Italian Neorealism emerged in post-WWII Italy in response to the difficult economic conditions and desire to portray realism over fascism's rejection of realism. Key directors like Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio De Sica filmed on location using non-professional actors and a documentary style. De Sica's 1948 film Bicycle Thieves is considered the pinnacle of the movement. The French New Wave of the late 1950s rejected classical Hollywood styles through techniques like jump cuts and handheld cameras, influenced by writers at Cahiers du Cinema and the auteur theory. Parallel Indian Cinema emerged in the 1970s as an alternative to commercial Indian cinema, addressing social and political realities through serious themes and naturalism

1. UNDERSTANDING CINEMA
Faiqa J Dabir
2014
Indian Parallel
Cinema
French New Wave
Italian Neorealism

2. What is Italian Neorealism?
A movement of film realistically reflecting the difficult
economic and moral conditions in post-WWII Italy

3. Origins of Neorealism
World War Ⅱ
Mussolini and Fascists
rejected to make realism films.
Did not want to show the negative side of Italian Society.
(unemployment,inequality.etc)

4. Origins of Neorealism
• WW II destroyed Italy as economically and politically.
• Fascism fall off.
• The war destroyed studios and created economic crisis.
• The directors search a new method to give life to Italian
Film.
• The inventions of technology help them to take camera
and focus them to street.
• It destroy all other isms in cinema and created a
neorealist method.

5. Origins of Neorealism
1943 End of the World War Ⅱ
Neo-realism became the mainstream of Italian cinema and
literature.
…response to the political turmoil and desperate economic
conditions afflicting the country

6. Style and Methods of Neorealism
• Captured the “beauty of ordinary life”
• “Open form narrative;” ranges from partisan heroics to
contemporary social problems
• The new realism included the notion of abolishing
contrived plots and professional actors
• simple realist style films
• Documentary-like visual style with an avoidance of special
effects or unnatural lighting
• The use of actual locations, especially city exteriors,
rather than studio sets

7. Style and Methods of Neorealism
• On-location shooting
• Long takes
• Natural light
• Medium and long shots
• Working class protagonists
• Environment as important as actors
• Poverty, crime, social injustice common themes

8. Key Directors
Roberto Rossellini Luchino Visconti
Vittorio De Sica

9. Pinnacle of Neorealism

10. Pinnacle of Neorealism
Di Sica’s The Bicycle Thieves (Ladri di biciclette) of 1948
was given an honorary Academy Award in 1950.
It appears on critics’ and directors’ lists as one of the most
important and influential films ever made.
The film placed sixth as the greatest film ever made in
Sight & Sound's latest directors' poll, conducted in 2002

11. Demise or Decadence of Neorealism
• Postwar Italian governments did not approve of films that
portrayed Italy in a negative light.
• A 1949 law strengthening production and exhibition of
Italian films imposed censorship on scripts that “slandered
Italy.”
• The following developed:
Allegoric Fantasy-Miracle in Milan(1952),Desica
Melodrama Film-Senso(1954) ,Luchino Visconti
Pink Neo-realism-Bread, Love and Dreams(1953),Luigi
Comencini

12. After effects
• It opened the door to filming on location rather than in a
studio
• It showed filmmakers that movies can be used to highlight
the reality of societal problems and make viewers
consider social change
• In Asia, Africa, and Latin America, in particular, it
demonstrated that you could make great films
inexpensively with your own country’s landscape and
people—without lavish sets or expensive stars.
• The movement did influence the French New Wave,
Hollywood and TV

13. What is a New Wave in Cinema?
A New Wave is a movement in cinema which seeks to
stylistically and narratively differentiate itself from the
dominant paradigm of mainstream film production. Usually,
the people driving the movement are young and are driven
by an ideological/political imperative.

14. Origins of the French nouvelle vague
• Due to the Nazi occupation of France, American
cinema had been banned during World War II. After
the war, restrictions were lifted and Hollywood
product flooded the French market.
• Fearing that there was little exhibition space for
alternatives to Hollywood, Andre Bazin established a
number of cineclubs in which he would screen non-
Hollywood, non-commercial films. Other like-minded
people began to do the same, and an underground
movement was born.
• The screenings were organised and attended by
people like Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut
who would go on to be leading figures in the French
New Wave movement.

15. Cahiers du Cinéma
• In April 1951, the first issue of Cahiers du
Cinéma (Notes on Cinema) was
published. CDC was headed by Bazin,
Jacques Donoil-Valcroze and Joseph
Marie Lo-Duca.
• The magazine aimed to restore French
cinema to prominence, as well as to
discuss all film with the same kind of
intellectual context which other art forms
were treated with.

16. The Director’s Cinema
• Andre Bazin firmly believed in evaluating a film through
the prism of the director.
• CDC constantly interviewed filmmakers, and established
a canon of directors who they believed to be above the
corporate machinations of studio filmmaking.
• These names included Jean Renoir (France), Kenji
Mizoguchi (Japan) and Alfred Hitchcock (America).

