Neorealism

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The neo-realism is a socially realistic flow in prose literature, film and painting in Italy , Portugal and Brazil in the mid-20th century (about 1930-1965). Characteristic are a simple style of speech, including everyday language and dialects, as well as the renunciation of rhetoric and conventions. The focus is on the depiction of the difficult life and the emotional conflicts of socially weak and peasant classes, who are dependent on privileged elites. Any idealization is avoided. The requirement of objectivity and neutrality leads to a distanced, documentary, unadorned presentation. Films are usually not shot in the studio, but in partly gloomy original locations. Linguistic innovations from the previous period of modernism are taken up, but the actors in neorealism are drawn far more simply than the highly complex subjects of modernism; their actions are often portrayed as determined by constraints and traditions.

There are clear parallels to neorealism in French cinema of the 1930s and among various authors of the generation of the 30s in Greece .

After 1945, increased influences of Marxism and psychoanalysis made themselves felt especially on Italian neorealism. The post-fascist Italian film played an important role in the culture war that then began. Although neorealism distinguishes itself from socialist realism , it often uses black and white painting and reveals its didactic intentions, including caricatures.

The Portuguese and Brazilian literary neorrealismo lacked the strong impetus for cultural renewal; instead, the psychological development of the characters came to the fore in the 1950s and 1960s.

background

The Great Depression of the 1920s and 1930s led to the impoverishment of large groups. Living conditions deteriorated not only in industrial, but also in backward rural regions such as the Mezzogiorno , Portugal and the Brazilian northeast. At the same time, the dictatorships in Italy, Portugal and Brazil grew stronger; The corporate state concepts and labor laws they drafted cemented the privileges of the elites and increased the dependency of the rural population through political repression. These tendencies as well as the failure of the Popular Front in France and the Spanish Civil War contributed to the politicization of broad layers, but also to a feeling of hopelessness and fatalism. This found its expression in the formation of a neorealist current in the late 1930s.

The distant, pessimistic representation of the neorealists showed the economic, social and psychological conflicts and their dramatic escalation in the everyday life of ordinary people. The early neorealists offered neither tangible solutions nor ideological interpretations. Precisely because of this, the authors and directors were often able to circumvent the censorship that was particularly pronounced in Portugal. The Italian film of neorealismo, on the other hand, ostensibly oriented itself towards the requirements of official cultural policy when it turned away from the forms of traditional entertainment films, and enjoyed considerable creative freedom. Some Italian authors like Elio Vittorini belonged to the left-wing intellectual wing of the Italian fascists.

Neorealism in Italian Literature

Forerunners can be found in Italian verismo ; however, this lacked the socially critical element and the commitment to the radical renewal of culture that is noticeable in Italian neorealismo or neoverismo . The most important authors of Italian neorealismo or neoverismo include Cesare Pavese , Elio Vittorini, Carlo Levi , Alberto Moravia , Italo Calvino and Ignazio Silone .

Neorealism in Italian film

Neorealism in Italian Architecture

Neorealist architecture is used to refer to a group of Italian architects who opposed the classicism of fascism as well as the rationalism and functionalism of the international styles . Representatives were u. a. Ludovico Quaroni and Carlo Aymonino and Lina Bo Bardi , who emigrated to Brazil in 1946 and continued her work there.

Brazilian regionalismo

The novel A Bagaceira (1928) by José Américo de Almeida is considered to be the first work of this movement, which can be viewed as a Brazilian variant of neorealism . Other representatives were José Lins do Rego (1901–1957), who described life on the sugar cane plantations ( Menino de ENGENHO , 1932), Graciliano Ramos ("Karges Leben", Ger . 2013), Érico Veríssimo and the early Jorge Amado .

Brazilian Cinema Novo

Fome by Olympio Guilherme (1929) is considered the first neo-realistic Brazilian film. Neorealism lived on in the Cinema Novo of the 1950s. A late work of this style, which was influenced by Nelson Pereira dos Santos , is the film Pixote ("Asphalt Sharks") made by Héctor Babenco during the military dictatorship in 1980 with street children as amateur actors .

Portuguese neorrealismo

The Brazilian novel of the northeast also influenced Portuguese literature. With a certain time lag, this also developed a neo-realistic trend in response to aesthetic modernism and also took up suggestions from John Steinbeck and John Dos Passos . Important authors of Portuguese Neorrealismo are Alves Redol , who was persecuted by the PIDE and was temporarily imprisoned, Manuel da Fonseca ("Saat des Windes", German 1990), Fernando Namora and the Marxist Carlos de Oliveira , who linguistically admitted ties in with modernism. While Redol is quite indifferent to aesthetic questions and only wants to document, Oliveira ties in with the poetic and symbolic language of presençismo , i.e. the modernist generation of the 1920s.

In Mozambique , Orlando Mendes , of Portuguese origin, was influenced by neorealism in his poetry.

Aniki Bóbó by Manoel de Oliveira (1942), a film about the children of the port district of Porto, is considered Portugal's first neorealistic film . In the 1960s, the Novo Cinema followed up on this work, which stood alone for a long time because the Salazar regime prevented critical, realistic film production .

French Poetic Realism

Important representatives are Jean Renoir and René Clair .

Neorealistic painting

The Mexican painting school of muralism around Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco and the works of the Brazilian painter Candido Portinari are also described as neorealistic. In Italy Renato Guttuso is considered a Neorealismo pittorico , but he is often referred to as an expressionist .

See also

literature

  • João Pedro de Andrade: Ambições e limites do Neo-Realismo Português. Editora Acontecimento, 2002 (Portuguese)
  • Heinz Ludwig Arnold (Ed.): Italian Neorealism. Text + criticism 63, München 1979.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Neorealism , in: Der Literatur Brockhaus , Vol. 2, Mannheim 1988, p. 686.
  2. ^ Francisco Martins: The prostrate hero in the novels of António Alves Redol. City University of New York, New York 1978.
  3. ↑ Harri Meier, Ray-Güde Mertin: The Portuguese literature. In: Kindler's new literary lexicon. Vol. 20. Munich 1996, p. 75.