A Study of Italian Neorealist Films

Introduction

The end of the second World War in the 1940s meant the beginning of an era that was wrought with major socio-political and cultural changes for Italy, one of which was the fall of Mussolini and the fascist regime. In a post-war Italy that was charged in this manner, a group of film critics who worked on the film journal Cinema, such as Luchino Visconti, Gianni Puccini, Cesare Zavattini, Giuseppe De Santis and Pietro Ingrao, saw the need for a neorealist style of filmmaking in Italian Cinema, and less than a decade after the war, these films came into being. This essay will attempt to study and analyse four films that are considered to be some of the best examples of Italian Neorealist films – Roberto Rossellini’s Germania Anno Zero (1948), Vittorio de Sica’s Ladri di Biciclette (1948) and Umberto D (1952), and Federico Fellini’s La Strada (1954).

Italian Neorealist films

While most film movements have been born out of artistic notions that filmmakers felt was lacking in the existing trends of cinema, Italian Neorealism stands out as an exception to this simply because it was born out of certain necessities as much as it was about artistic filmmaking. A major characteristic feature that is often attributed to Italian Neorealist films was the use of real locations rather than studios, unlike its other major contemporaries such as the Hollywood. While this definitely contributed to the style of the neorealist films, it was also inevitable as shooting in studios like the Cinecitta was not possible due to the severe damages borne by them during the war. This real-life location, in itself, then became “open, active, and effective” in carrying the narrative forward as evidently seen in Rossellini’s Germania Anno Zero. The film’s depiction of old buildings destructed by the war at the beginning and end that tells a story of its own – a story of hardships that a war has showered over a previously prospering nation. The young protagonist of the film, Edmund, is another testimony to the hardships that the war has brought forth in numerous waves because he, like other juvenile characters in these films, depict the loss of the innocence of an entire generation of children. Children like him often had their “reassurance of a sheltering domestic life” shattered when “boys were impelled to take on the role of provider and girls the role of caregiver” to support their families in a crippled economy. In the case of Edmund who is burdened with providing for an entire family, this proves fatal to him as his guilt from poisoning his father in an innocent attempt to help the family survive, driven by his father’s own desire to not be a burden, eventually leads to his suicide. Meanwhile, in Vittorio De Sica’s Ladre di Biciclette Bruno Ricci’s loss of innocence is portrayed through him witnessing the unfairness of the society that shatters any hope he or his father may have had for a better future. The stolen bicycle and the ensuing struggle to find it turns into a life lesson to this young boy, who bears witness to his father turning into a bicycle thief out of desperation and being beaten by an angry crowd. His innocence, like Edmund’s, ends the moment they realise that the line between what is just and unjust in a war-torn society is very much blurred or distorted in the favour of the more affluent. It is indeed this very fact that the title of the film, Ladri di Biciclette (The Bicycle Thieves) drives a viewer to ponder upon. If an honest man like Antonio was driven to steal a bicycle in desperation, was the first thief just another man caught in a similar situation? The film does not provide a clear answer to this but it definitely demonstrates the lack of interest on the part of the nation’s governing authorities to ensure the happiness of its working class citizens, which in turn forces them to seek out less than moral or illegal means to survive in a harsh society.

The similarity of Vittorio De Sica’s protagonists in Ladri di Biciclette and Umberto D begins and ends on the fact that they face various hardships of the war that makes them desperate for a form of employment or income. While Antonio appears familiar and capable of hard physical labour, Umberto in his retirement ages is driven to the streets to beg for money when his inability to cover his rent dangles the threat of eviction over his head. Umberto, who probably held a respectable job in his youth, is embarrassed to be seen to be begging in public. When he is unable to do it, he makes his dog, Flike, beg. However, when he comes face to face with an old acquaintance, he claims that his dog was only playing. This highlights an important complication that the middle class gents faced in such a time. Even in the face of desperation, when “inflation and illness erode their meagre pension” menfolk like Umberto are more concerned with “outward appearances” of “a clean shirt, proper behaviour, and good manners” than earning a wage because they are more afraid of the “loss of face, of appearing poor, than of poverty itself.”

The most common themes of this movement centered around the desperation and loss of faith of the citizens in their own government (among other socio-political and cultural themes) that made these films stand out for their portrayal of life, as stark and realistically as possible. The use of real locations, the minimal use of editing, the use of unprofessional actors and the foregoing of rehearsal sequences before each shot contributed to making Italian Neorealist films look very life-like. The use of real locations like the Pantheon in front of which Umberto’s fall is witnessed, indeed brings out the contrast between the prosperity of Italy and its people in the past and its fall to poverty and humiliation in its present while the use of unprofessional actors in these films compels them “to be before expressing” as the professional actor is substituted with just another man from the street. Here Vittorio De Sica’s Bruno becomes just another “silhouette, a face, a way of walking.” Moreover, within the narrative itself, the minimal use of editing or cutting is able to successfully convey the actual duration of the event or at least provide the viewers with a sense of it.

As these films explore real and tragic events, Fellini’s La Strada also holds a comical element. While the characters in these films are just as dramatic as in other films, the comical element here arises from the use of characters like the Fool that act as a comic relief. Here, the idea is not of tragedy or comedy alone, but it is also of portraying the reality of everything that is inside of man, including “spiritual reality” and “metaphysical reality”. In this sense, the existential theme that is represented through the dialogue of the Fool and Gelsomina, whose similarity to Chaplin’s “Little Tramp” adds to the tragicomical element of human frailty, sets apart the neorealism of this film from the others of its time.

Conclusion

By the 1950s, when the economy of Italy had significantly recovered from the aftermath of the second World War, the realist themes of these films fell into a vacuum where its audiences could no longer identify with it. This was a major reason that led to the rapid decline of this short lived movement. The availability of American films added to this, as many viewers now preferred the optimistic themes of Hollywood movies. However, this movement did leave a lasting mark on the global arena of filmmaking. In the Indian context itself, the influence of Italian neorealism was felt by the viewers of what came to be called the Indian Parallel Cinema. In their depiction of social, political and cultural themes, these films drew inspiration from the Italian Neorealist in considerable measures. For instance, as revealed by Bimal Roy himself, it was Vittorio De Sica’s Ladri di Biciclette that inspired him to make one of the earlier classics of Indian Parallel Cinema, Do Bigha Zamin, marking the beginning of a trend in Indian Cinema that set itself apart from the commercial bollywood films in their themes and styles. Moreover, although the Italian Neorealist films were different in their subjects, the use of similar styles, themes and other factors contribute towards setting them apart from other movements by giving them distinctive qualities of their own.

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