17. Alexandre Astruc - Camera stylo (1948)
• ‘The cinema is quite simply becoming a means of
expression, just as all the arts have been before it, and in
particular painting and the novel.’
• ‘After having been a successful fairground attraction, an
amusement analogous to boulevard theatre, or a means
of preserving the images of an era, it is gradually
becoming a language.’
• ‘By language I mean a form in which and by which an
artist can express his thoughts, however abstract they
may be, or translate his obsessions exactly as he does in
a contemporary essay or novel.’
• ‘That is why I would like to call this new age of cinema the
age of caméra-stylo.’

18. The Auteur Theory
• Truffaut believed that too much of a premium had previously
been placed on the screenwriter, rather than the filmmaker.
• He proposed la politique des Auteurs, which valued a director’s
personal stylistic and narrative contributions to a film over all
else. Filmmakers who achieved this were auteurs, and those
who adhered to generic conventions were labelled as metteur
un scene – literally, a stage setter.
• This was a hugely influential mode of thought.
• Bazin, on the other hand, surprisingly attacked Truffaut for
ignoring the historical, social and industrial factors involved in
film production and for simplistically assuming that a director
alone was responsible for a film.

19. The Auteur Theory and The nouvelle
vague
• When Truffaut turned to filmmaking, he naturally tried to
make his films as personal/auterist as possible. Other
contemporaries followed suit, and this loose movement
become what is now known as the nouvelle vague.
• These films were shot by groups of friends on a low-
budget using newly available, cheaper cameras.
• Truffaut defined the members as sharing nothing in
common but their rejection of the excess of mainstream
cinema.

20. Key Directors
Francois Truffaut Jean-Luc Godard
Jacques Rivette
Claude Chabrol
Eric Rohmer

21. Stylistic Tendencies
A general disregard for many (but not all) of the principles
of continuity editing. The films featured techniques such as:
• Jump cuts rather than eyeline matches
• Breaking the 180 degree rule
• A heavy reliance on lighter, handheld cameras rather than
staged, static shots
• Extremely long takes, as opposed to the quick cuts of
Classical Hollywood
• Filmed on location rather than studio.

22. Stylistic Tendencies
• All of this amounts to a film style which does not attempt
to conceal that the viewer is watching a film. In fact, it
often seeks to actively remind them of this fact.
• Narrative is subservient to personal style rather than
vice versa.

23. Why was the nouvelle vague important?
• Presented a clear alternative to Hollywood, establishing
that not all films needed to be made in a uniform fashion.
• Influenced other New Waves (Japanese, Czech, Thai,
British) and continues to be a reference point for left wing
and art cinema today.
• Had a theoretical underpinning which remains influential
in Film Studies to this day – auteur theory, intellectual
discussion of film as a legitimate art form.

24. What is Parallel Indian Cinema
The term Parallel Indian Cinema refers to the New Indian
Wave, commonly known as the Art Cinema, or Parallel
Cinema i.e. a genre of Cinema which re-emerged after 90s,
as an alternative to commercial movement, the former is
known for its serious content (blended with naturalism and
realism), modern man dilemmas, and a constant search for
‘Self’ with a keen eye on the socio-political conditions.

25. Origin of Parallel Cinema
• Cinema was born out of the impetus to represent the reality in
a more convincing manner.
• With the passage of time and the new technological
achievements, cinema gradually metamorphosed itself into an
entertainment medium.
• However cinema, like any other art forms, cannot be oblivious
to the social changes that take place every day. It in fact
mirrors the reality.
• Indian cinema is no exception. It has always reflected the
social, political and economic changes throughout its history.
• In the 1970s, parallel cinema movement addressed this reality
without any reservation. The birth of parallel cinema in India
however was not a sudden phenomenon. The seed was sown
much earlier.

26. Scope of Parallel Cinema
• Through this form of cinema people could see the best of
Indian cinema .
• It exposes us to the best of foreign cinema too.
• Certain literary-cum-cinema critics created waves among
the young film makers who were frustrated with the
mindless songs-dance dramas made in India.
• The Main Objective was to promote the flow of standard
art, culture, literature through media.

27. Most Common Themes
• Modern Man Dilemmas
• Socio Political Scenario
• Search for ‘SELF’
• Alienation
• Narcissism
• Quest for power

28. Canvas of characters
• High Seriousness of content
• Naturalism
• Realism portrayed in characters

29. Key Directors

30. Decline
• By the early 1990s, the rising costs involved in film
production and the commercialisation of the films had a
negative impact on the art films.
• The fact that investment returns cannot be guaranteed
made art films less popular amongst filmmakers.
• Underworld financing, political and economic turmoil,
television and piracy proved to be fatal threat to parallel
cinema, as it declined.

31. Resurgence
• The term "parallel cinema" has started being applied to
off-beat films produced in Bollywood, where art films have
begun experiencing a resurgence. This led to the
emergence of a distinct genre known as Mumbai noir,
urban films reflecting social problems in the city
of Mumbai.
• Other modern examples of art films produced in
Bollywood which are classified as part of the parallel
cinema genre include Yuva, Dor, Ship of Thesus,
Sonchidi, Dhobi Ghat.