Global Neorealism. the Transnational History of a Film Style

GLOBAL NEOREALISM This page intentionally left blank GLOBAL NEOREALISM The Transnational History of a Film Style Edited by Saverio Giovacchini and Robert Sklar university press of mississippi t jackson www.upress.state.ms.us The University Press of Mississippi is a member of the Association of American University Presses. Copyright © 2012 by University Press of Mississippi All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America First printing 2012 ∞ Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Global neorealism : the transnational history of a film style / edited by Saverio Giovacchini and Robert Sklar. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-61703-122-9 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-61703-123-6 (ebook) 1. Realism in motion pictures. 2. Motion pictures—Italy—History—20th century. I. Giovacchini, Saverio, 1963– II. Sklar, Robert. PN1995.9.R3G56 2011 791.43’612—dc22 2011015992 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available For Ingalisa si vales ego valeo For Nevona, Nadav, Cedar, and Jake and To the memory of Robert Sklar, maestro e amico This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix Introduction The Geography and History of Global Neorealism 3 saverio giovacchini and robert sklar PART 1 Before the (Neorealist) Revolution 19 vito zagarrio Soviet-Italian Cinematic Exchanges, 1920s–1950s From Early Soviet Film Theory to Neorealism 37 masha salazkina The Role of Documentary Film in the Formation of the Neorealist Cinema 52 luca caminati PART 2 “The Exalted Spirit of the Actual” James Agee, Critic and Filmmaker, and the U.S. Response to Neorealism 71 robert sklar Marketing Meaning, Branding Neorealism Advertising and Promoting Italian Cinema in Postwar America 87 nathaniel brennan Neorealism Another “Cinéma de Papa” for the French New Wave? 103 caroline eades viii contents “With an Incredible Realism That Beats the Best of the European Cinemas” The Making of Barrio Gris and the Reception of Italian Neorealism in Argentina, 1947–1955 125 paula halperin Living in Peace after the Massacre Neorealism, Colonialism, and Race 141 saverio giovacchini PART 3 From Italian Neorealism to New Latin American Cinema Ruptures and Continuities during the 1960s 163 mariano mestman Importing Neorealism, Exporting Cinema Indian Cinema and Film Festivals in the 1950s 178 neepa majumdar Neorealism and Nationalist African Cinema 194 sada niang Documenting the Social Reality of Brazil Roberto Rossellini, the Paraíban Documentary School, and the Cinema Novistas 209 sarah sarzynski Neorealism Iranian Style 226 hamid naficy Epilogue Neorealism, Cinema of Poetry, and Italian Contemporary Cinema 240 silvia carlorosi Contributors 257 Index 260 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We thank the Nathan and Jeanette Miller Center for Historical Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park, for precious help in the organization of the conference that started the process that this book completes. At the University Press of Mississippi, Leila Salisbury admirably shepherded the book and assigned it to very competent readers and an extraordinary copy editor, Ellen D. Goldlust-Gingrich. Robert Sklar died on July 2, 2011, when Global Neorealism was going to press. This book would not have been possible without Bob’s unparalleled knowl- edge of world cinema, his humor, and his commitment to clear and elegant writing. Global Neorealism is dedicated to his memory. ix This page intentionally left blank GLOBAL NEOREALISM This page intentionally left blank INTRODUCTION The Geography and History of Global Neorealism saverio giovacchini and robert sklar Among the terms that cinema scholars, critics, and filmmakers have developed in the course of the twentieth century, few if any have had the staying power of neorealism. Since 1943, when Umberto Barbaro took the term from literary analysis and employed it to describe French realist cinema of the 1930s,1 the term has remained current, widely applied, and hotly debated in its definition. In 2008, after winning the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival for his film, Gomorra (Gomorrah), about the Italian Camorra’s stranglehold on the harbor of Naples, director Matteo Garrone pointed out that his movie was meant less as a reference to the mob tales of Martin Scorsese than to the neorealist “war trilogy” of Roberto Rossellini—in other words, that it was less indebted to Mean Streets (1973), Goodfellas (1990), and Casino (1995) than to Roma, città aperta (Rome, Open City, 1945), Paisà (1946), and Germania anno zero (Germany Year Zero, 1948).2 More tragically, in 2010, Iranian authorities arrested Persian filmmaker Jafar Panahi and detained him for three months; they also denied him an exit visa to attend the Venice Film Festival, which he had won in 2000 