Karl Schoonover
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816675548
- eISBN:
- 9781452947563
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816675548.003.0004
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter examines three films from the Vittorio De Sica-Cesare Zavattini collaboration, namely, Shoeshine, Bicycle Thieves, and The Roof, and how each posits spectacle as a realist cinematic ...
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This chapter examines three films from the Vittorio De Sica-Cesare Zavattini collaboration, namely, Shoeshine, Bicycle Thieves, and The Roof, and how each posits spectacle as a realist cinematic device capable of triggering and nourishing a charitable gaze in line with the nascent institutional practices of global humanism. It argues that De Sica’s neorealism develops specific narrational procedures aimed at fostering a gaze of globalized concern. The films also align themselves with a gaze that anticipates the subjective structures necessary for large-scale international aid projects rather than endorsing regional or statist forms of assistance, dismissing these latter as corrupt, condescending, and ineffectual.Less
This chapter examines three films from the Vittorio De Sica-Cesare Zavattini collaboration, namely, Shoeshine, Bicycle Thieves, and The Roof, and how each posits spectacle as a realist cinematic device capable of triggering and nourishing a charitable gaze in line with the nascent institutional practices of global humanism. It argues that De Sica’s neorealism develops specific narrational procedures aimed at fostering a gaze of globalized concern. The films also align themselves with a gaze that anticipates the subjective structures necessary for large-scale international aid projects rather than endorsing regional or statist forms of assistance, dismissing these latter as corrupt, condescending, and ineffectual.
Saverio Giovacchini and Robert Sklar (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617031229
- eISBN:
- 9781617031236
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617031229.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Intellectual, cultural, and film historians have long considered neorealism the founding block of post-World War II Italian cinema. Neorealism, the traditional story goes, was an Italian film style ...
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Intellectual, cultural, and film historians have long considered neorealism the founding block of post-World War II Italian cinema. Neorealism, the traditional story goes, was an Italian film style born in the second postwar period and aimed at recovering the reality of Italy after the sugarcoated moving images of Fascism. Lasting from 1945 to the early 1950s, it produced world-renowned masterpieces such as Roberto Rossellini’s Roma, città aperta (Rome, Open City, 1945) and Vittorio De Sica’s Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves, 1947). These films won some of the most prestigious film awards of the immediate postwar period. This collection brings together film scholars and cultural historians to complicate this nation-based approach to the history of neorealism. The traditional story notwithstanding, the meaning and the origins of the term are problematic. What does neorealism really mean, and how Italian is it? Italian filmmakers were wary of using the term and Rossellini preferred “realism.” Many filmmakers confessed to having greatly borrowed from other cinemas, including French, Soviet, and American. Divided into three sections, this book examines the history of this film style from the 1930s to the 1970s using a global and international perspective. The first section examines the origins of neorealism in the international debate about realist esthetics in the 1930s. The second section discusses how this debate about realism was “Italianized” and coalesced into Italian “neorealism,” and explores how critics and film distributors participated in coining the term. Finally, the third section looks at neorealism’s success outside of Italy.Less
Intellectual, cultural, and film historians have long considered neorealism the founding block of post-World War II Italian cinema. Neorealism, the traditional story goes, was an Italian film style born in the second postwar period and aimed at recovering the reality of Italy after the sugarcoated moving images of Fascism. Lasting from 1945 to the early 1950s, it produced world-renowned masterpieces such as Roberto Rossellini’s Roma, città aperta (Rome, Open City, 1945) and Vittorio De Sica’s Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves, 1947). These films won some of the most prestigious film awards of the immediate postwar period. This collection brings together film scholars and cultural historians to complicate this nation-based approach to the history of neorealism. The traditional story notwithstanding, the meaning and the origins of the term are problematic. What does neorealism really mean, and how Italian is it? Italian filmmakers were wary of using the term and Rossellini preferred “realism.” Many filmmakers confessed to having greatly borrowed from other cinemas, including French, Soviet, and American. Divided into three sections, this book examines the history of this film style from the 1930s to the 1970s using a global and international perspective. The first section examines the origins of neorealism in the international debate about realist esthetics in the 1930s. The second section discusses how this debate about realism was “Italianized” and coalesced into Italian “neorealism,” and explores how critics and film distributors participated in coining the term. Finally, the third section looks at neorealism’s success outside of Italy.
