Summary
Highlights
Neorealism is a literary and cultural movement of post-World War II Italy, spanning the 1940s and 1950s. Writers and artists, deeply affected by the war and inspired by Resistance ideals, sought to renew Italian literature. They rejected fascism and embraced democratic values, introducing innovative linguistic and thematic elements. Early influences include Alberto Moravia's "Gli indifferenti," Corrado Alvaro's "Gente in Aspromonte," and Ignazio Silone's "Fontamara."
The term "Neorealism" was first used in cinema by Luchino Visconti with his 1942 film "Ossessione." However, literary works like Elio Vittorini's "Conversazione in Sicilia" (1939) are also considered early examples. Visconti later adapted Giovanni Verga's "I Malavoglia" into the 1948 film "La Terra Trema." Pier Paolo Pasolini, a significant figure in both literature and cinema, was heavily influenced by Neorealism, seeing it as a way to reveal Italy's true self, without rhetorical falseness, and to envision a better future through revolution.
Neorealism originated in cinema to fulfill a need for communication using images to depict the post-war emergency. Prominent Neorealist directors include Luchino Visconti, Roberto Rossellini, and Vittorio De Sica. Rossellini's "Roma città aperta" (Rome, Open City) (1945) documented the Nazi occupation of Rome, while De Sica's "Sciuscià" (Shoeshine) (1946) and "Ladri di biciclette" (Bicycle Thieves) (1948) portrayed the poverty of post-war Italy. Neorealist filmmakers aimed to depict reality without manipulation, as exemplified by actress Anna Magnani's powerful performances, such as in "Bellissima," where she plays a Roman working-class woman dreaming of her daughter becoming a film star.
From cinema, Neorealism expanded into literature, focusing on themes like war, resistance, and the lives of the popular classes. Literary influences included Soviet socialist realism, anti-fascism, Antonio Gramsci's "Quaderni del carcere" (Prison Notebooks), existentialist philosophy, and American narrative from authors like Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner. Neorealist writers are divided into two generations: those born in the early 20th century (e.g., Vittorini, Pavese) and those who debuted during WWII (e.g., Calvino, Fenoglio, Primo Levi). Italo Calvino's "Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno" (The Path to the Nest of Spiders) perfectly embodies the movement's drive for collective storytelling and the desire for peripheral voices to narrate their experiences. Key literary trends include war and resistance testimonies (Vittorini, Fenoglio, Calvino, Pavese, Levi, Ginzburg, Rigoni Stern) and depictions of popular classes (Carlo Levi, Moravia, Pasolini), along with more intimate forms of Neorealism like Cassola's.
The next video will delve into Elio Vittorini's "Conversazione in Sicilia," which is crucial as it predates and signals the dawn of Neorealism, beginning in the late 1930s (1939), just before its official peak in the 1940s and 1950s.