Italian Neo Realist Films example essay topic

Italian neo realist cinema and British social realist cinema have some similarities in some ways. First of all we may say both of them breaks through dimensions for the individuals of their culture. They try to give tensions about the war. Both gives us a perspective to look at the cinema as a natural eye.

The important thing is to able to look and see as Berger's said. (John Berger Ways of Seeing) So I will try to give a brief story of two films from these fields. \n Saturday night and Sunday morning\n Rome Open City The most significant film of the 1960's British new wave in cinema, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning was in many ways the most influential of the group, with its powerful anti-establishment stance, unblushing treatment of sex and working class protagonist: Arthur Seaton was something new in British cinema. While other films of the period have dated somewhat, most of Reisz's ground-breaking film looks as fresh and powerful as ever, and it's valid to observe just how good Albert Finney was in the role of Seaton... Set in the gray industrial town of Nottingham, Alan Sillitoe's novel SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING, with all of its black realism, is successfully adapted to the screen with a powerful performance by Albert Finney in his first starring role.

Director Karel Reisz draws on his work in documentaries to give the film a sharp eye for the look and feel of northern England. Arthur Seaton (Albert Finney) is a young man trapped in a mindless factory job, intrinsically rebelling, but without any focus to his anger. He spends his Saturday nights getting drunk and his Sunday mornings fishing. His affair with a married neighbor, Brenda (Rachel Roberts), seems to please him only for its risky illicitness. Their love scenes are controversial for the palpable expression of real sexual pleasure that Roberts shows in the role of an ordinary English housewife, and because of the fact that she receives, from a handsome younger man, the sexual fulfillment that her husband can not provide. Arthur's best friend Bert (Norman Ross ington) shares Arthur's resentment but avoids his self destructive ways.

Arthur gets into increasing trouble when he impregnates Brenda (Rachel Roberts), the neglected wife of Arthur's mild-mannered co-worker Jack (Bryan Pringle). Abortions were illegal at the time, although often hinted at in British films. In the story that follows, we see this insolent rebel bluster his way through some of the formative experiences of his young adulthood. He drinks a lot of beer and continually speaks his mind about the society he's been born into: a world where people marry young, get dead-end jobs and 'before they know where they are, they " ve kicked the bucket!'. 'They rob you left, right and centre and then after they " ve skinned you dry, you get called up in the army and get shot to death!'. ..

Arthur meets a young woman, Doreen, in the pub and talks her into a date... Tension also comes when Arthur begins dating 'good girl' beauty Doreen (Shirley Ann Field), who insists upon old-fashioned values such as marriage and home-ownership as a prerequisite to sex. But he's also having an affair with Brenda and his two-timing love life moves into crisis when Brenda tells him that she's pregnant. By the end of the film he seems to be drifting into marriage with Doreen. It's a trap perhaps, but as he looks down on the bland new housing development he " ll probably be living in, he can't resist throwing a stone as a last gesture of defiance. Finney projects just the right mixture of cockiness and disaffection.

Arthur feels that he deserves better than his expected lot in life, though not because of education, intelligence, values or job skills. He feels that he is superior, because he is confident in his own manhood. Even after he has been bettered in a fight by a pair of soldiers, Arthur claims that he would have won if he had only faced them one at a time. But it is only his comeuppance that finally demonstrates to Arthur that he must conform to societal rules.

Arthur's selfish and womanizing ways may have been an influence upon Alfie (1966), which featured a similar, starring character. But Alfie lacked Arthur's resentment of society, while Arthur does not think of his transgressions as being a game. In British cinema until the late 1950's (apart from a brief wave of egalitarianism during World War Two), working-class characters performed much the same function as black characters in Hollywood movies. They were types, thick-accented comic relief to the main drama which typically involved such quintessential middle-class actors as John Mills and Jack Hawkins. In movies such as Brief Encounter (1945), the working-class characters had only a painfully limited emotional range compared with that of their well-spoken 'betters'. Even though the movie is populated entirely by working-class characters, the British class system is delineated here with an accurate verbal savagery which no film before.

