Italian neorealism developed under onerous circumstances and became a form by which Italian filmmakers could express themselves in a new way. Essentially, the early neorealist filmmakers were doing what they could with the tools at hand and doing it under the watchful eyes of an antagonistic ruling class, From the tensions this arrangement produced, they created something distinctive, allowing them to develop ideas and to do so in a new cinematic style. At the time, Italy was ruled by fascists, who viewed art as valuable only to the degree it was useful. Yet, these films were not made in service of fascist ideas but as a counter to them. The forces that helped shape these films, the style that was produced by these tensions, and some important examples demonstrate the vitality achieved by Italian directors as World War II ended.
One of the best-known of what would be called the neo-realist approach to film was Roberto Rossellini's Open City (1945), and many of the characteristics of the movement were evident in this film. These films had an anti-establishment, revolutionary attitude. They had an extemporaneous, documentary quality enhanced in the early era by the materials from which they were made--war-time film stock, cobbled-together equipment, non-professional actors, and location shooting. Open City is a good example of this early period in neorealism, while Vittorio De Sica's The Bicycle Thief (1948) is an expression of the fully developed tradition from the period after the expulsion of the fascists and after the end of World War II. Luchino Visconti's Ossessione (Obsession) is another example of how the style was used, this one produced during the war.
These three films display a challenge to the establishment of the time and a social consciousness that delves into the reality rather than the image of the nation. For this reason, neorealism encountered hostility from the established forces because these film...