How To Read Vittorio De Sica

Paisan is a revolutionary, documentary-style film, consisting of six separate but seemingly related episodes. Director Roberto Rossellini uses this film to portray the drastic consequences of war on a nation, the people, and overall society. Neorealism was a pivotal movement, and Paisan brought attention to the Fascist influence by showing the harsh economic and social reality of World War II. Rossellini also uses Paisan to allude to regionalism and the importance of a unified nation. Paisan exposes a fundamental truth and emphasizes a need for reconstruction through the use of a complex setting, elements of humanity, and reoccurring themes of revival.

The gangster genre within films in America has accomplished numerous positive criticisms and constant willing audiences due to containing outstanding spectacles and mind-blowing action. The Godfather, being second on the IMDb Top 250 Movies, has set a new popular concept to life within the Mafia from their point of view. Doing so, creating a positive association. Yet within Italy, the same topic contains a complete different view. Movies such as I Cento Passi demonstrate unenthusiastic view by those whom are outside yet negatively affected by those members. Unlike American films, the gangsters are not as often viewed at the protagonist and are the main causes for the problematic events. But how different is Italian Mafia and American

This film was created after the fall of Benito Mussolini’s government, Rossellini wanted to create the film to show the realism and the after effect of the war, the films were created majority on the streets of Rome all the buildings and the infrastructures were damaged the film was well thought out Neorealism was a sign of cultural change and social progress that Italy was going through.

Two films, both alike in content, set in fair Verona, where the directors laid out their scene, one created by Franco Zeffirelli in 1968 and the other by Baz Luhbrmann in 1996. Both cinematic, both staying true to the plot and dialogue, each one radically different than the other, Zeffirelli sets his film within historical actuality, while Luhbrmann presents his with a modern twist. A story of love, revenge and death, revolving around a pair of star-crossed lovers, interpreted differently, but presented in the same form.

In Jean-Louis Comolli and Jean Narboni’s essay “Cinema/Ideology/Criticism,” they put forward the central argument that film is a commercial product in the capitalist system and therefore also the unconscious instrument of the dominant ideology which produces it. In opposition to the classic film theory that applauds camera as an impartial device to reproduce reality, they argue that what the camera reproduces is merely a refraction of the prevailing ideology. Therefore, the primary and political task for filmmakers is to disrupt this replication of the world as self-evident and the function of film criticism is to identify and evaluate that politics. Comolli and Narboni then suggest seven categories of films confronting ideology in different ways, among which the second category resists the prevailing ideology on two levels. Films of this group not only overtly deal with political contents in order to “attack their ideological assimilation” (Comolli and Narboni 483), but also achieve their goal through breaking down the conventional way of depicting reality.

The essay provides vital information about the social distinctions in the society but readers may disagree with the idea that the working poor may never get the opportunity to advance their lives, regardless of the effort they put. It is only right to argue that the working poor remain in the impoverished condition because their undertakings do not generate enough income to help them get out of the unfriendly situation. The working poor, however, may emerge to be

Alfred Hitchcock is widely regarded as a prime example of an auteur, a theory that emerged in the 1950s by Truffaut, in the ‘politique des auteurs’ of Cahiers du Cinema (Tudor 121). The auteur theory, as defined by Andrew Tudor, is premised on the assumption that “any director creates his films on the basis of a central structure”(140) and thus, if you consider their films in relation to each other, commonalities can be found within them. These commonalities work to demonstrate the view of the director as “the true creator of the film” (Tudor 122). Evidence of an auteur can be found in examining a director’s creative tendencies, in their distinctive themes and motifs, stylistic choices,

Italian Neorealism was a movement of art, which strived to illustrate the normal lives of the ordinary, working class people in post war Rome, usually with the use of non-professional actors. As one of the best Italian Neorealist film, Bicycle Thieves showed an absolute depiction of the war’s impact on daily life and exposed a world in which sufferings, unkindness and corruption jeopardized the rationality of human beings and action of men (Schoonover). By utilizing a depressing and gloomy cinematography, De Sica implies the somber lives of the poor and their crisis in losing their self-identity and moral conscience as a result of parochial society that make a fetish of personal belongings as a mode of social acceptance. By examining the cinematography, ‘mise-en-scene’ and events in the film, the daily struggles of the working class in post war Rome can be seen through the crisis of masculinity, class struggle, ethical dilemma and a profoundly patriarchal society.

