Cinema of Italy

The history of Italian cinema began a just few months after the Lumière brothers had discovered it, and it was precisely with a few seconds of film in which Pope Leo XIII was blessing the camera.

Neorealism

Italian cinema had little prices to pay to dictatorship, and perhaps only when approaching the war, when (like in every fighting country) many works were produced for propaganda purposes. Nevertheless, Blasetti could produce in 1942 his Quattro passi tra le nuvole (Four Steps in the Clouds), which is the story of a humble employee, by many indicated as the first neorealist work.

Related Topics:
War - Propaganda - 1942

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Neorealism exploded soon after the war, with unforgettable works such as Rossellini's trilogy and with extraordinary actors such as Anna Magnani, as an attempt to describe the difficult economical and moral conditions of Italy, the changes in the mentality, in everyday life. Also because Cinecittà was occupied by the refugees, films were shot outdoor, on the devastated roads of a defeated country. This genre was soon instrumentally used for political purposes too, but in the generality of cases directors were able to keep a distinguishing barrier between art and politics.

Related Topics:
Neorealism - Anna Magnani

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Poetry and cruelty of life were harmonically combined in the works that De Sica wrote and directed together with scenarist Cesare Zavattini: among all, Sciuscià (Shoeshine - 1946), Ladri di Biciclette (The Bicycle Thief, 1948) and Miracolo a Milano (Miracle in Milan, 1950). The sad, bitter Umberto D. (1952), the touching story of an old poor man with his little dog, that life forces to beg for alms against his dignity, in the loneliness of the new society, is perhaps De Sica's masterpiece and one of most important works of the whole Italian production. Baptised with a heavy polemic with government, that would have censored it for alleged anti-national sentiments, the film did not score a commercial success and since then it has been transmitted on Italian TV once, perhaps twice only. Yet it is perhaps the most violent attack, in the apparent quietness of the action, to the rules of the new economy, the new mentality, the new values, and happens to be at the same time a conservative and a progressist view.

Related Topics:
Cesare Zavattini - 1946 - The Bicycle Thief - 1948 - 1950 - Umberto D. - 1952

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