As we traverse through time and history the world goes through many different phases; some of these phases have no similarity to the last and some overlap with one another. One of the phases Italian cinema went through was Neorealism. Like everything else, every phase comes to an end. Vittorio De Sica’s Umberto D was considered the moving away from Neorealism in Italian cinema history. Umberto D did, however, carry aspects of neorealism just as Bicycle Thief, also by Vittorio De Sica, does during the prime of Neorealism. Neorealism had appeared right after the end of World War II and was started by Roberto Rosselini, the father of Neorealism. With his movie, he started a new trend in Italian cinema. (quote) Although it was not specifically …show more content…
Akin to Neorealist films, Umberto D casts non professional actors. However, the main character was not cast as a poor working class man. He was cast as a retired upper-middle class bourgeois struggling to live off of his pension. Deviating even further from what was considered “Neorealist”, Umberto D did not use on location shooting. Rather, De Sica decided to film in studios where all the sets were made and where the camera could be more thoroughly controlled (2.). This allowed De Sica to make scenes more impactful with better angled filming (2.) De Sica not only created the poster boy, Bicycle Thief, for Neorealism, but also created the end to the movement, Umberto …show more content…
After the war, the people did not want to go to the movie theaters and watch a movie that was exactly like their daily lives, full of social problems and poverty due to the war. Also, most films were budget films due to the terrible economy of Italy after the war. This was no longer necessary with the implementation of the U.S. Martial plan that stimulated an economic boom in Italy. The King of the Half Portion that was featured in Ettore Scola’s We All Loved Each Other So Much, many could only afford to eat half portions due to the lack of money after the war. But this restaurant became much less popular after the economic boom because the people no longer needed to eat half portions. Similarly after the economic boom there was no need for budget films, Neorealist films. On top of that, Neorealist films were unpopular and most did not ever break even. Thus the moving away from Neorealist films happened; with all movements there is a beginning, peak, and an
1959 was an exciting year in the history of filmmaking. An extraordinary conjunction of talent throughout the globe existed. In France, Truffaut, Godard, Chabrol, Rohmer, Rivette, and Resnais all directed their first films, thus establishing the French New Wave. In Italy, Fellini created the elegant La Dolce Vita, and Antonioni gave us L’avventura. Most importantly, though, in America, famed British director Alfred Hitchcock gave us the classic thriller North by Northwest, the father of the modern action film.
With the loss of its centralized structure, the film industry produced filmmakers with radical new ideas. The unique nature of these films was a product of the loss of unified identity.
Amelio places an immense focus on intertextuality in this film as an homage to the end of the neorealistic era. He particularly references one of the leading figures of the neorealistic movement, Vittorio De Sica, and his film Bicycle Thief. The title, Stolen Children, and the main character’s name, Antonio, are an allusion of Bicycle Thief. Through Amelio’s choice of allusions,
Film Noir, as Paul Schrader integrates in his essay ‘Notes on Film Noir,’ reflects a marked phase in the history of films denoting a peculiar style observed during that period. More specifically, Film Noir is defined by intricate qualities like tone and mood, rather than generic compositions, settings and presentation. Just as ‘genre’ categorizes films on the basis of common occurrences of iconographic elements in a certain way, ‘style’ acts as the paradox that exemplifies the generality and singularity at the same time, in Film Noir, through the notion of morality. In other words, Film Noir is a genre that exquisitely entwines theme and style, and henceforth sheds light on individual difference in perception of a common phenomenon. Pertaining
To draw the conclusion, it can be effectively said that it is very difficult to incorporate the ideas contained in books into films, especially when one has to prove some theory. Pasolini has done it successfully by incorporating his film theory contained in the book Heretical Empricism into the film Mamma Roma. Pasolini’s creativity is an integral part of the classical art. He gave his life to change the world for the better through his films. He has not only presented his socialistic thoughts in the film, but also included religious motifs of Christianity to show the plight of a woman in this materialistic society. The development of unforgettable emotions and memories are guaranteed in return. Modern society should know and remember the
During the course of this essay it is my intention to discuss the differences between Classical Hollywood and post-Classical Hollywood. Although these terms refer to theoretical movements of which they are not definitive it is my goal to show that they are applicable in a broad way to a cinema tradition that dominated Hollywood production between 1916 and 1960 and which also pervaded Western Mainstream Cinema (Classical Hollywood or Classic Narrative Cinema) and to the movement and changes that came about following this time period (Post-Classical or New Hollywood). I intend to do this by first analysing and defining aspects of Classical Hollywood and having done that, examining post classical at which time the relationship between them will become evident. It is my intention to reference films from both movements and also published texts relative to the subject matter. In order to illustrate the structures involved I will be writing about the subjects of genre and genre transformation, the representation of gender, postmodernism and the relationship between style, form and content.
In this essay I will look at the emergence of Italian neo-realist cinema and how Italian Neo-realism has been defined and classified in the film industry as well as how its distinct cinematic characteristics could only have been conceived in Italy and how these characteristics set the neo-realist style apart from other realist movements and from Hollywood.
