Italian Neorealism

ITALIAN NEOREALISM
A Cultural History
Italian Neorealism
A Cultural History
CHARLES L. LEAVITT IV
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS

Toronto Buffalo London
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Printed in the U.S.A.
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Toronto Italian Studies
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: Italian neorealism : a cultural history / Charles L. Leavitt IV.

Names: Leavitt, Charles L., IV, author.
Series: Toronto Italian studies.
Description: Series statement: Toronto Italian studies | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200169033 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200169114
| ISBN 9781487507107 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781487535582 (EPUB) |
ISBN 9781487535575 (PDF)
Subjects: LCSH: Motion pictures – Italy – History. | LCSH: Realism in motion
pictures.
Classification: LCC PN1993.5.I88 L43 2020 | DDC 791.430945 – dc23
This book has been published with the assistance of the Institute for
Scholarship in the Liberal Arts at the University of Notre Dame.
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its

publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts
Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario.
For Brynn, always.
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 3
1 What Was Neorealism? 14
2 “Renewal through Conservation”: Neorealism after Fascism 49
3 “Chronicle and Tragedy”: The Neorealist Representation
of History 85
4 “From I to We ”: Neorealism’s Choral Politics 128
Conclusion 171
Notes 179
Bibliography 249
Index 303
Acknowledgments
This book begins with an imagined conversation, but it was born from
the actual conversations that, over the more than ten years it has taken to
bring this project to its completion, I have had the good fortune to carry
on with my friends, colleagues, and mentors. To all those who have kindly
shared with me their questions and curiosity, their comments and criti-
cisms, their encouragement and enthusiasm, I extend my heartfelt thanks.
I would like to thank in particular those scholars and editors who were
generous enough to read and to critique this work while it was still in
progress. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Robert Gordon, Brendan Hennessey, Alan
O’Leary, John Welle, Demetrio Yocum, and the anonymous readers at the
University of Toronto Press commented on earlier drafts with precision
and care, and their insightful reflections and probing queries helped me
to expand my thinking, refine my argument, and clarify my writing. I am
grateful, as well, to Mark Thompson, Robin Studniberg, Anne Laughlin,
and Breanna Muir at the University of Toronto Press, who helped me to
revise and enhance my manuscript throughout its path to publication.
All along that path, I have been fortunate to receive the support of
a number of institutions, whose generosity allowed me to research, to
write, and eventually to publish this book. I would like to thank the
Nanovic Institute for European Studies, whose Annese Fellowship
permitted me to expand the scope of my project and to cultivate my
research at an early stage. I would like to thank the University of Reading
for the research travel grants that enabled me to present my work as it
developed. And I would like to thank the University of Notre Dame’s
Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts, whose travel grant helped
me to finalize my research, and whose publication grant allowed me to
realize my goal of bringing that research to press.
At Notre Dame I have had the opportunity, and the pleasure, first to study
under and now to work alongside a remarkable number of distinguished
x Acknowledgments
scholars and teachers, among whom are my fellow Italianists Ted Cachey,
Sabrina Ferri, and Christian Moevs. Together they have done much more
than help me to develop my scholarship; they have helped me to discover
my scholarly vocation. Among the many others who played a crucial role
in that discovery, I want especially to thank Gina Psaki at the University
of Oregon, Luca Bonomi at the Società Dante Alighieri in Siena, and
Paolo Squillacioti at the Opera Del Vocabolario Italiano in Florence, who
first taught me, respectively, to love Italian culture, to savour the Italian
language, and to esteem Italian philology.
It is my great honour to have been entrusted to impart some of these
same lessons to the students of the University of Notre Dame, and before
them those of the University of Reading, where I had the good fortune to
serve for six years as lecturer. I want to thank Federico Faloppa, Daniela
La Penna, Paola Nasti, Lisa Sampson, and Enza Siciliano-Verruccio, who
shared with me so many of the satisfactions as well as the struggles of
Italian studies in Reading. This book is largely a product of our time
together, and I hope it reflects not only something of the wealth of
Italian culture and civilization, as one of our number once described
our remit, but also the common sense, transparency, and irony he valued
in the context in which we worked. While in Reading, I had the oppor-
tunity to serve as co-editor of the Italianist film issue, and I would like
to thank Catherine O’Rawe and Dana Renga, who shared that role with
me; I continue to learn from their scrupulous example, and from their
generous devotion to the field.
Among the many friends whose encouragement, intellectual as well
as personal, has helped me to see this project through to its comple-
tion, I want to be sure to thank Maggie Barański, Damiano Benvegnù,
Eleonora Buonocore, Jacopo Di Giovanni, Marisa Escolar, Francesca
Iacoponi, James Kriesel, Anne Leone, David Lummus, Ugo Marsili,
Vittorio Montemaggi, Sam Tilsen, and Sara Troyani. I would above
all like to thank my family – Janet, Charlie, Andrew, Amy, Cernie, and
Sam, as well as a vibrant and growing extended family – without whose
support and patience I could never have completed this project. And
I would never have enjoyed its completion so much were it not for my
son Nathaniel, who was born the same day I finished my first draft. He
was early, I was late. Now I have the joy of sharing with him, and with the
others I love, this labour of love.
Several of the conversations that sustained me in crucial stages of this
project were cut short before its conclusion, and my joy in completing
this book is tinged with the sadness of losing some of the friends and
mentors who played important roles in making that happen. I wish to
remember Joe Buttigieg, whose formidable knowledge of European
Acknowledgments xi
cultural history helped me to situate my discoveries, and whose fervent