The maintenance of the class system was, and is, the most important organizing principle of injustice in British society. The film very powerfully presents this as a trap and, similarly, work and marriage are seen as constraints holding the individual in a grip of conformity. Seaton sees the world through jaundiced eyes but, his sexism aside, it's a persuasive viewpoint. His description of his parents is still as good a summary as you " ll get of a country where tabloid newspapers and TV game shows are staples in far too many people's lives: 'They " ve got a television set and a packet of fags but they " re both dead from the neck up...

They " ve had their hash settled for them, so that all the bloody gaffers can push them around like a lot of sheep!'s saturday Night and Sunday Morning was arguably the first British film to give an un condescending representation of working-class life and it was certainly the first to celebrate convincingly a working-class hero. For all his faults and vulgar bluster, I liked Arthur Seaton a lot when I first saw him. At last thing about this film I may say is Saturday Night offers a superb example of gritty realism with its industrial north and working class settings, and the angry and anti-establishment attitude on the part of the main protagonist. From director Roberto Rossellini comes one of the most treasured films of the Italian neo-Realist period. The movement is characterized by stories set amongst the poor and working class, filmed in long takes on location, frequently using non-actors for secondary and sometimes primary roles. Italian neo realist films mostly content with the difficult economical and moral conditions of postwar Italy, reflecting the changes in the Italian psyche and the conditions of everyday life: defeat, poverty, and desperation.

Neo realism was first introduced to the world in 1946 with Rome, Open City, which was the first major film to come out Italy after the war. Despite containing many elements extraneous to the principles of neo realism, it depicted clearly the struggle of normal Italian people to live from day to day under the extraordinary difficulties of the German occupation of Rome. The children play a key role in this, and their presence at the end of the film is indicative of their role in neo realism as a whole: as observers of the difficulties of today who hold the key to the future. Made in 1945 on a shoestring budget under harsh post-World War 2 conditions, Rossellini's film is a film of great emotional depth and political impact. The film concerns the plight of the true Italian people: the brave partisans who fought against -- and helped defeat -- the fascists who held power over Italy in the nightmare WWII years. Like few films made prior to it, ROME OPEN CITY explores a uniquely human emotional landscape absent from most Hollywood war films.

The Italian neo-Realist films (of which some of the works of Lu chino Visconti and Vittorio de Sica would be classified) were nothing less than celluloid revolutions in world cinema and their explosive reverberations are with us today in all films that express human chaos and tragedies in an intellectually and emotionally honest manner Shortly after the liberation of Italy in 1945, Roberto Rossellini took to the war ravaged streets of Rome and filmed a highly unsettling, yet profoundly affirming story of the struggle and defiance of ordinary people in the face of human adversity, and created the indelible image of Open City. Using narrative, documentary styled filmmaking that would come to be known as neo realism, Open City chronicles the plight, not of individual characters, but of the collective soul of the Italian people. An idealistic resistance leader, Giorgio Manfred i (Marcello Pagliero), is pursued by a persistent German officer, Bergmann (Henry Feist), attempting to elicit the names of other members of the underground movement. He goes to the apartment of a lithographer named Francesco (Francesco Grandjaquet) seeking assistance in transferring money to other rebels, and encounters his fianc'e, Pina (Anna Magna ni), a kind, but weary widow who lives in an adjacent apartment. Pina sends her son, Marcello (Vito Annichiarico) to fetch Don Pietro (Aldo Fabrizio) a sympathetic priest who agrees to orchestrate the exchange. In the morning of Francesco and Pina's planned wedding, German soldiers search the apartment building, turning all the residents out into the street, and detain all of the men for routine questioning.

Giorgio escapes and contacts a former lover, a self-absorbed actress named Marina (Maria Michi) who betrays him by disclosing his plans to Bergman's assistant, Ingrid (Giovanna Gallet ti). At last I may brief as ROME, OPEN CITY and SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING are the direct portraits of the time in which they were made; life as it was then lived is reflected on the screen with great authenticity..