5 ms·

Italian Neo-realism predates French New Wave.

• klik99 4y ago
  True, but I believe italian neorealism didn't have international reach until fellini - outside of influencing french new wave which went on to popularize (within the art community at least) those ideas. French New Wave also paired it with new editing and cinematography techniques that made it all work together. Edit: I had originally prefaced this with "I'm not a scholar" but forgot to readd it - the responses below invalidate most of what I said, but leaving the comment so their responses make sense - though I still stand by the lesser version of what I said - that Godard had a bigger impact on American cinema than pre-Fellini Italian Neorealism, and that parts of italian film influenced Godard.
  • l33tbro 4y ago
    The French New Wave were all too different to generalise like this. Godard and Rohmer (or Resnais) could't be more different really. It was actually the previous generation of French directors that they were all reacting against - who were making somewhat pretentious literary adaptation films. You can read about it in Truffaut's 1954 essay 'A certain tendency in the french cinema'. Neorealism was actually a fairly minor influence - as none of the new wave directors were social realists. But older, maverick French directors like Bresson and Melville were much more influential, as it was their freewheeling sensibility which united all the new wave directors and sent them hurtling off in different directions.
    • klik99 4y ago
      Yeah, it's hard to talk about French New Wave as a cohesive set, since it was so reactionary - I still see influences from earlier italian neorealism in Godard, in the street view slice of life shots and focus on regular people throughout Breathless
  • carlob 4y ago
    Not sure I agree De Sica's Sciuscià (Shoeshine) won a Honorary Academy Award in 1947, which then became the Academy Award for the Best Foreign Language Film. In other words it was so influential that it ended up defining its own category at the Oscars.
    • klik99 4y ago
      I am wrong about that then, but I was talking more about influence on American films - I haven't seen any Sciuscia so I don't know if that went on to influence american films in the same way that godard did later.
• coldtea 4y ago
  It does, but it has little to do with the kind of cinema of New Wave, or the later 60s-70s cinema in America.
• achairapart 4y ago
  It goes in waves back and forth from Europe to Usa and back again: 40s: Italian Neo-realism 50s: Hollywood Golden Era 60s: French new wave 70s: New Hollywood Somehow every wave greatly inspired the next one.
  • paganel 4y ago
    There’s also the Japanese New Wave somewhere in there (the ‘50s and ‘60s) which also had a very great influence. Me, personally, I’d also put the 1960s-1970s wuxia films from Hong Kong in a list of “stuff that has changed movie history for good”.
    • achairapart 4y ago
      Of course, the list wasn't exhaustive. Asian cinema also had a great influence again in the 90s/00s.
      • paganel 4y ago
        For sure, to this day I’m mesmerized by a few Tsui Hark movies from that era, even though I saw them 15+ years ago. Pure art of fluid movement, for lack of a better expression.