positivity emboldened me to pursue those discoveries to their conclu-
sion; Laurence Hooper, who inspired me with his sincere devotion to
serious scholarship, as well as his sardonic appraisals of work that fell
short of his ideal; and Chris Wagstaff, who was always prepared to fight
unyieldingly for what he believed, and who took the time to debate with
me, generously but forcefully, about Italian neorealism, and much else
as well, over countless long lunches that, I am privileged to say, some-
times stretched well into the evening. I wish so much that these esteemed
scholars and cherished friends were still with me, and I hope that, in
some small way, this book can serve as a tribute to their memory.
I hope, finally, that my book stands to the credit of the two people who
did more than any others to make it a reality: Zyg Barański, who shared
with me not only his incomparable expertise and invaluable advice but
also his home, where most of this book was written; and Brynn Leavitt,
with whom I have shared a life for nearly twenty years, and without whom
this book would never have been possible. Thank you.
ITALIAN NEOREALISM
A Cultural History
Introduction
This book was inspired by a conversation that never took place. I do not
mean to imply that conversations about Italian neorealism are somehow
lacking. To this day scholars and critics continually remind us how, in
the decade following the end of the Second World War, the innovations
of Italian cinema were met not only with global admiration but also with
widespread imitation, permanently reshaping how films were made and
understood worldwide.1 These commentators stress, as well, how related
developments transformed Italian painting and photography,2 architec-
ture and design,3 music and literature,4 with lasting repercussions for
all forms of creative expression. Citing diverse examples from disparate
contexts, they describe the distinctive ways in which the international
community drew inspiration from Italian writers, artists, and especially
filmmakers, helping to make Italian neorealism one of the most influ-
ential cultural currents of the modern age.5 It was not this ongoing crit-
ical conversation, however, but rather an imagined discussion that first
attracted my notice. Asked by an interviewer to reflect on the rise of
Italian neorealism, the director Vittorio De Sica, who deserved as much
credit as anyone for this development, invoked an originary silence at its
birth. “Non è che un giorno ci siamo seduti a un tavolino di via Veneto,
Rossellini, Visconti, io e gli altri, e ci siamo detti: adesso facciamo il neo-
realismo [It isn’t the case that one day Rossellini, Visconti, the other
directors, and I sat down at a table in the Via Veneto and said: now let’s
make neorealism],” De Sica told his interviewer. “Ognuno viveva per
conto suo, pensava e sperava per conto suo. E tuttavia il cinema neo-
realista stava nascendo come un vasto movimento collettivo, di tutti
[We were each living our own lives, with our own thoughts and our own
hopes. And yet neorealist cinema was beginning to take shape as a vast,
collective movement, of all of us].”6 De Sica sought to make clear that,
if their films had revolutionized cinema, if they had helped to birth a
4 Italian Neorealism
neorealist movement, it was not because these three celebrated directors

