The Portrayal of Reality on films after Italian Neorealism

Abstract

Beginning in Italy in 1942 with the release of ‘Obsession’ (1942) by Luchino Visconti, Italian Neorealism was a movement that aimed to move away from the look of glamourized film productions of the time in favor of a more realistic depiction of human lives. The neorealist films that were born as a reaction to the Fascist ideology, featured workers and poor people as a way to oppose the regime’s ideals and also show the struggles which the Italian population was going through during and after the war. The goal of this thesis is to understand how realism was achieved in neorealist films in regard to cinematography and camera techniques. The thesis offers a definition of terms such as ‘realism’, ‘naturalism’, ‘deep focus’, and ‘newsreel aesthetic’ alongside a brief overview of the development of realism in art and the development of cinematography lighting until the 1940s in order to analyze how they come together to shape the neorealist movement’s aesthetic. Using primarily Rome, Open City and The Earth Trembles, film analysis is provided in order to exemplify the neorealist aesthetic while explaining how the filmmakers’ choices granted an increased sense of realism to their films. Ultimately, the findings are extended to an analysis of how the neorealist choices influenced other filmmakers and how they pushed the realistic representation further.