One of the most influential Italian cinemas film directors was Federico Fellini, who became popular after World War II. The filmography of Fellini included 24 titles; of which won him five Academy Awards including the most Oscars in history for best foreign language film (Encyclopaedia Britannica). Federico Fellini’s influences have became such an integral part of the film industry, that some of his influences are barely even credited to him in todays society such as the word “paparazzi” which originated in his film La Dolce Vita, and became the word it means today. Also high schools across the America stage perform the Broadway musical comedy Sweet Charity, which was based on the Fellini film Nights of Cabiria, which was a film about an eternally optimistic Roman prostitute (Encyclopaedia Britannica). Fellini started out as a documentary-style realist in the Neorealism movement but soon developed his own distinctive style of autobiographical films that imposed dreamlike or hallucinatory imagery upon ordinary situations and portrayed people at their most bizarre state (Encyclopaedia Britannica). Federico Fellini was a significant directors in the Neorealism movement in his early career but later left Neorealism behind and created a new style of film that’s influences are still seen today and are prominent in film and other artistic pieces of work.
In 1959- early 1960 five directors released debut feature length films that are widely regarded as heralding the start of the French nouvelle vague or French New Wave. Claude Chabrols Le Beau Serge (The Good Serge, 1959) and Les Cousins (The Cousins, 1959) were released, along with Francois Truffauts Les Quatre cents coups (The 400 Blows, 1959), Jean-Luc Godards A bout de souffle (Breathless, 1960) and Alain Resnais Hiroshima mon amour (Hiroshima my love, 1959). These films were the beginning of a revolution in French cinema. In the following years these directors were to follow up their debuts, while other young directors made their first features, in fact between 1959-63 over 170 French directors made their debut films. These films were very different to anything French and American cinema had ever produced both in film style and film form and would change the shape of cinema to come for years. To understand how and why this nouvelle vague happened we must first look at the historical, social, economical and political aspects of France and the French film industry leading up to the onset of the nouvelle vague.
Second World War, which lasted from 1939 until 1945 had an influence to many various areas, especially, it made a huge impact to European economy, but it had an effect on almost every field of art as well. During the Second World War and after it art and especially, cinema was used for propaganda purposes to impart people and their attitude. Vladimir Lenin, a Russian communist and politician, said that ‘of all the arts, for us the cinema is the most important‘. The movement called neorealism thrived in post-war world, especially in Italy. It is defined as a movement, which focused mostly on social issues and describes the lives of the poor side of the society. Vittorio de Sica (1901-1974) was an Italian actor, director and auteur during period after Second World War. In Italy neorealism in the cinema started with a film called Rome, Open City (1945) by Roberto Rosellini another famous director, writer and neorealist. Umberto D. (1952) a film created by Vittorio de Sica is considered to be the end of the movement. Vittorio de Sica is famous for his films Bicycle Thieves and Umberto D....
According to historians like Neil Burch, the primitive period of the film industry, at the turn of the 20th century was making films that appealed to their audiences due to the simple story. A non-fiction narrative, single shots a burgeoning sense
The ‘New Hollywood Cinema’ era came about from around the 1960’s when cinema and film making began to change. Big film studios were going out of their comfort zone to produce different, creative and artistic movies. At the time, it was all the public wanted to see. People were astonished at the way these films were put together, the narration, the editing, the shots, and everything in between. No more were the films in similar arrangement and structure. The ‘New Hollywood era’ took the classic Hollywood period and turned it around so that rules were broken and people left stunned.
The postmodern cinema emerged in the 80s and 90s as a powerfully creative force in Hollywood film-making, helping to form the historic convergence of technology, media culture and consumerism. Departing from the modernist cultural tradition grounded in the faith in historical progress, the norms of industrial society and the Enlightenment, the postmodern film is defined by its disjointed narratives, images of chaos, random violence, a dark view of the human state, death of the hero and the emphasis on technique over content. The postmodernist film accomplishes that by acquiring forms and styles from the traditional methods and mixing them together or decorating them. Thus, the postmodern film challenges the “modern” and the modernist cinema along with its inclinations. It also attempts to transform the mainstream conventions of characterization, narrative and suppresses the audience suspension of disbelief. The postmodern cinema often rejects modernist conventions by manipulating and maneuvering with conventions such as space, time and story-telling. Furthermore, it rejects the traditional “grand-narratives” and totalizing forms such as war, history, love and utopian visions of reality. Instead, it is heavily aimed to create constructed fictions and subjective idealisms.
The aim of this report is to discuss Italian Neorealism (Neorealismo); looking at how the movement played a significant element in European cinema during and after the times of Benito Mussolini’s fascist regime. The report not only looks at how but why Neorealism became a growing phenomenon for filmmakers during its debatable 10 year period, and what implication of messages these Neorealist directors were trying to send out through their films. Backed up by several reliable book sources, the evidence for this report will also highlight the influences Neo-realism has created in modern filmmaking today.
‘Then came the films’; writes the German cultural theorist Walter Benjamin, evoking the arrival of a powerful new art form at the end of 19th century. By this statement, he tried to explain that films were not just another visual medium, but it has a clear differentiation from all previous mediums of visual culture.