Realist Film Movements

1. Realist Film Movements Neorealismo (3) Films of Luchino Visconti

2. Table of Contents 1) The Parma Conference on Neorealismo 2) Who is Luchino Visconti? 3) La Terra trema 4) Neorealist Ideals and reality

3. The Parma Conference on Neorealismo The conference held in Parma in 1953 • Filmmakers, film critics and journalists • After a long debate, a compromised manifesto was published.

4. The Parma Conference on Neorealismo (1) POSITIONS IN CONTENT a. An emphasis on contemporary subjects and the life of the working class b. Calling for political reform and unity c. Moral commitment to make characters’ problems gain universal significance d. Beauty of ordinary life, drama hidden in everyday life

5. The Parma Conference on Neorealismo POSITIONS IN FORM a. Location shooting b. Use of non-professional actors c. Rough, off-hand composition d. Shooting with available natural light e. Restraint in using expressive shots (close-up, wide-angle, telephoto, zoom shot, etc.)

9. The Parma Conference on Neorealismo f. Long take g. Restraint in expressive montage

10. Who is Luchino Visconti? • Born on 2 Nov. 1906 and died on 17 March 1976. • Aristocrat, Marxist, film and theatre director: the maker of the films of harsh realism as well as sublime melodrama

11. Who is Luchino Visconti? • Met Jean Renoir in Paris in the 1930s through the introduction of Coco Chanel and worked for him. • Returning to Italy during the war, he became a resistance fighter and Marxist. • The leading light of Neorealismo.

12. Luchino Visconti’s Works • Early (neo)realist works • Ossessione (1943) • Giorni di gloria (1945) • La Terra Trema (The Earth Trembles, 1948)

13. Who is Luchino’s Works • Ossessione (1943) - based on James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice, it is about a doomed love affair between a drifter and the wife of a roadside restaurant owner. • First neorealist film(?)

14. Luchino Visconti’s Works • Giorni di gloria (1945) - a documentary film about the Nazi-Fascist oppression of Italians during the war. Includes footage of executions, atrocities and humiliation.

15. Luchino Visconti’s Works • La Terra Trema (1948) - based on Giovanni Verga’s Il Malavoglia, it is about a fisherman family’s revolt against the exploitation and its failure.

16. La Terra trema • Shot on location in Aci Trezza, Sicily. • All the people who appear in the films are fishermen, residents or their families of Aci Trezza.

17. La Terra trema • No artificial light • The dialect of Eastern Sicily • The pressing contemporary issue - the exploitation of the poor in the South

18. La Terra trema • PARADOX AND CONTRADICTION • 'Realistic' representation of the life in a Sicilian fishing village / A Marxist interpretation of the novel of Giovanni Verga, I Malvoglio (Financially backed by the Italian Communist Party.)

19. La Terra trema • The gritty realism of Visconti's mise-en-scène / High aesthetic sensibility (mise-en-scène: slow and fluid pan shot; perfectly balanced composition; picturesque depth of deep focus photography

20. La Terra trema • Visconti's composition of frames is beautifully painterly and his camerawork is as elaborate as that in any studio product.

21. La Terra trema • Painterly composition - triangle composition

22. La Terra trema • Casper Friedrich, The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog 1818 • Mary Cassat, The Family 1892

23. La Terra trema • Perfect triangle compositions in La Terra trema

24. Neorealist Ideals and Reality • Narrative compromise – drama and suspense, gap between actual time and story time, ideological intention behind storytelling • Formal compromise – filming in studio sets with careful lighting, non-synchronous recording (post-dabbing), ‘amalgam’ of professional and non-professional actors, self-conscious mise-en-scéne and montage

25. Who is Luchino Visconti? • Career after neorealismo • Theatre and opera producer - life long career.

26. Luchino Viscont’s Works • Senso (1954) • A Venetian countess falls in love with a vile Austrian lieutenant at the end of Austrian occupation of Venice. • Doomed decadent love affair.

27. Luchino Viscont’s Works • Le Notte bianche (1956) - based on Feodor Dostoevskij’s novel, it is about a fleeting love affair between a lonely man and a lonely woman. • Entirely shot in sets and more stagy than cinematic.

28. Luchino Viscont’s Works • Gattopardo (Leopard, 1965) - based on Giuseppe Lampedusa’s autobiographical story, it is about the decline and fall of a Sicilian aristocratic family. • Stylistic, aesthetic and operatic.

29. Luchino Visconti’s Works Later Career Autobiographical elements in his later films - decadence and aestheticism; homosexuality • Morte a Venizia (Death in Venice1971) • Ludwich (1973)

30. Luchino Visconti’s Works • Morte a Venizia (1971) - based on Thomas Man’s short story, it is about a dying man’s infatuation of a beautiful boy. • Operatic contemplation of love and death.

31. Luchino Visconti’s Works • Ludwig (1973) - about ‘mad’ king of Bavaria, who is determined to create an artistic kingdom in his country inviting Richard Wagner. • Visconti’s love for opera and anything beautiful.

32. Luchino Visconti’s Works • Innocente (1976) - based on Gabriel D’Annunzio’s novel, it is about the breakup of a marriage, and jealousy and homosexual relationship.