An important takeaway from Italian Neorealism is that there is not a singular nor neat definition to which in can be applied and explained. With this being said, it seems the strongest overarching connections in neorealist cinema are the content and characters these films deploy, rather than any strict stylist choices. It seems a common goal in Neorealist films — during the post war period and thus in response to embellished propaganda films of the war period — was to relay narratives that dealt with realistic perspectives and characters relevant to the time. In Italian Neorealist Cinema an Aesthetic Approach there is an argument made that Roma Città Aperta “documents’ the meanings that the Resistance to occupation had for Italians at the moment in the time in which the film was made and shown.” Thus this implies that Neorealist films were not necessarily just pleasurable escapes from reality, but also reflections on sometime unglamorous …show more content…
Looking at Roma Città Aperta and Umberto D. I believe it fair to say that both of these films both spoke bold truths about Italian society at times surrounding the war. Aside from the Nazis and their affiliates, most characters in Roma Città Aperta seem humble and relatable characters, living in poverty and unified in their resistance to Nazi occupation. This resistance was willing to overlook past or current social categories that would later come back to divide Italian society as seen in Umberto D. Furthermore, the idea that Neorealism, “dealt with actual problems, that they employed contemporary stories, and that they focussed on believable characters taken most frequently from Italian daily life.” gives insight into the fact these film were successful not because of their glamor, but because they intentionally instilled the zeitgeist, allowing viewers to see a