Life as It Is: The Neorealist Movement in Italy

Feb 13, 2007

0h 40m

★ 0.0

Overview

A film scholar named Mark Shiel discusses the history of italian neo-realism in filmmaking, accompanied by rare still photographs and newly restored film footage.

Genres

Documentary

Production Companies

The Criterion Collection

Life as It Is: The Neorealist Movement in Italy Trailers

No Trailers found.

Cast

Self

Mark Shiel

This short film tells the story of the most important cinema trend that Italy has ever produced - Neo Realism. Born after the Second World War, this veritable cultural revolution rapidly became a boundless source of inspiration for movie-makers throughout the entire world. Even today it influences those wanting to produce quality movies characterized and identified as Italian products able to be exported as well. It is precisely one of the masters of this unique current rich in different personalities who introduces the story - Carlo Lizzani - whose 'lesson' reconstructs the birth and development of Neorealism in Italy. It combined innovative movie techniques with a new view based on a 'true' interpretation of reality. Due to its high cultural value, this short film was given the highest reknown of the Presidency of the Republic of Italy.

5.7

Notes on a True Story

Jan 1, 1951

On the evening of March 11, 1950, Annabella Bracci, a 12-year-old girl, was brutally killed and thrown into a pit on the outskirts of Rome, near the village of Primavalle. A brief and poetic account of the events and their impact on an impoverished community. A handful of wild flowers and a painful catch in the voices.

No Image Available

5.0

Animated Motion: Part 1

Jan 1, 1976

The first part of this series by Norman McLaren deals only with tempo. It starts by showing the disc travelling in one move (1/24 of a second) from A to B, and progressively demonstrates slower and slower tempos.

6.8

The Postman's White Nights

Oct 14, 2014

The film represents life in a godforsaken Russian village. The only way to reach the mainland is to cross the lake by boat and a postman became the only connection with the outside world. A reserved community has been set up here. Despite the modern technologies and a spaceport nearby the people of the village live the way they would in the Neolithic Era. There is neither government nor social services or jobs. The postman's beloved woman escapes the village life and moves to the city. Postman's outboard engine gets stolen and he can no longer deliver mail. His normal pattern of life is disrupted. The postman makes a decision to leave for the city too but returns before long with no certain reason. The script is based on real characters' stories. People from the village play their own parts in the film. The search for the protagonist lasted for over a year.

6.5

Paranoid Park

Jul 12, 2007

A teenage skateboarder becomes suspected of being connected with a security guard who suffered a brutal death in a skate park called "Paranoid Park".

6.5

Young Cain

Oct 5, 1959

Juana moves with her son Juan from the country to Caracas in search of better work and educational opportunities. When they get there they have to live in a poor home in one of the slums located in the city's outskirts, where they encounter a horrible world full of promiscuity and misery, that is quite different from what they expected and that eventually will lead Juana to self-destruction and Juan to reconsider his life in the city.

7.3

The Icicle Thief

Feb 16, 1989

Director Maurizio Nichetti is invited on TV to introduce a screening of his neo-realist classic 'The Icicle Thief'. He is horrified to discover that his black-and-white tale of life in poverty is constantly interrupted by garish color commercials, and even more horrified when a power cut in the studio causes film and commercials to mix up – a glamorous model finds herself in the arms of an unemployed pauper, while his wife finds herself in consumers' heaven. Nichetti has to break into the film to try to sort everything out.

6.4

The Unknown Country

Jul 28, 2023

A grieving woman embarks on an unexpected road trip as she grapples with the pain of her recent loss and seeks to understand her place in the world.

6.2

Bronco Bullfrog

Aug 1, 1969

Del and his friends agree to take part in a robbery with a boy fresh from the borstal prison. When Del falls in love with Irene they decide to run away from their nagging parents - and the law.

7.3

Europe '51

Dec 4, 1952

A wealthy, self-absorbed Rome socialite is racked by guilt over the death of her young son. As a way of dealing with her grief and finding meaning in her life, she decides to devote her time and money to the city’s poor and sick. Her newfound, single-minded activism leads to conflicts with her husband and questions about her sanity.

7.4

Mary Forever

May 4, 1989

A teacher discovers his calling. Marco relocates to Palermo from Milan and takes a job teaching in a reform school while he waits for a high school position. He tries to understand and motivate his handful of students, reading them colloquial poetry, encouraging them to stand up for their rights, finding out about their histories. Natale, in for murder, enamoured of the Mafia, the King Rat within the group; Mery, a drag queen, arrested for assault when defending himself, in love with Mario and, in daylight, rejected by all; Pietro, illiterate, muscular, believing his destiny is set; the callow Claudio, vulnerable, learning to harden himself. What can Mario learn and do in such a short time?

8.0

We the Poor

Mar 25, 1948

Carpenter Pepe El Toro lives peacefully with his daughter Chachita in an impoverished Mexico City neighborhood. He pursues a romance with the pretty Celia, but tragedy comes knocking on his door when he is falsely accused of having perpetrated a felony.

5.9

Indiscretion of an American Wife

Apr 2, 1953

While on vacation in Rome, married American Mary Forbes becomes entangled in an affair with an Italian man, Giovanni Doria. As she prepares to leave Italy, Giovanni confesses his love for her; he doesn't want her to go. Together they wander the railroad station where Mary is to take the train to Paris, then ultimately reunite with her husband and daughter in Philadelphia. Will she throw away her old life for this passionate new romance?

7.9

Mamma Roma

Sep 22, 1962

After years spent working as a prostitute in her Italian village, middle-aged Mamma Roma has saved enough money to buy herself a fruit stand so that she can have a respectable middle-class life and reestablish contact with the 16-year-old son she abandoned when he was an infant. But her former pimp threatens to expose her sordid past, and her troubled son seems destined to fall into a life of crime and violence.

6.2

Kinatay

Sep 23, 2009

A young man tries to make some money so he can marry his girlfriend. He takes a job for $2,000 and then soon realizes that this job involves killing a woman.

6.4

Suture

Sep 14, 1993

A man named Clay flies into Phoenix for a reunion with his long-lost half-brother Vincent.

No Image Available

6.0

Killed by Lightning

Jun 27, 2002

An anthropologist investigates the origins of human evolution. She had suffered a mental trauma during her childhood when her father, a submarine captain, died during the war. This trauma periodically destabilizes her condition. The ghosts of a prehistoric past and a violent death collide in the subconsciousness of the scientist to give birth to an unexpected theory of the origins of human beings.

6.5

Celluloide

Jan 26, 1996

June 1944. In the newly liberated Rome, Roberto Rossellini and Sergio Amidei decide, against all odds, to make an unprecedented, true-to-life film on the tragic events that occurred during the Nazi occupation: Rome, Open City .

Life as It Is: The Neorealist Movement in Italy

Overview

Genres

Production Companies

Life as It Is: The Neorealist Movement in Italy Trailers