Italian
NEOREALISM:
A film movement that
began in Italy near the end of World War II. Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio
De Sica, and Luchino Visconti were among those Italian directors of
the time who produced films described as neorealistic. Their approach
to technique and theme rejected the well-made studio film and the happy
ending-story. Neorealism is characterized by social consciousness, simple
stories of the common worker, and location shooting. The neorealist
directors often used non-actors as performers and took their cameras
into the streets and into real settings for visual authenticity and
thematic credibility. Among the outstanding films produced during the
height of neorealism between 1945 and 1952 were Open City (1945), Paisan
(1947), La Terra Trema (1948), and The Bicycle Thief [1948].
Italian neorealism
as a film style developed as a result of social and economic unrest
in Italy that accompanied the end of World War II. De Sica, describing
neorealism's birth, wrote that the lack of an organized film industry
in Italy at the end of the war and "problem of finance ... encouraged
filmmakers to create a kind of movie that would no longer be dependent
on fiction and on invented themes ... but would draw on the reality
of everyday life."
Because of the efforts
of the neorealist filmmakers to place their characters in natural settings
and to build their stories around "everyday life," the structure of
their films led to their being described as "found stories" or flow-of-life
films. Narrative incidents and flow of action appear so casual and spontaneous
as to give the impression the filmmaker has simply followed a character
and discovered the story rather than having invented it. The thematic
interest of Italian neorealism in the personal struggles of common people
has been carried abroad in films such as Sounder (1973), Blue Collar
(1978), Country (1984), and Salaam Bombay! (1988).
SURREALISM:
... originating in
France in the early 1920s, [a movement] that seeks to express subconscious
states through the disparate and illogical arrangement of imagery. Early
surrealist filmmakers - Man Ray, Salvadore Dali, and Luis Bunuel - captured
on film a variety of material phenomena and arranged the imagery in
incongruous ways so as to effect subjective, dreamlike meanings. The
classic example of an early surrealist film is Un Chien Andalous (1928),
By Bunuel and Dali. Surrealism was born in revolt against realism and
traditional art. According to an early manifesto written by its leader,
Andre Breton, surrealism is defined as "pure psychic automatism by which
an attempt is made to express, either verbally, in writing, or in any
other manner, the true function of thought."
The
Avante-Garde & Modernism:
[to be added]
POSTMODERNISM:
Fellini is not a
postmodernist filmmaker.