lighting, unvarnished life demonstration of the lower classes), Visconti and de Santis felt in the prototype “ Obsession ” (1943), the first indisputable neorealist film to consider “ Rome is an open city ” ( 1945 ) of Roberto Rossellini. Four years later, after the release of Vittorio de Sica's The Bicycle Thieves , the whole world spoke about Italian neo-realism.
Among the cinematographic works, denoted by the word "neorealism", usually include a specific, well-defined group of films; in particular:
- “ Rome is an open city ” ( Roberto Rossellini , 1945);
- “ Bicycle thieves ” ( Vittorio de Sica , 1948);
- "The earth trembles " ( Luchino Visconti , 1948);
- “ At the walls of Malapagi ” ( Rene Clement , 1949);
- “ There is no peace under the olives ” ( Giuseppe de Santis , 1950);
- “The Miracle of Milan” ( Vittorio De Sica , 1952);
- " Rome at 11 o'clock " ( Giuseppe de Santis , 1952)
Feature
Yu. M. Lotman noted that Italian neorealism was directed against "theatrical pomposity" ( westerns , filmmaker and historical epics) and strove "towards the complete identification of art and extra-artistic reality." The means of implementation were the following "failures" [1] :
- from the stereotypical movie character (reliance on the "little man")
- from the "stars" (reliance on non-professionals)
- from the “iron script” (in the course dialogues were created and changed)
- from music
- from mounting
Siegfried Krakauer noted the “streetness” of action in the pictures of this direction when “situations of public life prevail over private affairs, episodes involving the masses over personal conflicts”. According to him, “When history is being created on the streets, the streets themselves are being asked for on the screen,” Nicola Chiaromonte, who traced the origins of post-war Italian neorealism, cited observation: “Then the life of filmmakers proceeded, like everyone else, on the streets and on the roads. They saw what they saw. For a fake of what they saw, they had neither film sets, nor powerful enough equipment, and there was not enough money. Therefore, they had to shoot full-scale scenes right on the streets and turn ordinary people into movie stars ” [2] .
Ideology
The cinematic style, called “neo-realism,” is associated with leftist (but not extremist) political sentiment. Many of the creators of these films were emotionally close to the left side of the political spectrum, including the Italian Communist Party (which, for its part, was on the eve of the emergence of new trends that received two decades later the name " Eurocommunism " and " communism with a human face "). According to some historians, it was neorealism that had a softening effect on the Italian communist ideologues and contributed to the weakening of their rigid Marxist dogmatism and ideological mores. .
Sunset
By the mid-1950s, the popularity of neo-realism began to fade: post-war poverty and disorder were fading, the well-being of the Italian population grew steadily, and the communists began to lose elections. The more sophisticated modernist directors Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni came to the fore in Italian cinema. Besides them, the career of outstanding actresses Anna Magnani and Sylvanas Mangano began with neorealism. Many of the principles of neo-realism were claimed by the movements that had come to replace him, such as the French New Wave , the new German cinema , the Iranian cinema of the end of the 20th century, and Dogma 95 .
Italian Neorealism and the USSR
According to Evgeny Yevtushenko , all the Russian Sixties did not grow on Marxism , but on Italian neo-realism: “there is no small suffering, no little people — this is what Italian neo-realism taught us again” [3] .
In the USSR of the 50s of the 20th century, neorealist films had unprecedented success. Their appearance on the screen was an indisputable sign of the weakening of the rigid ideological framework of the Soviet censorship, and the films themselves were in sharp contrast with the extremely politicized and didactic Soviet cinema of the 1930-1950s and its tough ideological and aesthetic canons. Hollywood's traditional prudent canons were also rejected by neorealist filmmakers. Some Soviet films of the late 1950s and early 1960s are marked by the influence of neorealistic aesthetics.
Criticism
Lotman noted that with all democracy, Italian neo-realism was becoming “too intellectual,” which means boring for an unprepared viewer [1] .
Notes
- ↑ 1 2 Semiotics of cinema and problems of film aesthetics
- ↑ Krakauer, Siegfried. The nature of the film: Rehabilitation of physical reality / Abridged translation from English by D. F. Sokolova. - M .: Art, 1974. - P. 141-142.
- ↑ Yevgeny Yevtushenko . Letter to Vittorio Strada // Vittorio. - M .: Three squares, 2005. - p. 16.
Literature
- Cinema of Italy: Neorealism: Trans. with ital. / Compiled by G. D. Bohemian. - M .: Art , 1989. - 431 p.
- Bazin, Andre . Book IV The Aesthetics of Reality: Neorealism // What is cinema? [: Sat. articles]. - M .: Art, 1972. - 382 p.
- Solovyov and . Cinema of Italy: 1945-1960. - M .: Art, 1961.
Links
- E. Bregovich Neorealism - Open Art - “Cultural Barricades”, No. 1, p. 6-7
- I and Rossellini - Russian directors about neorealism