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
Beginning the mid 1920s, Hollywood’s ostensibly all-powerful film studios controlled the American film industry, creating a period of film history now recognized as “Classical Hollywood”. Distinguished by a practical, workmanlike, “invisible” method of filmmaking- whose purpose was to demand as little attention to the camera as possible, Classical Hollywood cinema supported undeviating storylines (with the occasional flashback being an exception), an observance of a the three act structure, frontality, and visibly identified goals for the “hero” to work toward and well-defined conflict/story resolution, most commonly illustrated with the employment of the “happy ending”. Studios understood precisely what an audience desired, and accommodated their wants and needs, resulting in films that were generally all the same, starring similar (sometimes the same) actors, crafted in a similar manner. It became the principal style throughout the western world against which all other styles were judged. While there have been some deviations and experiments with the format in the past 50 plus ye...
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....
Aside from its acting, the other major influence which Mean Streets had upon American film-makers was through it's use of a rock n' roll soundtrack (almost perfectly integrated with the images), and in its depiction of a new kind of screen violence. Unexpected, volatile, explosive and wholly senseless, yet, for all that, undeniably cinematic violence. The way in which Scorsese blends these two - the rock and roll and the violence - shows that he understood instinctively, better than anyone else until then, that cinema (or at least this kind of cinema, the kinetic, visceral kind) and rock n' roll are both expressions of revolutionary instincts, and that they are as inherently destructive as they are creative. This simple device - brutal outbreaks of violence combined with an upbeat soundtrack - has been taken up by both the mainstream cinema at large and by many individual `auteurs', all of whom are in Scorsese's debt - Stone and Tarantino coming at once to mind.
These British 'new wave' films began to include youthful protagonists, absorbed in the period's thriving society, which seemed to portray the relevant themes and the social issues at this time. Although, it is suggested that “New Wave” films were mostly about interpersonal relationships in Working class and industrial settings, and that although it is believe that many of these inspirational movement pieces were to portray forms of social injustice, it may not have been their intention to explore and portray through film the economic system and question its ethics. It may well have been, as John Hill suggested that the many social problem films that can be found throughout this movement, could have obscured as much as they enlightened the potential for social change and reconstruction. It is known that many of the great Directors of the time will have grown up in Working class positions and have personal experiences that they’d have wished to portray through the use of film. We can see that a characteristic of many New Wave films are poetic shots and montages of the northern industrial landscape as it was the Working class in the North of England that suffered greatly post-war.
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.
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.
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,
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 reason that the two books of Cinema 1: The movement-Image and Cinema 2: The Time-Image are important is Deleuze’s contribution to create a revolutionary argument by inter-cutting between cinema and philosophy. These books show a genuine method of how Deleuze established a creative connection between examples of historical movies such as that of Cecil B. de Mille’s and Nietzsche’s essay on nineteenth-century German historiography (Deleuze, 1983).
Think about your favorite movie. When watching that movie, was there anything about the style of the movie that makes it your favorite? Have you ever thought about why that movie is just so darn good? The answer is because of the the Auteur. An Auteur is the artists behind the movie. They have and individual style and control over all elements of production, which make their movies exclusively unique. If you could put a finger on who the director of a movie is without even seeing the whole film, then the person that made the movie is most likely an auteur director. They have a unique stamp on each of their movies. This essay will be covering Martin Scorsese, you will soon find out that he is one of the best auteur directors in the film industry. This paper will include, but is not limited to two of his movies, Good Fellas, and The Wolf of Wall Street. We will also cover the details on what makes Martin Scorsese's movies unique, such as the common themes, recurring motifs, and filming practices found in their work. Then on
In this essay the following will be discussed; the change from the age of classical Hollywood film making to the new Hollywood era, the influence of European film making in American films from Martin Scorsese and how the film Taxi Driver shows the innovative and fresh techniques of this ‘New Hollywood Cinema’.
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.
“Open City” is a neo-realist film that followed the movement in Italy during World War 2. The film is neo-realistic because it has that ‘reality’ like feeling to it by following specific characters through their daily stressful lives that are screwed up from poverty and war. It has many qualities that make it in some ways ‘closer’ to the characters. While watching, the viewer is sucked into the story and immediately feeling emotional with the families and the other various characters in the film. The main reason is Rossellini's choosing dramatic music and kids with big eyes.
Is important to point out that Cinema Vérité and Direct Cinema films aesthetic and philosophy was not first thought of during the 1960’s. The father of Documentary Robert Flaherty foreshadows key elements of Cinema Vérité and Direct Cinema. For example, the interest in studying real people in their actual environment. In Nanook of the North (1922) Flaherty Follows Nanook and his family for moths, to show the world Nanook’s background life style and culture. Another example is that Flaherty saw the Filmmaking process as and art of observation and afterward selection. Which relat...
‘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.