Italian neorealism also known as the golden age of cinema was a key movement within Italian cinema but also cinema in general. It is often said to be characterised by characterized by moving stories showing the often poor and more of the working class, being filmed on location and less use of stages and sets and more often than not using non-professional, usually unknown actors. Hence the use of the term realism, referring to the conditions of the less fortunate and lower class set in the 1940s and 1950s. However one of the criticisms of this was that “Neorealism in and of itself was a noble accomplishment, but to the film industry, with its eyes on the future of Italian cinema, neorealism produced the anxiety that the global market would come to expect only neorealist films and reject anything else.” (Giovacchini, Sklar, 2011, page 85.) This meaning that the fear is that people would focus too much on neorealist films due to that this period was more successful and therefore this may become the standard. In post war Italy the public were beginning to reject fascism and starting to have more open views which was heavily influenced by neorealism due to the focus on real people with real issues in areas dealing with the aftereffect of the second world war. This was done through avoiding the use of glamour and over the top ideas, settings and characters which added even more to the theme of realism. One of the key directors of this period was Vittorio De Sica. In particular focussing on the film The Bicycle Thief. An unemployed man by the name of Antonio Ricci (Lamberto Maggiorani) is happy to have finally have found work hanging posters in a war-torn Rome. However his bike is then stolen and he faces the possibility of not being able to keep this new job that is unless they can find who took it and growing more and more desperate he searched high and low throughout the city. This is a prime example of the focus on real people with real problems. For example, during the film Antonio’s son Bruno is shown as representing the new generation of post-fascism Italians and shows his resourcefulness and his willingness to persist in helping his father to rebuild their lives. The end scene is a prime example. When Antonio is caught taking back his bicycle from outside the football stadium his image is shattered and he in fact becomes the bicycle thief, the person of which he has been telling his son is the root of the problem. The film ends abruptly, and all this leaves is the legacy of Bruno’s father which is one of hypocrisy now that he can become that of which he hates. In conclusion neorealism has had quite a big impact on the film industry in Europe over the past 60 or so years and has also succeeded on changing the narrative to that of which focuses on real world issues. bibliography
Giovacchini, Saverio, and Robert Sklar. (2011) Global Neorealism. Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, p.85.
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