Italian Neo Realism

Italian Neo Realism and New Realism

Italian Neo Realism was a new form of film starting in the 1940s that was made to rebel against the typical Hollywood "Blockbuster Movies". It brought about a new way of filming and character connection with the audience.

In these New Realism films, the audience saw the world as it was, instead of a glorified, flashy version of life. Directors often took people off the street to act in these movies instead of real actors. In the film, Bicycle Thieves, the film was shot on real locations in Italy, not on a set in a studio. In that movie, we see life as it is for Italian people in the 1940s. The main conflict of the movie was a simple, relatable problem that made us feel for the main character; he needs a bike. That was it. And through that relatively small problem, much more problems are created.

The main character in these films did not have to be good people. There didn't have to be a "good guy". The conflict could just be situational. In the film, The Exterminating Angel, there was no real main character. And the ending wasn't happy. The director made a conscious choice to shoot two scenes twice, and play them back to back. They didn't just shoot these scenes once and then replay them. They shot the same scenes twice per scene and used all of the clips. When the director was asked why he did it, he simply said "Because I wanted to." He also used physical metaphors, like three small sheep and a bear cub in one of the scenes to illustrate the class and ranking of the characters in the movie. In these movies, the directors didn't have to follow rules. They made them up as they went and were happy with what they created in the end. This new way of film making sparked a new era of films and created a revolution of how movies could be thought of.