Other filmmakers who helped to define Italian neorealism were Vittorio De Sica, Luchino Visconti, and Giuseppe De Santis.

Some films from this period, like Roberto Rossellini’s Rome, Open City, birthed cinematic movements such as Italian neorealism. World War II incited filmmakers from around the globe to take to the streets to make their films. His late 1930s films La Grande Illusion and The Rules of the Game were major catalysts for introducing realism in film. There were some movies that were shot in part, or mostly on location, like Sergei Eisenstein’s Soviet Montage film Battleship Potemkin, but most were shot in sound stages or on sets.įrench filmmaker Jean Renoir is widely credited as The Godfather of realism in film, even though most of his films were shot on set. Between World War I and World War II, most movies were shot in studios. Location shooting is one of the predominant characteristics of realism in film.

The Rebirth of Cinematic Realism Neorealism in film These movies are grounded in reality with none of the escapist fantasy of the typical Hollywood blockbuster. Realism in film relies on both narrative and visual realism - by this I mean that the story must be grounded in reality and the visuals must match. It’s about taking what we infer reality to be and transposing or transcribing it onto an artistic medium, either in writing, photography, film, etc. As the video explains, realism is all about depicting life as it’s presented to us.

Aesthetic realism in literature