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Italian Neorealism
The revival of humanism
Natural light, non-professional actors, documentary-like methods of filming... As Giotto did with Renaissance painting, Italian Neorealism not only changed the understanding of "reality" but also permanently Changed the way movies are made. Its impact is historic. Jean-Luc Godard once said: “All roads lead to Rome, the Undefended City ( Roma, città aperta , 1945).” Without Neorealism, there would be no French New Wave, let alone no French New Wave. The 1960s and 1970s saw a series of film waves that came and went around the world. Even now, open any contemporary Italian film, such as "Miracle" (L e meraviglie, 20 14) and "La zzaro felice" (La zzaro felice, 2018), and you will find that neorealism still exists in their blood.
By the mid-1950s, the first-generation standard bearers of Neorealism, Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio De Sica, had passed their creative peaks, and the torch passed to a younger generation of Italian cinema. In the hands of people, including Federico Fellini. He carried the banner of neorealism in the 1950s and launched the "Lonely Trilogy" , which won the Oscar for best foreign language film twice and shocked the world film industry.
The "Lonely Trilogy" continues the tradition of neorealism and focuses on the little people at the bottom of society. These people are powerless against fate, and despite all the hardships, they still hold hope for the future. Fellini's films of this period are full of sympathy for the suffering of the underclass, as he understands how difficult it was to survive in the post-war rubble. Leaving aside all the film skills, "The Solitude Trilogy" once again shows that Neorealism is essentially a kind of humanism, a kind of humanistic spirit of compassion. From this point of view, an important reason why Neorealism originated in Italy is the spirit of the Christian tradition deeply rooted in sympathy for the weak, and Italy is precisely at the center of this spirit.
The real question, however, is why was neorealism suddenly obsolete in the early 1960s? To answer these questions, we have to look at what happened to Fellini?
Roman beings
Fellini's watershed
We turn our attention to La Dolce Vita ( La dolce vita , 1960), a watershed moment in Fellini's personal work. First of all, the object of Fellini's attention is different - it is no longer the poor people at the bottom, and the protagonist of the film has become Marcello, a young journalist chasing fame and fortune. The film is first and foremost his personal spiritual journey, following him as he jumps back and forth between day and night, passing through carnival nightclubs, witnessing fanatical religious gatherings, and participating in the extravagant evenings of high society... Marcello grew increasingly disgusted with Vanity Fair and began to examine his life, dreaming of being a writer and doing something worthwhile. But everything ended in exhaustion in the end, and he still didn't get out of Rome's feasting.
"Sweet Life" is also a picture of all living beings in the eternal capital of Rome. Through Marcello's eyes, what we see is no longer the misery of life in the period of neorealism, but the spiritual emptiness of the upper class and the spirit of the people at the bottom. stupid. For the former, there is a very representative character in the film, that is, Marcello's friend Steiner . He has a happy family, runs an art salon, and has a large group of friends in the literary and art circles - this person seems to have understood the mysteries of life and has everything that Marcello envied. Seeing him as his role model, Marcello, after self-examination and determined to change his life, was surprised to hear that Steiner had committed suicide soon after. It turned out that under the bright exterior, even this wise man with a halo was actually an empty shell. This brings us to what he said to Marcello earlier, that the most miserable life is better than a protected life in a society where everything is calculated precisely – no doubt he was referring to the life of the modern man.
As for the spiritual ignorance of the people at the bottom, the film shows it as the blindness of belief. Faith is a pervasive spiritual force in neorealist films. In Rossellini's "Rome, the Undefended City," a Christian priest heroically dies after being tortured by the Nazis. In "Sweet Life" 15 years later, several little girls announced that they had seen the apparition of the Virgin Mary, so thousands of believers flocked to it, but they didn't know that someone else was behind it. There are also the media, including Marcello. He watched indifferently as the mad devotees followed the girls who believed and started running, chasing after the "Virgin"—faith turned into a farce, a frenzy.
"God is dead"
The abdication of neorealism
Here we may find the reason for Fellini's transformation, which is also the reason for the end of Neorealism - in the late 1950s, Italy was in a period of economic recovery, the two world wars were a thing of the past, people The material life of the people is enriched again, the old social contradictions are replaced by the new ones, and the theme of suffering like neorealism becomes out of place. So it can be found that it is the whole social picture that is really found to change, and Fellini has captured this change astutely. He deeply realized that beneath the flamboyant and extravagant material appearance, there is the emptiness and degeneration of modern people's spirit.
This is not a new discovery. As early as the end of the 19th century, Nietzsche predicted the crisis of modernity that Europe would face after the decline of Christianity. The crisis only really began to emerge in the 1960s, when both Fellini and Antonioni found it to be a serious spiritual crisis. To this day, the crisis remains the same. The period of physical reconstruction is over, but what about spiritual reconstruction? Although L'avventura ( 1960) looks completely different from Dolce Vita, the themes are similar: spiritual emptiness, failure of communication. God dies and leaves a void, what else can modern people use as a spiritual support?
But neither Fellini nor Antonioni can claim to have found a definitive solution. The problem is far bigger than film, and it is bigger than art itself.
This human misfortune has made the film a fortune. At the Cannes Film Festival in 1960, Fellini's "La Dolce Vita" and Antonioni's "Adventures" won the Palme d'Or and the Jury Prize. At the same time, two Italian cinematic masters of Neorealism pushed the boundaries of this movement. Neorealism officially announced the curtain call, compassionate humanism gave way to absolute attention to the heart and spirit, and modern cinema began to enter a new era of internalization.
*This article was originally published on the cinewoo public account. repost is not allowed without consent.
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