had devised a plan to achieve some shared ambition. There was no plan,
there was no shared ambition, and there had been no conversation.
Many critics have seized on admissions like De Sica’s to emphasize the
difficulty, if not in fact the very impossibility, of defining this complex
cultural tendency. Neorealism, they maintain, was inevitably “malleabile,
elastica, cangiante, caleidoscopica [malleable, elastic, changing, kalei-
doscopic],” “un coacervo di posizioni e di linee ideologiche tangenti
[a jumble of tangential ideological lines and positions],” “equivoca e
intimamente contraddittoria [confused and thoroughly contradictory],”
with an “assenza di qualsiasi coesione interna [absence of any internal
coherence whatsoever].”7 Stressing the absence of a neorealist program
or manifesto, they argue that the movement lacked any well-defined
conceptual boundaries.8 They often conclude that neorealism cannot be
considered a movement or a school at all.9 Little wonder, then, that few
can agree on which works rightly fall within the neorealist orbit. Some
purists argue that there were only five neorealist films.10 Other critics
take a more inclusive approach, broadening the canon to encompass
twenty-one,11 forty,12 sixty to eighty,13 or possibly eighty to ninety works.14
There is a similar dispute regarding neorealism’s periodization. Some
date its emergence to the end of the Second World War, locating its
conclusion sometime between 1948 and 1951.15 Others think it lasted
longer, persisting well into the 1950s, and perhaps as late as 1960.16
There are those, as well, who argue that the origin of neorealism needs
to be pushed back before the end of the war, to 1943, the year of Benito
Mussolini’s dismissal and arrest.17 Others extend the dating further still,
locating neorealism’s origins in the 1930s.18 The questions of definition
and periodization become all the more acute when one looks beyond
cinema. Whether references to neorealist art, architecture, and litera-
ture derive from a cinematic designation or instead denote specific and
perhaps even separate creative tendencies remains very much an open
question.19 Differing responses, and with them differing conceptions of
neorealism, have led to the formation of opposing canons, each headed
by authors and artists the other excludes by definition.20 It is never
entirely apparent, therefore, what is meant when notions of neorealism
are invoked. Indeed, while neorealism retains its place of prominence in
modern cultural history, there remains little agreement regarding what
neorealism is, and even some disagreement about whether neorealism
can be said to exist at all.
De Sica’s remarks offer a way out of this apparent impasse. If it is
true that he denied the existence of a neorealist manifesto, after all,
it is also true that he affirmed the existence of a neorealist moment,
Introduction 5
and with it a neorealist movement: “a vast, collective movement, of

all of us.”21 In his telling, as in the accounts of several of his contem-
poraries and colleagues, neorealism cohered not because it was born
from a common program but because it emerged in response to a com-
mon climate.22 Italian artists and intellectuals may have held opposing
beliefs, pursued divergent objectives, and offered contrasting and even
conflicting proposals, but they did so inspired by common concerns
and shared challenges. De Sica’s statement thus suggests the possibil-
ity of an underlying unity to the neorealists’ apparent disunity, what
Pierre Bourdieu would call a “consensus in dissensus,” which is to say
a connection founded upon “the accepted questions on which they
are opposed.”23 One might even conjecture that such questions com-
prised the core of neorealism itself. This is the provocative implica-
tion of a comment by the screenwriter and critic Tullio Kezich, who
recalled that, even as neorealist films began to attract global acclaim, in
Italy “[l]’accento cadeva sui dibattiti. Erano essi, più che i film, l’apice
della nostra attività. I film si sarebbero potuti anche non vedere [our
emphasis was on the debates. These, more than the films, represented
the height of our activity. You didn’t even have to see the films].”24
Kezich took the point rather too far, perhaps, but in his exaggeration
he revealed something of the truth. If Italian neorealism was “a vast,
collective movement,” as De Sica argued, this was because it was the
scene of significant discussions and debates, because it was the subject
of a cultural conversation.
That statement is admittedly paradoxical, since De Sica sought to
defend neorealism’s existence despite what he saw as the absence of
a neorealist conversation. The great Italian directors, he insisted, had
never met to discuss and coordinate their film projects. Cinephiles may
regret that such a conversation never took place. What might De Sica,
Rossellini, and Visconti have discussed in Rome in the immediate after-
math of the Second World War? What plans might have emerged, what
new ideas might have taken shape, from their exchanges across a café
table in the Via Veneto? In truth, however, there is little need for such
speculative questions because, as Kezich’s remark reveals, a conversation
did in fact take place – a conversation that was far more inclusive, far
more extensive, and far more combative than the one imagined by De
Sica. It was a conversation carried out in the cafés of Rome, and in those
of every other Italian city as well, but also in the cultural pages of the
daily newspapers; in film journals and literary reviews; in editorial offices
and case del popolo; at artists’ exhibitions and on film sets; in novels, short
stories, poems, and memoirs; in theatres and at the cinema; in lecture
halls and radio broadcasts; even in the houses of Parliament. That
conversation was Italian neorealism. “La storia del neorealismo è [...]

