1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910814965903321

Autore

Wagstaff Christopher <1946->

Titolo

Italian neorealist cinema : an aesthetic approach / / Christopher Wagstaff

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Toronto ; ; Buffalo, N.Y., : University of Toronto Press, c2007

ISBN

1-4426-9243-X

1-4426-8567-0

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (ix, 504 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates) : illustrations, map, digital file

Collana

Toronto Italian studies

Disciplina

791.4301

Soggetti

Motion pictures - Italy - Aesthetics

Motion pictures - Italy - History

Realism in motion pictures

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. [473]-492) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction -- Overview. The Italian Cinema Industry -- The Cultural Context -- Films: Production and Screenwriting -- The Pro-filmic -- The Institution of Neorealism -- Realism. Aesthetics -- Reference -- Narrative -- Genre -- Idealism -- Realism -- Cesare Zavattini -- Rhetoric -- A Note on Comedy -- Roma città aperta. Photography -- Lighting -- Sound -- Mise en scene -- Performers -- Costume -- The Narrative: Story and Plot -- Dramaturgy: Analysis of the Episode of the Shooting of Pina -- Roma città aperta and Neorealism -- Paisà. The Rome Episode -- The Sicily Episode -- The Monastery Episode -- The Naples Episode -- The Florence Episode -- The Po delta Episode -- Concluding Remarks on Paisà -- Ladri di biciclette. Locations -- Performers and Costume -- Narrative -- Analysis of Sequences -- Concluding Remarks.

Sommario/riassunto

The end of the Second World War saw the emergence of neorealist film in Italy. In Italian Neorealist Cinema, Christopher Wagstaff analyses three neorealist films that have had significant influence on filmmakers around the world. Wagstaff treats these films as assemblies of sounds and images rather than as representations of historical reality. If Roberto Rossellini's Roma città aperta and Paisà, and Vittorio De Sica's Ladri di biciclette are still, half a century after they were made, among



the most highly valued artefacts in the history of cinema, Wagstaff suggests that this could be due to the aesthetic and rhetorical qualities of their assembled narratives, performances, locations, lighting, sound, mise en scene, and montage. This volume begins by situating neorealist cinema in its historical, industrial, commercial and cultural context, and makes available for the first time a large amount of data on post-war Italian cinema. Wagstaff offers a theoretical discussion of what it means to treat realist films as aesthetic artefacts before moving on to the core of the book, which consists of three studies of the films under discussion. Italian Neorealist Cinema not only offers readers in Film Studies and Italian Studies a radically new perspective on neorealist cinema and the Italian art cinema that followed it, but theorises and applies a method of close analysis of film texts for those interested in aesthetics and rhetoric, as well as cinema in general.