with his film Dayereh (The Circle). International press cov- erage of Panahi’s ordeal, which was related to political conflicts within Iran, invariably referred to him as a “director of neorealist films.”3 Indeed, Panahi has often been asked to speak about Iranian neorealism and its relation to the Italian example (a theme extensively discussed in Hamid Naficy’s essay in this volume). In 2001, Panahi told an interviewer, “The Iranian cinema treats social subjects. Because you’re showing social problems, you want to be more realistic and give the actual, the real aesthetics of the situation. Whatever shows the truth of the society, in a very artistic way—that will find its own neo-realism.”4 Panahi’s words could serve as the touchstone of the film histories and debates that are the subject of Global Neorealism: The Transnational History of a Film Style. This volume seeks primarily to investigate how neorealism has 3 4 introduction become central to the issues of political cinema in Iran and elsewhere in the world. Our itinerary crosses many nations, starts before the official post– World War II birth of Italian neorealism, and continues after its alleged death at the onset of the 1950s. Examining this long and complex journey, Global Neorealism remaps the geography and rewrites the history of neorealism from a transnational perspective. The authors included here conceive of the two as profoundly connected, pushing further three different but intertwined histo- riographic debates. The debate about neorealism has often dealt with the issue of defining the term and its style. The discussion recalls the long-lasting arguments about the definition of film noir: everyone from the film critic to the ordinary mov- iegoer seems to recognize a neorealist or noir film even in the absence of a consensual, unified, critical definition of the genre. Already by the late 1940s, film critics and filmmakers were able to identify the general characteristics of a neorealist film. Writing in 1948, director Stefano “Steno” Vanzina deemed it possible to list the rules that made the “perfect neorealist director [perfetto regista neorealista]”: for example, he wrote, “if you set your story in the out- skirts of the city, you will soon be able to grab [a critical] victory.”5 Yet scholars and practitioners have encountered problems whenever they have tried to give the term a normative definition. In 1952, the French maga- zine Films et documents listed “the 10 points of neorealism,” among which were “topical scripts,” “the truth of actors, often nonprofessionals,” the “truth of the lighting,” a “photography reminiscent of the reportage style,” and the “refusal of the studio.”6 In the intervening decades, however, critics have pointed out that Roberto Rossellini cast professionals such as Anna Magnani and Aldo Fabrizi for the central roles of Rome, Open City. In his recent Italian Neorealist Film: An Aesthetic Approach, Christopher Wagstaff reports that even in Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves, 1948), “only the three leading roles in a very large cast were performed by non-professionals.”7 In those films and many others, technological problems also prevented any consistent direct sound recording, and slow film stock made the use of natural light almost impossible, especially in interior shots.8 Responding to the difficulty of finding a shared common denominator among the multiple and at times discordant definitions of neorealism, Lino Micciché and Alberto Farassino attempted two different interpretive strate- gies to define neorealism in somewhat looser and more capacious terms. For Farassino, neorealism was not a set of rigid norms but rather a stylistic trend ruling over a short-lived moment of Italian cinema from 1945 to 1949. While few true “neorealist films” had been made, almost all films of this period in- clude some elements of the neorealist style, which “infiltrat[ed], cross[ed], introduction 5 ennobl[ed], or even contaminat[ed]” aspects of almost all the Italian films produced in this period.9 For Micciché, neorealism was an ethical sensibility animating a generation of diverse filmmakers. In fact, he wrote, neorealism was a shared ethical position “that has characterized a generation [of filmmakers] hungry for reality (to show) and of truths (to tell).”10 Endeavors to unearth the historical intellectual origins of Italian neorealism have been less multifarious. Commentators now agree with Millicent Marcus’s contention that Italian neorealism was an attempt not solely to tell “reality” but also to reveal what makes that “reality” possible. “I accept to be shown the way banderillas are made,” Cesare Zavattini wrote in 1953, “as long as the entire process of production is also demystified for me, together with all the human and social relations that [this process] implies.”11

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