There’s a pleasing sense of continuity in moving from last month’s films – On the Waterfront, A Streetcar Named Desire, and The Best Years of Our Lives – into this one. Where that trio traced the evolution of acting, culminating in the raw emotional immediacy of Method performance, this month steps back slightly to look at a movement that helped make that kind of acting not just possible, but necessary.
Italian Neorealism, which emerged in the shadow of World War II, didn’t just change how films looked – it changed what they paid attention to, and why.
Filmmakers turned, whether from curiosity or necessity, to the world as it actually was
After the war, Italy’s film industry – like much else – had been destabilised. Under Mussolini, cinema had largely been a vehicle for polished escapism and propaganda, produced in studios like Cinecittà. But by the mid-1940s, those studios were damaged or inaccessible, resources were scarce, and the illusion of a glossy, controlled Italy no longer held. Filmmakers turned, whether from curiosity or necessity, to the world as it actually was.
They shot on real streets, in real homes, often using non-professional actors. Stories focused on ordinary people – workers, pensioners, children – dealing with unemployment, poverty, and the lingering trauma of war.
The results were films that felt startlingly immediate: less like constructed narratives, more like life unfolding.
To my mind, Neorealism is less about realism in a literal sense, and more about attention – where it was directed, and what it dignified.
This month’s films, Rome, Open City and Umberto D., offer two distinct ways into that idea.
Rome, Open City, directed by Roberto Rossellini, is often cited as the movement’s beginning – and watching it, you can feel why. Shot in 1945, in a Rome still marked by occupation, it captures a moment that hadn’t yet settled into history.
There’s a rawness to it, a sense that the film is working with whatever was available, both materially and emotionally.
The story follows members of the Italian resistance under the Nazi occupation, weaving together threads of fear, loyalty, betrayal, and sacrifice. There are moments that land with real force, particularly when the film allows action – rather than dialogue – to carry the weight.
But if I’m honest, this was the film I struggled with most.
Part of that is likely circumstantial. I couldn’t find a version of it in English so had to watch it in Spanish instead, and while my Spanish isn’t bad, the combination of dubbing and a second language inevitably created an extra layer between me and the performance, especially in a film that relies so heavily on conversational nuance. There’s a great deal of talking in Rome, Open City: political discussion, moral argument, urgent exchanges that are clearly meant to crackle with tension. Instead, at least for me, they occasionally felt static, as though something essential had been flattened in translation.
Even allowing for that, though, there’s a density to the film that I admired more than I connected with. It felt important, but not always engaging.
If Rome, Open City is Neorealism in its most overtly historical and political mode, Umberto D., directed by Vittorio De Sica, shows what happens when that same sensibility turns inward.
Here, the stakes seem smaller: an elderly man, living on a dwindling pension, trying to maintain some sense of dignity in a society that has quietly moved past him.
There are no resistance networks, no overt villains, no dramatic set pieces. Instead, the film builds itself out of the smallest units of experience – routine, hesitation, minor humiliation, fleeting kindness.
In this, in its own way, it is just as political.
What stayed with me most was the relationship between Umberto and his dog, Flike. It would have been easy for this to tip into sentimentality, but the film resists that at every turn. Their bond isn’t presented as a grand emotional centrepiece; it simply is – steady, necessary, and quietly profound.
There’s a moment where Umberto contemplates what might happen to Flike if he can no longer care for him, and it lands with a kind of understated devastation, not because the film pushes for it; it doesn’t. It just trusts you to feel it yourself.
For me, (while I realise I’ve only seen a small sample) that’s where Neorealism is at its strongest – not in its depiction of hardship, but in its refusal to sensationalise it.
I admired both films (and was genuinely moved by Umberto D.), but neither quite became a favourite. There’s a pacing to Neorealist cinema that can feel, at times, like walking through treacle. Scenes unfold slowly, often without clear narrative propulsion, and meaning accumulates gradually rather than declaring itself.
I suspect that if you’re attuned to that rhythm, it could be absorbing. When you’re not – whether because of language, distraction, or even just mood – it creates a slight but persistent distance.
That doesn’t make the films unsuccessful, but it does make them demanding in a very specific way, one which makes them more rewarding to watch when you’re in the right frame of mind.
What Italian Neorealism ultimately did was expand the frame – not visually, but ethically
Interestingly, Italian Neorealism was relatively short-lived as a coherent movement despite its influence. By the early to mid-1950s, Italy itself was changing – economically, socially, culturally – and filmmakers began to move in new directions. However, Neorealism’s influence travelled far beyond Italy.
In France, it fed directly into the French New Wave, where directors embraced location shooting and looser narrative structures. In Britain, it helped shape social realism, with its focus on working-class life and regional specificity. And in Hollywood – perhaps the least likely inheritor – its DNA can be found in films that step outside the studio system to tell more grounded, character-driven stories. Even now, we see its imprint in independent cinema: in films that prioritise observation over plot, that cast non-professional actors, that find drama in the everyday.
What Italian Neorealism ultimately did was expand the frame – not visually, but ethically. It insisted that the lives of ordinary people were not just suitable for cinema, but essential to it.
That dignity, struggle, boredom, companionship – all the quiet textures of existence – were worthy of being seen.
It’s not always comfortable viewing. It’s not always even particularly enjoyable. But it is, at its best, deeply human.