Realist Film Movements

1
Realist Film Movements

• Neorealismo (2)
• Films of Vittoria De Sica

2
Table of Contents

• 1) Neorealismo as personal film
• 2) Films of Vittorio De Sica
• 3) Ladri di biciclette
• 4) Cesare Zavattini

3
Neorealismo as Personal Film

• Traditional films - studio bound genre bound
  star bound the studio, genre and star dictate
  the way a film is made.
• Films made according to the studios production
  interest and plan to genre requirements and to
  the demand of stars.
• Personal films reflect film makers personal
  concerns. Neorealists PERSONAL CONCERNS and
  INTERESTS
• are

4
Neorealismo as Personal Film

• Ordinary lives in the post-war era
• Social issues - unemployment, immigration,
  poverty, social and moral decay, political
  corruption
• Lives of ordinary people in ordinary situation

5
Neorealismo as Personal Film

• Influence of French Poetic Realism
• Films in the 1930s by Julian Duvivier, Jean
  Renoir, Marcel Carné, Jean Vigo, Jacques Feyder
  and others
• Ordinary people living in ordinary situation
  involves in tragic affairs.
• Ordinary lives of ordinary people are portrayed
  in lyrical images and the impossibility of
  happiness demonstrated in tragic endings.

6
Neorealismo as Personal Film

• What is realism in literature?
• more extensive and socially inferior human
  groups to the position of subject matter in
  literature. (Erich Auerbach, Mimesis The
  Representation of Reality in Western Literature,
  p.491)

7
Neorealismo as Personal Film

• Jean Renoir, La Bête humaine (1938)
• Based on Emile Zolas naturalist novel, it is a
  story about an engineer who murders his wifes
  godfather.

8
Neorealismo as Personal Film

• Jean Renoir, Toni (1935)
• Based on a police dossier, it is about a crime of
  passion. An Italian immigrant worker in a
  Provencal quarry is entangled in complicated love
  affairs and jealousy.

9
Neorealismo as Personal Film

• Marcel Carné, Le Jour se leve (1939)
• A foundry worker is forced to murder a man who
  betrays and tricks him.

10
Neorealismo as Personal Film

• A captain of a canal verge is estranged from his
  wife but they reunite after a sad separation in
  Jean Vigos LAtalante

11
Neorealismo as Personal Film

• Subject matters ordinary people who are in
  ordinary situation but fail to gain ordinary
  happiness.
• Stories of ordinary people in authentic settings
• No idealization, no flattery, not
  larger-than-life portraying

12
Films of Vittorio De Sica

• Vittorio de Sica (1902-1974)
• A matinée idol turned into a film director.
• The collaboration with Cezare Zavattini lead to
  the three great neorealist films

13
Films of Vittorio De Sica

• Sciusciá (Shoeshine, 1946) - two shoeshine boys
  save money by delivering black-market goods to
  buy a horse. They are caught and sent to
  overcrowded boys prison. One boy betrays the
  other and after their release the latter kills
  the former by mistake.

14
Films of Vittorio De Sica

• Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves, 1948) - a
  man in Rome found a job after two years waiting
  on the condition that he has his own bike. It is
  stolen on the very first day in his job. He
  searches all over Rome with his son. In
  desperation he himself turns to a bicycle thief.
  

15
Bicycle Thieves

• Elements which made Bicycle Thieves a realist
  film in its day
• ?    subject matters
• ?    narrative strays
• ?    the use of non-actors and location shooting
• ?    no facile solution to the problem
  illustrated
• ?    other aforementioned techniques (casual
  composition, no fancy mise-en-scène or montage,
  grainy photography, documentary style

16
Bicycle Thieves

• Subject matters Unemployment, poverty, petite
  crime, disintegration of the society in the
  post-war Italy

17
Bicycle Thieves

• Narrative strays
• Bruno tries to pee during the hot chase of the
  thief who may have stolen his fathers bike.

18
Bicycle Thieves

• Lamberto Maggiorani was a factory worker found by
  De Sica.

19
Bicycle Thieves

• Bicycle Thieves was shot entirely on location in
  various places in Rome Piazza Vittoria, Porta
  Portese market, and the River Tiber.

20
Bicycle Thieves

• No facile solution made though it looks as if
  father might restore his sons trust in him.
  Father will remain unemployed and the family will
  face more difficulties. Typical open ending.

21
Films of Vittorio De Sica

• Umberto D (1952) - a retired civil servant,
  pensioner, finds difficult to make end meet in
  ridiculous inflation. He is kicked out of his
  apartment and has to abandon his dog, his only
  possession and companion.

22
Umberto D

• Elements which made Umberto D a realist film in
  its day
• ?    subject matters
• ?    narrative strays
• ?    the use of non-actors and location shooting
• ?    no facile solution to the problem
  illustrated
• ?    other aforementioned techniques (casual
  composition, no fancy mise-en-scène or montage,
  grainy photography, documentary style

23
Umberto D

• Subject matters hyper-inflation after WWII,
  poverty, disintegration of the community, aging,
  animal welfare

24
Umberto D

• Narrative strays a moment of solace. Maria, a
  maidservant of the lodgings is the only person
  who understands and care for Umberto.

25
Umberto D

• Umberto was played by Carlo Battisti, the
  linguistics professor (dialects) at University of
  Florence, had no acting experience before and
  after the film.

26
Umberto D

• Umberto D was shot entirely in Rome. The begging
  sequence was shot at Piazza Rotondo in historic
  centre of the city.

27
Umberto D

• No facile solution. Umberto failed to kill
  himself and his dog and more problems are
  expected to torment them. Another typical open
  ending.

28
Ceare Zavattini

• Screenwriter, director, painter, writer and
  theorist
• Collaborated with Vittorio De Sica in Sciusciá,
  Ladri di biciclette and Umberto D
• Teacher at Centro Sperimentale di Cinema
• Critic at Bianco e nero
• PURIST

29
Ceare Zavattini

• A well-know American producer told me, This is
  how we would imagine a scene with an airplane.
  The plane passes by a machine gun fires the
  plane is crashed. And this is how you would
  imagine it. The plane passes by the plane
  passes by the plane passes by once more.
• Cezare Zavattini, Some Ideas on Cinema

30
Cesare Zavattini

• The dream of Zavattini is just to make a
  ninety-minute film of the life of a man to whom
  nothing ever happens. (Andre Bazin on Cesare
  Zavattini)
• The duration of actual time is equal to that of
  films narrative time.
• Little-man' principle a hole in the wall of
  a family house in order to peep inside.