Neorealism

Today we are going to talk about an issue which is a bit far from our main themes, but which is part of Italian culture: neorealism.

Probably, or quite certainly, many of you have seen a lot of neorealist films on TV without knowing that they were part of this artistic trend; in fact neorealism is a typical Italian artistic trend which was born between the 40s and the 50s. Neorealist artists chose two main ways to express themselves, actually they preferred both writing and cinema. Now let's focus on some neorealist works of both categories.

Talking about writing one of the most famous works in Italy is The Path to the Spiders' Nests by Italo Calvino (1964); actually in this book we can remark some of the main themes of Italian neorealism such as, for example, the artists' need to feel separate from the current political situation and to contribute in some way to make the political authorities hear people's voice. If we analyze the historic period in which neorealism was born, we can easily go back to the needs and issues which contributed to its birth, actually in the 40s in Italy still reigned the fascist regime and, especially at the beginning of that century, people had to face also WW2. In this socio-cultural context artists aren't satisfied of being alienated from the rest of the world, but they chose to take part in the fight and take the field with their works which are clearly supporting Italian people who have been put on their knees by 20 years of pain. In this way artists became the most important representatives of Italian antifascism and they give voice to masses during the last years of war, the Resistance and the difficult period which followed the end of the Second World War.

When it comes to the cinema, the most famous movie is, without any doubt, Bicycle Thieves by Vittorio De Sica (1948), but it is necessary to underline that neorealist writer and film directors had two different ways to send their message to the audience and the authorities; in fact in addition to the evident difference in the communication medium, film directors preferred to make their audience think, but in what way? Generally in neorealist films we see on the screen daily life scenes which hide in themselves a more dramatic side; so film directors decide to use something that other artists don't care, that is to say obvious things as episodes that people live in their daily routines which seem "normal", but which have to make people think about what is now defined as normal only because it has been imposed by a regime or a strong ideology.