Roberto Rossellini was an interesting filmmaker because throughout his many decades of work from the 1940s to 1970s, he has expressed a few different, and in some case contradictory styles. While Rossellini would be remembered for being a pioneer in Italian Neorealism, he was also noted for the spirituality oriented work especially with Ingrid Bergman, and in the final years, his subdued historical films, which has achieved a documentary realism that some would consider undramatic or even boring to hell. Watching his films from the Neorealist years, one can easily come to the impression that he was a rational and unsentimental sort of person. If you read his biography, you will find a very different picture that he was just like all of us, full of passion and emotion to things he enjoyed. One aspect that stood out was that Rossellini has found himself at odds with the world, and I suppose that is an attribute that is crucial for cutting edge and being a game changer.
In the 1940s, Rossellini, along with other filmmakers like Luchino Visconti and Victoria De Sica, pioneered the cinematic movement now known as Italian Neorealism. Many of the films in this movement would eventually influence the French New Wave and other younger generations at the 1960s and 1970s, and the Neorealists were retrospectively seen as revolutionary as they broke tradition from the American and European mainstream cinema before their times.
The context of the movement was that it was at the era of the Second World War, and Italy was under Fascist rule, which is of course the age where Bertolucci's The Conformist took place. Due to war the studios were closed and camera equipment was in scarcity. Facing with such challenges, the Neorealists decided to borrow equipment and shot their films predominantly on real locations, which was something unprecedented for previous cinema. On the other hand, the action was complimented by the use of non-professional actors to star in these films. The result was the capturing of an authentic reality that was absent from the films shot inside studio sets, and use of non-professional actors meant that they were able to deliver performance that were closer to their real life experiences. The cumulative effect in terms of approach was that the films of Neorealism could be able to get closer to the social issues at the time, without being indulging in a form of celluloid escapism. The documentary realism could clearly be felt in films like Rome Open City, Paisan, Bicycle Thieves, Germany Year Zero, Obsession and so on.
Rossellini has certainly
adopted these general approaches, and his films were also known for de-dramatization,
meaning that he did not deliberately heighten the dramatic aspect, he allowed
it to unfold naturally. Picture a dinner table, if one wants to bring out the
tension in the familial relationships, one does not have to stage the scene as
if to expose a torrent of family feuds for the last 200 years. Nothing wrong
with this per se yet that is just a very sentimental way to do so. If the
conflict is inherent there, it can be brought out naturally in a de-dramatized
way.
by Ed Law
Film Analysis