Italian Neorealist Cinema: An Aesthetic Approach

by Christopher Wagstaff

The end of the Second World War saw the emergence of neorealist film in Italy. In Italian Neorealist Cinema, Christopher Wagstaff analyses three neorealist films that have had significant influence on filmmakers around the world. Wagstaff treats these films as assemblies of sounds and images rather than as representations of historical reality. If Roberto Rossellini's Roma città aperta and Paisà , and Vittorio De Sica's Ladri di biciclette are still, half a century after they were made, among the most highly valued artefacts in the history of cinema, Wagstaff suggests that this could be due to the aesthetic and rhetorical qualities of their assembled narratives, performances, locations, lighting, sound, mise en scène, and montage. This volume begins by situating neorealist cinema in its historical, industrial, commercial and cultural context, and makes available for the first time a large amount of data on post-war Italian cinema. Wagstaff offers a theoretical discussion of what it means to treat realist films as aesthetic artefacts before moving on to the core of the book, which consists of three studies of the films under discussion. Italian Neorealist Cinema not only offers readers in Film Studies and Italian Studies a radically new perspective on neorealist cinema and the Italian art cinema that followed it, but theorises and applies a method of close analysis of film texts for those interested in aesthetics and rhetoric, as well as cinema in general.

514 pages, Paperback

First published December 29, 2007

Reviews

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the best film texts I have read, the appendices is amongst the best I have seen of any book and provides a comprehensive overview of essentially all relevant quantifiable statistics on Italian neorealism. On just the topic of box office takings there are charts and graphs representing what regions/cities had the best takings, from what category of cinema (conventional to converted parish church), how each film fluctuated in profit over the weeks they were being screened. This is just on the topic of profit, additionally there is incredibly impressive quantifiable data on what would otherwise seem qualitative, a favourite of mine would be how the shot length of major neorealist films compares to Hollywood films of the same period, a statistic which must have involved someone literally timing how long each shot lasts for the full 90 minutes to 2 hours of 10-20 movies (pp. 444-446). If I were to rattle on about all of the statistics that are found in the appendices I could be hear all day, it is truly a remarkable accomplishment. Besides the appendices the bulk of the book consists of a very nice escalation of theoretical writing, beginning with the "introduction to neorealism" for the novice reader and eventually closing with some fairly in-depth micro-analysis of various neorealist films.

This is easily the most necessary text for studying Italian neorealism and is the standard to which all historial film texts should be held to. I found it in the library while writing my dissertation and it was so useful that I bought a copy for my own collection. This is by far the most referenced text in said dissertation, even more so than some films that I am specifically analysing.