What is the difference between Italian neo-realism and traditional realism?

Italy, which was defeated in World War II, was in turmoil after the war, and its people were struggling in extreme poverty and despair. It is not only a huge social disaster caused by the fascist regime, but also a social reality of post-war reconstruction, and it is in urgent need of funds. Faced with such a social disaster and reality, a group of young film artists who have been baptized by the anti-fascist struggle, under the banner of striving for social progress, democracy and equality, turned their artistic vision from formalism to realism, and created a group of extremely simple, sincere and profound artistic films with an artistic program that faithfully reflected the historical truth and the reality they faced, which attracted the attention of filmmakers all over the world and left the most colorful stroke in the history of world films.

These young film artists' strong sense of social responsibility-a kind of film consciousness that faces the social reality directly and directly, and their life experience of participating in the anti-fascist struggle, make Italian neo-realism have strong realistic characteristics from the beginning, which means that they should not only record the reality, but also try to intervene and talk about it. This once again highlights and marks the other side of film art-the recording function of film and the dialogue function between film art and social reality-a different repairing function, which leads us to find a face-to-face reality and try to break through it and re-establish the connection between people and society.

Another unexpected social effect of Italian neo-realism is that at the beginning, it was probably not expected that it would trigger a global film movement that lasted for decades, including famous film art movements such as the French New Wave and the German New Film Movement. These film art movements in European countries have made European art films a coordinate series that can be juxtaposed with Hollywood in the United States, and thus formed a European art film festival that can compete with Oscar but has a completely different evaluation mechanism.

As the theoretical founder of neo-realism films, Chai Vatini, a famous neo-realism film writer, said that the most prominent feature of neo-realism and its most important innovation lies in that it proves that a film does not necessarily need a "story", that is, a story fabricated according to tradition; The greatest effort of neo-realism is that it makes the narrative as concise as possible. In short, "it is not a story, but a record, a record spirit." While expounding the aesthetic characteristics of neo-realism, Chavartini also defended this school in theory. He thinks that the new realistic film is a kind of record. Because he thinks that "life is art", he once said: the streets and alleys are full of touching events in daily chores. As long as you pay close attention, you can find art. "

Obviously, Chai Rafti does not advocate the induction, integration and perfection of life as the essence of life, but is only limited to the list of life phenomena. Many of this creative methods belong to naturalism. This can be seen from his films The Bicycle Thief, Wimberto-D and Miracle of Milan. However, it should be admitted that the new realistic film and the "life" it advocates are.