Art pro human solidarity: the example of neorealist directors

Italian neorealism, conceived in Italy during the 1940s and concretised in the immediate postwar, when the nation was still in ruins, by three unique artists, Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio De Sica and Luchino Visconti, is a cinema that holds an implacable but poetic mirror to the human condition under the most extreme circumstances. Working with ludicrous budgets by Hollywood standards, often employing non-professional actors, these men let their subjects do the talking and the effect was powerful and memorable. The canvas included all the curses that humanity has harvested from its fall into class-divided society: slavery, feudalism, and now capitalism, the latter ensuring war, pervasive unemployment, poverty, and untold misery for millions.  But the neorealist movement also gave us visions of faith and love, and the need for moral political action, and therefore hope in a future that seems to be increasingly in doubt by the younger generation.  Below we provide two intros to this important cinematic revolution, one by Marty Scorsese, and the other by Tyler Knudsen.  And two examples of neorealist art, as created by Roberto Rossellini, quite probably the leading exponent of this movement, and Vittorio de Sica, another towering figure. —PG