CATBIRD SEAT –
Italian Neorealism – 1940s to 1950s
The earth-shaking period of
Italian Neorealism (Neorealismo), also
known as The Golden Age of Italian Cinema,
was a national movement revealing stories
set amongst the poor and the working class,
filmed on location, and frequently using nonprofessional actors.
Such films mostly contended with the difficult
economic and moral conditions of the country
during post-World War II – a far cry from the
phony “white telephone” movies on Italian screens, movies about unrealistically affluent people living luxuriously, made to conceal the truth about a nation of long suffering, subjugated people.
Italian Neorealism came about as World War II ended and Benito Mussolini's government fell.
The style was developed by a circle of film critics to counter the superficial propaganda
found in the mainstream “white telephone films." The new critics felt that Italian cinema
should turn to the truth, to stark realism.
The resulting movies struck the world's cinemas with amazement; serious filmmakers began making similar films everywhere and by the mid 60s Neorealism spread globally.
Italian Neorealism rose to full bloom with an overwhelming intensity, then rapidly declined
in the early 1950s with a rise in economic circumstances; by then, during better times, it
was considered a "dirty laundry that shouldn't be washed and hung to dry in the open."
But it must be noted that the period between 1943 and 1950 was dominated by the impact of Neorealism and its impact has been enormous, on German realism, French New
Wave cinema, the Polish Film School, and ultimately on films all over the world.
It also, as many of today's critics have argued, in our “dumbed down” society it has furthered the abandoning of the classical way of developing Hollywood cinema to what
gradually has become an easily accepted overriding trend in "realistic" treatment - especially in acting which is as much as 85% improvised – resulting in a gradual lowering of
standards, as you might imagine to the detriment of the overall achievements once found
in the best of Hollywood's cinema past.
“Bicycle Thief” (1943) is the definitive example of Neorealist films at their finest; it focused on the hearts as well as on the minds among people we get to know and care
strongly about. Like its predecessors it was made with nonprofessional actors portraying people in a simple order of post war survival - people we cannot forget.
Hollywood, alas, has degraded what the European master filmmakers – and especially
those of Italy of the 40s - creatively left for us to cherish. While most movies today are
made for the moment only, films like “The Bicycle Thief” will always be savored as rare
experiences, as gems of the past - thanks to their heritage from the inspired classics of
the 40s - never to be forgotten.