Neorealism in Cinema

 Jacob Raymond

COM 126

Professor Saphire

11-2-20

      Neorealism in Cinema

By watching three different films in class, it is worth stating that the concept of neorealism has evolved with society throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. The three films I have viewed for the concept of neorealism are Bicycle Thieves (1948), Killer of Sheep (1978), and Moonlight (2016). Although these three films are different in overall structures and narratives, what they all have in common is how real the characters and settings are that makes them look expressional to audiences worldwide. These films also cover different settings that relate to real life society between the past and the present as we learn more about how these films were influenced by neorealism. In other words, here is how these three films express neorealism in the world of cinema.

     First off, the first film to express neorealism during its time was the 1948 film, Bicycle Thieves. The film focuses on Anthony Ricci and his son Bruno as they travel around post war Italy trying to recover a stolen bike that Anthony needs for his job. What makes this film neorealistic is that class struggle was a huge concern because poverty is heavily shown in how there were many unemployed pedestrians trying to get a decent paying job to provide for their families, since Italy has changed due to WW2. The film’s cast used non-professional actors as a way to make the narrative seem more emotional because these new actors showed more expression within the shots. A good example was within the ending of the film when Ricci demonstrates enough expression towards a suspected thief now that he is mainly a victim of a corrupted society in post war Italy. Unfortunately, Ricci resorts to attempting to steal a bike as a result of his changing behavior throughout the story. Mark Cousins highlights this type of moment as a theme from film director Robert Bresson by summarizing his works as routes to God and Grace. Cousins further elaborates on this by showing scenes from Pickpocket after the thief gets locked up for his crimes. Lastly, everything was shot on location as a way to further drive the story into making the narrative seem real to the audience on top of the actors playing themselves. In brief, Bicycle Thieves was ahead of its time for how it presented a narrative by using real world elements that stepped outside of the confines of cinema within the 1940s.

      Next, I looked at the 1978 film Killer of Sheep. This movie does not have a clear narrative, so I noticed that the overall stretch relationship was longer than the plots themselves since they were focused on different characters. Just like Bicycle Thieves, this film also used elements of neorealism by shooting on location, but within the Watts district of Los Angeles. Also like Bicycle Thieves, the film depicted the characters as poor and used unknown people to portray these characters. The main father figure named Stan makes a sympathetic character because he is also struggling to provide for his family, even though he works in a slaughterhouse. He was even offered a job by a white woman in a convenience store as a way to reflect on the struggles of being poor. Unlike Bicycle Thieves however, this film relied on realism and cinematic language by telling the story through the lives of everyday black communities within the 1970s between the freedom of children playing in different areas or the working hardships and expressive verbal language of the adults, mostly through profanity. In other words, Killer of Sheep expanded upon neorealism by using some elements from Bicycle Thieves, while also making the film stand out on its own by using realism in its overall structure. Lastly, the most recent example I have analyzed for neorealism was through the 2016 film Moonlight. The movie was divided into three plots through the main characters life: childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Throughout these three plots, we see a young boy named Chiron getting chased and bullied for his sexual identity of being gay. However, when we see Chiron interacting with water through all three aspects of his life, this serves as a meditative healing element for how cleansing and transformative both the character and the film will be as Chiron gets older. I noticed that the film made good use of its cinematic time while it elaborated on each aspect of Chiron’s life as well as how the film mainly served as a backstory for how neorealism can be influenced by sexual identity and masculinity. In the adolescence segment of the film, there was some rising action that eventually became a crisis when Chiron was violently beaten on school grounds for his sexual identity. The resulting resolution was when Chiron gets arrested after he decides to assault his perpetrator in class with a chair. In his documentary, Mark Cousins talks about neorealism through the works of Ingmar Bergman and the themes his films use in the world of cinema. When I compare Moonlight to Mark Cousins’ analysis of Bergman’s works, Cousins highlights that his film “Summer With Monicka” expresses sexuality in a modern way, which was how Moonlight expressed it in when Chiron gets called the homophobic word and when Chiron has gay sex on the beach. What Bergman and Moonlight have in common is that they both used neorealism as a self-aware medium where the film was the story. Lastly, I think that water made a good diagestic element in Chron’s life because it mainly helped the realistic transition from one part of life to another without having any complex issues within the segment plot. In the end, Moonlight demonstrates a powerful example on how neorealism can further be expanded upon going into the 21st century.

      After watching all three films, it is clear that neorealism has changed and evolved how we can see the world through the stories and actors that look impressionable enough to be considered real. First, Bicycle Thieves achieved this concept by providing audiences with a story between a father and his son as they struggle with post war italian society and their own routes to both God and grace through their actions within the film. Then, Killer of Sheep expanded upon neorealism by giving us a non linear narrative of struggling poor black communities within the Watts district of 1970s Los Angeles while also using on location shots and using everyday citizens to achieve realistic expressions within their scenes. Finally, Moonlight used neorealism to express sexual identity of the main character and how it uses Ingmar Bergman’s films to express sexuality in a modern way that achieves formalism within the segment plot of adolescence. In conclusion, neorealism is a form of cinema that should be further influenced in the years to come.