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True, but I believe italian neorealism didn't have international reach until fellini - outside of influencing french new wave which went on to popularize (withi

by 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.

by klik99 4y ago

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.