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Italian Neorealism: A Cultural History

2022; American Association of Teachers of Italian; Volume: 99; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5406/23256672.99.4.16

2325-6672

Irene Hatzopoulos,

Italian Fascism and Post-war Society

In his study on Italian neorealism, Leavitt introduces the idea for this project as a meditation on a conversation that never happened, quoting De Sica: “Non è che un giorno ci siamo seduti a un tavolino di via Veneto, Rossellini, Visconti, io e gli altri, e ci siamo detti: adesso facciamo il neorealismo” (3). He goes on to discuss the historic difficulties of pinning down a specific start and end date to the artistic movement. Leavitt discusses the far-reaching influence of neorealism, from cinema to literature. He then outlines the progression of the text: four chapters reflecting four movements with representative texts, though the elements he wishes to discuss can also be found in other works of the period.Chapter 1 is a grand tour of the influences of neorealism that have roots in nineteenth-century realism. He posits the question “what is neorealism” versus “what was neorealism,” providing a framework of “historicization” (16). The chapter is divided into eight subsections, which investigate a revamped return to the “realism of the nineteenth century” but also neorealism's tendency to be modernist, verista, and an overall cultural phenomenon (18). Leavitt analyzes Vittorini's Uomini e no (1945) and Visconti's La terrra trema (1948), citing an artistic dialogue between the two men. This analysis shows the malleability of neorealism and its ability to lend itself to different artistic modes.Chapter 2 discusses three schools of thought regarding neorealism and post-fascist Italian culture. One camp focused on the “Year Zero Theory,” citing that 1945 was the turning point in Italian culture, wanting to leave behind everything that was pre-1945 and begin anew; another camp believed that you could not break with the culture that brought about neorealism. Leavitt's take is that the two schools are not mutually exclusive, but symbiotic. For neorealism to have been so successful, it needed to acknowledge its past and then move on. He cites some prominent intellectuals of the period: Carlo Levi, Gabriele Pepe, and Ranuccio Bianchi Bandelli: “‘Il primo compito degli uomini ai quali la cultura è affidata, che di essa hanno fatto la propria ragione di vita, è, in tali tempi, di trapasso, il rinnovare conservando’” (70). Leavitt also cites two works: De Santis's Caccia tragica (1947) and Calvino's Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno (1947) as works that embody this tension between past, present, and future.Chapter 3 elaborates on the dichotomy between cronaca vs storia. One camp believed that art could (should) not be made from chronicle, while the other argued that chronicle naturally lent itself to art as the true and immediate representation of the lived experience. One side argued that through representations of individual experiences, we could arrive at a better understanding of history; the other argued that the only way to properly understand individual stories was to work from History to the micro-story. Leavitt concludes that both sides were arguing for the same thing and spent too long focusing on the semantics of cronaca. The most striking quotation of the whole chapter reads: “They disagreed about the means . . . but not about the ends, proposing contrasting solutions to a common problem: that of the proper historical mode in which to narrate the “people's war,” with its interpenetration of collective and singular experience, of public and private history of global decisions and personal consequences” (113). Here, Leavitt uses De Sica's film Ladri di biciclette (1948) and Leopoldo Trieste's play Cronaca (1946) to elucidate his argument. Both examples reiterate Leavitt's stance that both cronaca and storia are not mutually exclusive but intertwined in the realization of the work at hand.Chapter 4 focuses on the drive for artists and intellectuals of the postwar period to create a new culture. This chapter highlights the next logical step in the movement to use cronaca to create art. Leavitt uses Vittorini's postwar call for una nuova cultura as the backdrop for his argument. Leavitt argues “that works can be defined as neorealist insofar . . . as they can be shown to participate in the fervent desire for social and cultural reform after Fascism” (130). Throughout the chapter, the movement to create a new culture is equated to religious fervor, showing the heavy Catholic influence in thinking of the period, regardless of political affiliation. Returning to Vittorini, Leavitt cites: “‘Questo esattamente è cultura, . . . la linea più avanzata raggiunta nella ricerca della verità ai fini della liberazione umana. È ricerca dunque di coscienza che diventa ricerca di giustizia, di libertà e di uguaglianza”, which he further elaborates by saying “In this definition, culture was nothing less than the actualization of human wisdom in the service of human liberation” (134). Here, Leavitt cites three artistic examples. He first lists Rossellini's Roma città aperta (1945) as a work of art that incites all sides of the liberation to push forward for a new post-war culture. He then moves on to Alfonso Gatto's “Per i martiri di Piazzale Loreto” (1947), and Aldo Vergano's Il sole sorge ancora (1946), which lay out clear evidence of the chorality in the postwar movement. Gatto proposes a “poetic I” which becomes a collective “we.” Gatto's witnessing of the partisan execution in Piazzale Loreto shows a newfound fervor to take up arms and drive out the invaders to reestablish a new world order. A similar idea is presented in Il sole sorge ancora, whose partisan priest recites a solo litany. While he recites, a neighbor responds to his call, causing the collective voice to grow to include everyone around them. Leavitt says, “The transformative chorality at the centre of Il sole sorge ancora thus exemplifies the vector of cultural engagement prized by neorealism” (168). The same can be applied to the end of Roma città aperta and for Gatto's poem, showing that “the aspiration to make popular art, in this context, did not necessarily mean creating art people liked . . . but instead making a people: creating a new audience, a new public, a new nation” (159), echoing D'Azeglio's sentimento risorgimentale that now that the new state has been created, bisogna (ri)fare gli italiani.