Realist Film Movements

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Realist Film Movements

• Neorealismo (3)
• Films of Luchino Visconti

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Table of Contents

• 1) Common Neorealist Elements
• 2) Who is Luchino Visconti?
• 3) La Terra trema
• 4) Neorealist Ideals and Reality

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Common Neorealist Elements

• (1) In CONTENT
• a. An emphasis on contemporary subjects
• and the life of the working class
• b. Calling for political reform and unity
• c. Moral commitment to make characters
• problems gain universal recognition
• d. Beauty of ordinary life, drama hidden in
• everyday life

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Common Neorealist Elements

• (2) In FORM
• a. Location shooting
• b. Use of non-professional actors
• c. Rough, off-hand composition
• d. Shooting with available natural light
• e. Restraint in using expressive shots
  (close-up, wide-angle, telephoto, zoom shot,
  etc.)

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Common Neorealist Elements

• f. Long take
• g. Restraint in expressive montage

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Who is Luchino Visconti?

• Born on 2 Nov. 1906 and died on 17 March 1976.
• Aristocrat, film and theatre director the maker
  of the films of harsh realism as well as sublime
  melodrama

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Who is Luchino Visconti?

• Met Jean Renoir in Paris in the 1930s through the
  introduction of Coco Chanel and worked for him.
• Returning to Italy during the war, he became a
  resistance fighter and Marxist.
• The leading light of Neorealismo.

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Luchino Viscontis Works

• Early (neo)realist works
• Ossessione (1943)
• Giorni di gloria (1945)
• La Terra Trema (The Earth Trembles, 1948)

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Who is Luchinos Works

• Ossessione (1943) - based on James M. Cains The
  Postman Always Rings Twice, it is about a doomed
  love affair between a drifter and the wife of a
  roadside restaurant owner.
• First neorealist film (?)

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Luchino Viscontis Works

• Giorni di gloria (1945) - a documentary film
  about the Nazi-Fascist oppression of Italians
  during the war. Includes footage of executions,
  atrocities and humiliation.

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Luchino Viscontis Works

• La Terra Trema (1948) - based on Giovanni Vergas
  Il Malavoglia, it is about a fisherman familys
  revolt against the exploitation and its failure.

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La Terra trema

• Shot on location in Aci Trezza, Sicily.
• All the people who appear in the films are
  fishermen, residents or their families of Aci
  Trezza.

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La Terra trema

• No artificial light
• The dialect of Eastern Sicily
• The pressing contemporary issue - the
  exploitation of the poor in the South

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La Terra trema

• PARADOX AND CONTRADICTION
• Realistic representation of the life in a
  Sicilian fishing village / A Marxist
  re-interpretation of the novel of Giovanni Verga,
  I Malavoglia (Financially backed by the Italian
  Communist Party.)

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La Terra trema

• The gritty realism of Viscontis mise-en-scène /
  High aesthetic sensibility (mise-en-scène slow
  and fluid pan shot perfectly balanced
  composition picturesque depth of deep focus
  photography

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La Terra trema

• Viscontis composition of frames is like painting
  and his camerawork is as elaborate as that of any
  studio product.

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La Terra trema

• Painterly composition - triangle composition

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La Terra trema

• Casper Friedrich, The Wanderer above the Sea of
  Fog 1818
• Mary Cassat, The Family 1892

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La Terra trema

• Perfect triangle compositions in La Terra trema

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La Terra trema

• Another painterly composition

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Neorealist Ideals and Reality

• Narrative compromise drama and suspense, gap
  between actual time and story time, ideological
  intention behind storytelling
• Formal compromise filming in studio sets with
  careful lighting, non-synchronous recording
  (post-dabbing), amalgam of professional and
  non-professional actors, self-conscious
  mise-en-scéne and montage

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Luchino Visconts Works

• Career after neorealismo
• Theatre and opera producer - life long career.

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Luchino Visconts Works

• Senso (1954)
• A Venetian countess falls in love with a vile
  Austrian lieutenant at the end of Austrian
  occupation of Venice.
• Doomed decadent love affair.

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Luchino Visconts Works

• Le Notte bianche (1956) - based on Feodor
  Dostoevskijs novel, it is about a fleeting love
  affair between a lonely man and a lonely woman.
• Entirely shot in sets and more stagy than
  cinematic.

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Luchino Visconts Works

• Gattopardo (Leopard, 1965) - based on Giuseppe di
  Lampedusas autobiographical story, it is about
  the decline and fall of a Sicilian aristocratic
  family.
• Stylistic, aesthetic and operatic.

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Luchino Viscontis Works

• Later Career Autobiographical elements -
  decadence and aestheticism homosexuality
• Morte a Venizia (Death in Venice 1971)
• Ludwich (1973)

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Luchino Viscontis Works

• Morte a Venizia (1971) - based on Thomas Mans
  short story, it is about a dying mans
  infatuation with a beautiful boy.
• Operatic contemplation of love and death.

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Luchino Viscontis Works

• Ludwig (1973) about mad king of Bavaria, who
  is determined to create an artistic kingdom in
  his country inviting Richard Wagner.
• Viscontis love for opera and anything beautiful.

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Luchino Viscontis Works

• Innocente (1976) - based on Gabriel DAnnunzios
  novel, it is about the breakup of a marriage, and
  jealousy and homosexual relationship.