	Another fine example of neorealism is The Bicycle Thief (1948), written by Cesare Zavattini and directed by Vittorio De Sica. The narrative of this film unfolds in post-W.W.II times. The film is a portrait of the post-war Italian disadvantaged class (the majority) in their search for self-respect. It is a time of struggle for the Italian people, amplified by a shortage of employment and lack of social services. In the first scenes of the film, these conditions are evident as Antonio Ricci (Lamberto Maggiorami) meets his spouse Maria (Lianalla Carell) on his way back home. We see the "men" arguing at the employment "office" as the "women" argue about the shortage of water. Although the director's

Italian neorealism (1945-1953), through directors like Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio De Sica, made its trademark on cinematic history not only in Italy, but also throughout the world. It was films such as Rome Open City (Roma città aperta, 1945), The Bicycle Thief (Ladri di biciclette, 1948), and Umberto D., (1952) whose style of depicting the harsh economic and social realities of the poor and working class of Italy took off as a new cinematic style after World War II. Neorealism is a response to desperate economic situations and often illustrates suffering, poverty, injustice, and/or discrimination. Many argue that neorealism is a way of seeing reality without prejudice due to the documentary-like technique of the film and its ability

In Italy, directors focused on the moral and economic conditions that came with the postwar generation quickly after the war and addressed the war instead of not acknowledging as German cinema did for so long. Unlike Alice in the Cities and The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, films such as Bicycle Thieves depicted dislocation during the postwar period in the Neorealist style, made in 1948, this film differs greatly from the two former films discussed. In Bicycle Thieves, Vittorio De Sica delivers a political message regarding the difficulty of survival in postwar Italy, but also conveys a sense of psychological dislocation through the character development of Antonio Ricci. In many ways, Italy’s economy is much to blame for Ricci’s two-year unemployment in which the film begins, however, Ricci has as many internal struggles as he does externally. Neorealism lies heavily on the depiction of real life problems depicting common people and often used people from the street as actors, in this film the man who played Ricci, Lamberto Maggiorani, actually was a factory worker, which helps solidify the film’s authenticity. Towards the end of Bicycle Thieves, Ricci’s efforts to retrieve his stolen bicycle fail when the people that live near the boy who stole it side with the epileptic boy as he has a

In this essay I will look at the emergence of Italian neo-realist cinema and how Italian Neo-realism has been defined and classified in the film industry as well as how its distinct cinematic characteristics could only have been conceived in Italy and how these characteristics set the neo-realist style apart from other realist movements and from Hollywood.

i Suoi Fratelli, it is beneficial to analyse these films with reference to two sub-themes:

Naomi Greene once said that, “Pier Paolo Pasolini was the more protean figure than anyone else in the world of film.” This means that Pasolini was a versatile film director because he simplified cinema into the simplest way possible, while still visually embodying an important message to his cinematic viewers. Because of his encounter with Italy’s social changes, it influenced the writing and films he chose to write. His aspirations regarding his written work “Cinema of Poetry” explains how a writer usage of words and a filmmaker’s choice of images are linked to how cinema can be a poetry of language. He characterizes cinema as irrational and his approach on free indirect point of view is used to achieve a particular effect in his body of work. His claims made in the Cinema of Poetry illustrate why he stylized his films in the manner he did, such as Mamma Roma through the images he portrayed on screen. By examining Pasolini’s approach to poetic communication in the Cinema of Poetry, we can see that these cinematic attributes about reality and authenticity depicted in Mamma Roma are utilized to question cinematic viewer’s effortless identification of cinema with life. This is important to illustrate because Pasolini wants to motivate viewers to have an interpretative rather than a passionate relationship with the screen.

The Italian Neo-realist film Umberto D directed by Vittorio De Sica follows the life of elderly Umberto Domenico Ferrari, a pensioner struggling to get by after pensions have been reduced post World War II. In the aftermath of major tragedy and suffering, such as the war that Umberto lived through, hope can be hard to find. Society is a web of dependence. Individuals rely on the government to provide a support structure of benefits and protection. Individuals count on each other for love and validation. When one strand of the web collapses, disaster can result. In this case, the government let Umberto down by not providing his pension. His life tilts on the edge, but the dependence of his dog brings it back into balance. Umberto D shows how