Italian Neorealism: 10 Influential Italian Neorealist Films

Italian neorealism refers to a particular style of making films in 1940s Italy. Italian neorealism was a major and highly influential movement in film history, marking a conscious move away from Hollywood-style filmmaking and focusing on realistic characters and stories. Themes of the genre include moral ambiguity, frank depictions of economic deprivation, and deep sympathy for characters. Italian neorealist filmmakers made use of documentary techniques and low budgets.

The Italian neorealism movement was short-lived but highly influential in the decade following World War II.

• Post-war years: In Italy after World War II, the economy was depressed, much of the country’s infrastructure was destroyed or damaged, and the political situation was highly unpredictable. Post-war Italy was in upheaval, reeling from the horrors of war and the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini, and struggling to find a way forward. Filmmakers sought to reflect these changes in what they chose to make films about and how they made them.
• Rome, Open City (1945): Roberto Rossellini’s Rome, Open City, an early, foundational example of the genre, was critically celebrated. Featuring primarily non-professional actors and shot documentary style on the streets of Rome, it introduced a new way of thinking about and making cinema in Italy and elsewhere.
• Heyday: Italian neorealism burned brightly but briefly. By the early 1950s, the heyday of the genre was over. Audiences mostly favored American imports, familiar melodramas, and works that presented optimism. The filmmakers themselves continued to evolve creatively, incorporating techniques that went beyond the normal structures of the neorealist period.
• Influence: Italian neorealism inspired later generations of filmmakers worldwide and future genres, including the subsequent French New Wave of the 1950s.

Italian neorealism was an aesthetic and a practical approach to filmmaking. The following are some of the movement’s defining characteristics:

1. 1. Documentary style: Italian Neorealist filmmaking took its stylistic cues from documentary filmmaking. Innovations in camera design meant that cinema cameras could be smaller and lighter, and improvements in film stock meant it was easier to shoot without powerful studio lights. Filmmakers could work in the streets and actual locations. Italian neorealist filmmakers took this further, often casting non-professional actors and even putting them in some leading roles.
2. 2. Loose storytelling: Many neorealist films are episodic, focusing on everyday life with far less attention on dramatic unity and storytelling than the popular Hollywood-style cinema of the day. Screenwriters often incorporated improvised dialogue or wrote to mimic the speech patterns of everyday people.
3. 3. The working class: There was an overtly political dimension to Italian neorealism with a repudiation of fascism and censorship under Mussolini’s reign. These films were also a reaction to the popular comedies and melodramas of an earlier era known as Telefoni Bianchi (white telephone) movies, which often featured upper and middle-class concerns over the interests of poor and working class Italians. The constant threat of poverty, daily struggle to make ends meet, and harsh reality of post-war Italian society were prominent themes.
4. 4. Sympathetic humanism: Liberated from wartime censorship, Italian filmmakers in the mid-1940s were eager to cover topics formerly disallowed. Filmmakers began to directly confront social ills and moral quandaries. It was no longer necessary to portray characters as either good or bad, so filmmakers began to depict characters as complex humans with conflicting motives. This led to stories that were unsparing in their realism but sympathetic to the characters, showing them as both fallible and redeemable.

Some of the frontrunning Italian neorealist films include:

1. 1. Ossessione (Obsession) (1943): Directed by Luchino Visconti, one of the most prominent filmmakers in the Italian Neorealist movement, Ossessione was based on the James M. Cain novel The Postman Always Rings Twice. Many film historians consider this tragic story of infidelity and betrayal to be the first Italian neorealist film.
2. 2. Roma, Citta Aperta (Rome, Open City) (1945): Part one of Roberto Rossellini’s War Trilogy depicts the struggle of Italian underground operatives resisting the Nazi occupation in the waning days of World War II. It won the Palme D’Or at the 1946 Cannes Film Festival.
3. 3. Paisà (Paisan) (1946): The next installment in Rossellini’s trilogy is an episodic depiction of the campaign to liberate Italy from German occupation in WWII. It features nonprofessional and professional actors playing Italian freedom fighters as they collaborate with the American troops who have landed in Sicily and elsewhere.
4. 4. Germania Anno Zero (Germany, Year Zero) (1948): For the final film in his trilogy, Rossellini filmed on location in recently-fallen Berlin, before reconstruction had begun. His unsparing depiction of the wreckage, and the people fighting to survive, was notable for its humanist sympathies—a surprise to audiences used to one-dimension depictions of German villains.
5. 5. La Terra Trema (The Earth Trembles) (1948): Visconti’s epic docufiction employed local Sicilians as the entire cast. The story is an adaptation of Giovanni Verga’s novel I Malavoglia. It chronicles the struggles of a poor fisherman on the Sicilian coast trying to buy his own boat, thus escaping from the exploitative practices of the more affluent class.
6. 6. Ladri di Biciclette (Bicycle Thieves) (1948): Also known as The Bicycle Thief, this film was directed by Vittorio De Sica, a significant filmmaker of the Italian neorealist period. The film follows the father of a low-income family seeking to retrieve his stolen bicycle, without which he won’t be able to work. The film, with a script by Cesare Zavattini, is considered one of the best films ever made.
7. 7. Riso Amaro (Bitter Rice) (1949): Giuseppe De Santis directed this film, which incorporates elements of film noir into the neorealist template. Riso Amaro is about criminals on the run who attempt to blend in with local rice farmers.
8. 8. Umberto D. (1952): Directed by Vittorio De Sica, the titular character is an elderly pensioner struggling to avoid eviction. The cast comprises mostly nonprofessionals—including Carlo Battisti, the man who portrays Umberto. The film was shot at Rome’s famous Cinecitta studios, unlike many earlier Italian neorealist films.
9. 9. I Vitelloni (The Layabouts) (1953): Federico Fellini’s comedic drama is about a group of young men on the cusp of adulthood who must make decisions that will alter their lives. A pivotal film for Fellini, it marked a turn towards more serious social themes.
10. 10. La Strada (The Road) (1954): Fellini’s drama explores the life of a poor woman and the traveling strongman who has enslaved her, honestly depicting the brutality of life in post-war Italy.

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