School of Entertainment and Design Technology FIL 1030 History of Film Lecture Notes Chapter 13 prepared by Mario Beguiristain, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Film from Mast, Gerald and Bruce F. Kawin. A Short History of the Movies. Abridged Ninth Edition. Longman Press, Pearson Education, Inc. 2007. ISBN #: 0-321-41821-2 These notes are intended solely as a study aid and are not meant to replace the reading assignments from the text. Chapter 13: Italian Neo-Realism and the French New Wave After World War II: . American films in transition . European Cinema emerges as “best, serious, quality cinema” . Cultural snobbism: “ART Theaters” European Films vs. American Films: American Films: considered escapist fare, entertainment, narrative driven, frivolous. European Films: seen as realistic, serious, worthy of study, intellectually engaging. Realism = Art Mast: “European films structured themselves around a theme or a psychological problem, more than around a story.” Italian Neo-Realism Precedents: . Mussolini establishes Cinecittà . Centro Sperimentale (first film school) . White Telephone comedies . U.S. films were banned Vittorio De Sica became a matinee idol in Ai Vostri Ordni, . Devastated Post-War Italy: Signora! (1939) and Il Signor Max (1937). Invariably set onboard Unemployment, poverty and scarcity liners or in hotels or nightclubs, these "white telephone" pictures gently mocked the upper-classes. Cinecittà Studios Front Gate Aerial view of Cinecittà Studios outside of Rome Cesare Zavattini defined the principles of Neo-Realism (p.328): “To show things as they are, not as they seem, nor as the bourgeois would prefer them to appear; to write fictions about the human side of representative social, political, and economic conditions; to shoot on location wherever possible; to use untrained actors in the majority of the roles; to capture and reflect reality with little or no compromise; to depict common people rather than overdressed heroes and fantasy role models; to reveal the everyday rather than the exceptional; and to show a person’s relationship to the real social environment rather than to his or her romantic dreams.” Centro Sperimentale, the world’s first film school Roberto Rossellini Post-War Neo-Realist Trilogy: “Open City” (1945): Ana Magnani: Resistance in Rome “Paisan” (1946): Six stories on Allied Invasion and Nazi retreat “Germany Year Zero” (1947): Hungry boy lives in Berlin rubble “The Miracle” (1948) Anna Magnani is a crazed peasant woman who claims her pregnancy is the result of immaculate conception. Rossellini intended this film to be a study of personal faith in the face of social ridicule but the film was denounced by the New York Catholic League as "heretical", Protests, bomb scares and the threat of fines and jail terms (possible at the time since films were not protected as free speech under the first Amendment) forced the distributors to initiate a landmark lawsuit. The case, which went to the Supreme Court, established for the first time that film was a form of speech protected by the First Amendment. The Ingrid Bergman scandal and their collaboration: “Stromboli” (1949): Bergman goes to live on an island and faces repudiation “The Greatest Love” (1952) “Ingrid Bergman” (1953) Episode in We, the Women with Bergman as herself. “Voyage to Italy” (1953) Starring Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders. “Joan of Arc at the Stake” (1954) “La Paura” (Fear) (1954) Last Rossellini film starring Ingrid Bergman. “Stromboli” Vittorio De Sica and Cesare Zavattini The former White Telephone Comedy leading man joins the socialist writer and they become the standard bearers of Italian Neo-Realism. “Shoeshine” (1946) “The Bicycle Thief” (1948) “Miracle in Milan” (1950) “Umberto D.” (1952) Vittorio De Sica Cesare Zavattini André Bazin on “Umberto D.” : "I have no hesitation in stating that the cinema has rarely gone such a long way toward making us The aware of what it is to be a man. And also, for that Bicycle matter, of what it is to be a dog." Thief.