ITALIAN CINEMA: FROM NEOREALISM TO THE DOLCE VITA
The Second World War represented a turning point between the old and the new, also in cinema. With his film Rome, Open City (October 1945), Roberto Rossellini pioneered the new Italian production based on people’s daily lives. This film was immediately sold to an American buyer, who made the new neorealist movement of the Italian cinema known abroad. After focusing on war (Paisan, 1946) and on the post-war period (Germany, Year Zero, 1948), with his film Amore (1948), Roberto Rossellini launched Anna Magnani, his partner at that time, who became a great star thanks to this double acting challenge, where she gave her best.
Vittorio De Sica started directing films after having acted in comedies for ten years and reached great success. He is considered as the forerunner of the Neorealist movement, thanks to his intimist film The Children Are Watching Us (1943). After the war, he analysed in depth these social issues and created two masterpieces of the Italian cinema: Shoeshine and Bicycle Thieves, in cooperation with Cesare Zavattini. Luchino Visconti is another precursor of the movement. His film Ossessione (1943) was shot in the lower Po Valley, in a social environment where there was no trace of Fascism. The story was remote from the regime’s directives and adultery was explicitly linked to homicide. His following feature film is La Terra Trema (1948/49). It is one of the most concrete examples of Neorealist cinema, because its cast is made of non-professional actors, true Sicilian fishermen who act in their own dialect. Another masterpiece by Visconti is the film Senso (1954), a fine portrayal of the Risorgimento. An Italian Countess (Alida Valli) falls in love with an Austrian Officer (Farley Granger) and squanders the money that patriots had entrusted to her; but then she realises that her lover was taking advantage of her. We have another foretaste of Neorealism with the film Bitter Rice (1949) by Giuseppe De Santis, showing the turbid passion of a young Vittorio Gassman for the rice weeder Silvana Mangano. Michelangelo Antonioni shot his first feature film in 1950, Story of a Love Affair. It is set in the upperclass Milan, where the suspicions of a well-off husband lead his wife (Lucia Bosé) to meet again an old flame of hers (Massimo Girotti) and arrange with him the murder of her husband. In 1952, Alessandro Blasetti launched the episode films. In Altri tempi, Aldo Fabrizi, in the role of a street bookseller, starts the episodes, which are drawn from the literature of the beginning of the century. Prince Antonio De Curtis, whose stage-name was Totò, performed for both the theatre and the cinema. After the war, he became the show-stealer of the comedy cinema; he was little appreciated by the critics, but obtained great box-office success. Among his works, some light comedies such as Il ratto delle Sabine (1945) and some masterpieces, like Risate di gioia (1960), the only film where he acted with Anna Magnani, his theatre partner in the successful revues of the 40s.
In 1960, true masterpieces of the Italian cinema were shot: L’Avventura by Antonioni, Il bell’Antonio by Bolognini, Rocco and his brothers by Visconti and Two Women by De Sica. However, the unforgettable film which, once again, was the watershed between the old and the new, is La dolce vita by Federico Fellini. This complex film analyses in depth the changes which were taking place in the Italian society on the verge of the economic boom. These same events were carefully described three years later in the homonymous film Il Boom, by De Sica and Zavattini.
By Armando Giuffrida
Vittorio De Sica started directing films after having acted in comedies for ten years and reached great success. He is considered as the forerunner of the Neorealist movement, thanks to his intimist film The Children Are Watching Us (1943). After the war, he analysed in depth these social issues and created two masterpieces of the Italian cinema: Shoeshine and Bicycle Thieves, in cooperation with Cesare Zavattini. Luchino Visconti is another precursor of the movement. His film Ossessione (1943) was shot in the lower Po Valley, in a social environment where there was no trace of Fascism. The story was remote from the regime’s directives and adultery was explicitly linked to homicide. His following feature film is La Terra Trema (1948/49). It is one of the most concrete examples of Neorealist cinema, because its cast is made of non-professional actors, true Sicilian fishermen who act in their own dialect. Another masterpiece by Visconti is the film Senso (1954), a fine portrayal of the Risorgimento. An Italian Countess (Alida Valli) falls in love with an Austrian Officer (Farley Granger) and squanders the money that patriots had entrusted to her; but then she realises that her lover was taking advantage of her. We have another foretaste of Neorealism with the film Bitter Rice (1949) by Giuseppe De Santis, showing the turbid passion of a young Vittorio Gassman for the rice weeder Silvana Mangano. Michelangelo Antonioni shot his first feature film in 1950, Story of a Love Affair. It is set in the upperclass Milan, where the suspicions of a well-off husband lead his wife (Lucia Bosé) to meet again an old flame of hers (Massimo Girotti) and arrange with him the murder of her husband. In 1952, Alessandro Blasetti launched the episode films. In Altri tempi, Aldo Fabrizi, in the role of a street bookseller, starts the episodes, which are drawn from the literature of the beginning of the century. Prince Antonio De Curtis, whose stage-name was Totò, performed for both the theatre and the cinema. After the war, he became the show-stealer of the comedy cinema; he was little appreciated by the critics, but obtained great box-office success. Among his works, some light comedies such as Il ratto delle Sabine (1945) and some masterpieces, like Risate di gioia (1960), the only film where he acted with Anna Magnani, his theatre partner in the successful revues of the 40s.
In 1960, true masterpieces of the Italian cinema were shot: L’Avventura by Antonioni, Il bell’Antonio by Bolognini, Rocco and his brothers by Visconti and Two Women by De Sica. However, the unforgettable film which, once again, was the watershed between the old and the new, is La dolce vita by Federico Fellini. This complex film analyses in depth the changes which were taking place in the Italian society on the verge of the economic boom. These same events were carefully described three years later in the homonymous film Il Boom, by De Sica and Zavattini.
By Armando Giuffrida