Script
Italian Neorealism also known as the Golden Age of Italian Cinema was a film movement between 1944 and 1952, this new wave came about after the fall of Mussolini's government, Italy lost its epicentre of film, this is due to the loss of funding from the government to create propaganda. The solution to this was to create a new type of film that focuses on the repercussions of the war. Neorealism became the symbol of cultural change and progress. film-makers like Roberto Rossellini wanted to give something new and present, a true reflection and image of italy after the damage of Mussolini and his government. Poverty, famine, oppression, injustice and desperation became common themes in the films.
Roberto Rossellini an Italian film director and screenwriter was one of the most influential directors of the neorealism period. During facist Italy Rossellini created what is now referred to as the Facist Trilogy between 1941 and 1943 which were funded by different propaganda centres within the government. With the collapse of the facist regime and the liberation of Rome, Rossellini began to write and produce Roma Cittá aperta (1945, Rome, Open City), This would become the start of the neo-realistic trilogy. Followed by Paisá (1946) and German, Year Zero (1948) make up the other two films. The funding for these films came from small loans and were originally circulated on the black market due to their anti-facist stance.
Rossellini used non-professional actors in his films but often struggled to find faces he deemed as interesting. He says in an interview that in order to really create the character one has in mind, it is necessary for the director to engage in a battle with the actor which usually means submitting to the actors wish and I have no desire to waste my energy in a battle like this, I only use professional actors occasionally. He is acknowledged as the father of italian neo-realism, he introduced the world to naturalism with Rome, Open City. He then began to change the way we look at films three years later, with Stromboli and Journey to Italy, he aimed to get his audience to understand and engage with the actors through exploring their surroundings with them on screen rather than simply identifying with them. This went against the conventional Hollywood method, Rossellini claimed that with his film one watches with his own eyes. Scorsese states in the preface of his book Roberto Rossellini: Magician of the Real that few film makers at this stage of their lives or careers were as adventurous or ambitious and that Rossellini's goal was nothing less than to educate the entire world.
With Rossellini, however, there was always a distinctive method to the seeming madness. The same year he made Journey to Italy, he fought against the idea of planned scripts like Hitchcock. For realistic films, he insisted that inspiration and spontaneity were what mattered. He is quoted famously saying "An author writes a sentence or page, then crosses it out. A painter uses a red, then paints it out with a green. Why shouldn't I be able to cross things out too, to remake and replace film? This is why I don't think you can have a fixed script. If I thought you could, I'd think of myself as a scriptwriter. But I'm not a scriptwriter. I make films."
With his film Pasiá took one step further toward a revolutionary style of film making. He would place his cameraman in the middle of the main square in a rural town and choose his actors from the inquisitive faces of the people who came to see the camera, With the main theme of the script of this film is the interaction between two foreign cultures. After the death of his son in 1946, Rossellini's next film Germany Year Zero was full of pain, violence and pessimism, it became an attempt to discover through death the reason for living. It was financed and supported by a french production house and filmed in the countries berlin sector. Like his previous film he tried the same technique of putting a camera man in the centre of the square but was surprised when nobody came to watch.
Russollini was a visionary director who brought naturalism to light in cinema and becomes a god of the italian neorealism age, being a diving force behind this movement he created works of art that really captured and created a true image of Italy and the inner deeper darker parts of a human being and how to connect with them through the things that surround them.
"a spirit rehabilitation of an entire culture"
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