la storia di un dialogo [The history of neorealism is (...) the history of a
dialogue],” explained the film critic Gian Luigi Rondi; neorealism was
“un insieme di voci [many voices combined],” declared the novelist Italo
Calvino.25 This study is an attempt to listen to those voices, to describe
their dialogue, to understand their conversation.
“A Confusion of Language”
Scholarship on neorealism has often taken the opposite tack, aspiring

not to study the conversation but rather to silence it. There have been
frequent exhortations, in fact, to do away with the commentary that has
always surrounded neorealism and to “start from the texts,” consider-
ing the neorealist canon unburdened by the cultural and historical dis-
course to which it has given rise.26 Let the artwork speak for itself, it
is argued, so that the essence of neorealism can emerge through the
attentive, unmediated analysis of neorealist artefacts. More than thirty
years ago, in an essay entitled “Neorealismo senza” (Neorealism with-
out), Leonardo Quaresima offered what remains the most compelling
call to separate the texts from the accumulated prejudices of previous
generations, exhorting his readers in the following terms:
Proviamo a isolare la nozione [del neorealismo] sottraendola alle incrostazi-

oni del discorso critico purista e essenzialista. Proviamo a vedere che cos’è il
neorealismo senza l’ideologia del neorealismo, l’ideologia che ne fa espressione
ufficiale della nascita da un punto zero, l’ideologia che stabilisce questo
collegamento sulla base della purezza di cuore del movimento [...].27
Let us try to isolate the notion [of neorealism] by removing from it the
incrustations of purist and essentialist critical discourse. Let us try to see
what neorealism is without the ideology of neorealism, the ideology that makes
it into an official expression of [post-war Italy’s] birth from zero, and the
ideology that establishes this connection [between neorealism and nation]
on the basis of the movement’s purity of heart [...].
There is something admirable in Quaresima’s stance, in his refusal indis-

crimately to adopt the conventional wisdom, in his desire to look care-
fully, analytically, at works of art whose cultural status has often seemed
to preclude critical reconsideration. Yet there is something deeply prob-
lematic as well.
Put simply, there is no way to approach neorealism free of critical
cant, no neutral position to which one can appeal. Quaresima and other
Introduction 7
like-minded scholars say “start from the texts,” to which one must invaria-
bly ask, “which texts?” The five neorealist films acknowledged by the pur-
ists or the ninety that more ecumenical critics would countenance? Shall
we consider only those films released between 1945 and 1949, or shall
we expand the selection to include those from the 1930s to the 1960s?
Shall we include poems, novels, songs, paintings, sculptures, and perhaps
even buildings and neighbourhoods as well, and if so which ones? Any
choice on these matters entails precisely the kind of ideological interven-
tion Quaresima wished to avoid. This is true even of the small set of films
believed – but believed by whom? – to be the most canonical exemplars of
Italian neorealism. In the interview cited above, for example, Vittorio De
Sica invoked by name two of his most respected neorealist contemporaries,
Luchino Visconti and Roberto Rossellini. In so doing, he may have wished
to offer a kind of common ground, a neorealist core comprising a pair of
cinematic luminaries with an established corpus of films firmly ensconced
in the neorealist firmament. Yet even the most influential films of these
eminent directors have had their neorealist credentials questioned. It has
been said that Visconti “invent[ed] neorealism in his first film, Ossessione,”
but also that Ossessione, released in 1943, “cannot be called, without qual-
ification, a work of neorealism.”28 It has likewise been argued that 1948’s
La terra trema, Visconti’s next film, represents “il vertice poetico di tutta
l’esperienza neorealista [the poetic peak of the entire neorealist expe-
rience],” yet serious doubt is cast on such claims by those who maintain
that the film “si colloca al di fuori del neorealismo [is positioned outside
of neorealism].”29 Rossellini’s status seems no less debatable. Although
it has been claimed that “[l]a nascita del neorealismo in Italia avviene
soltanto con Roma città aperta [the birth of neorealism in Italy happened
only with Roma città aperta],” Rossellini’s first post-war feature, it has also
been asserted, with equal force, that “Roma città aperta doesn’t really fit the
definition of neorealism.”30 To this latter judgment one can only respond
with a question: Whose definition of neorealism? It is a question that can-
not be answered satisfactorily through a close reading of the texts, how-
ever detailed the analysis and however large the corpus.
If neorealism was a cultural climate, if it was a cultural conversation,
then it will not be possible to make definitive claims about the neorealism
of Roma città aperta, or of any other contemporary text, without concom-
itantly analysing the neorealist context. It may not even be possible to
declare with any degree of certainty what constitutes the text and what the
context. Such a priori distinctions, which are implied in every call to “start
from the texts,” necessarily restrict neorealism, often confining it to only
one form of invention, one mode of expression.31 In truth, the refusal to
accept those restrictions, the refusal to acknowledge the barriers between
different forms of expression, different modes of discourse, or different

spheres of influence, was one of the defining characteristics of the neore-
alist moment in Italian culture. The novelist and editor Natalia Ginzburg
recalled that moment in the following illuminating terms:
Era, il dopoguerra, un tempo in cui tutti pensavano d’essere dei poeti, e

tutti pensavano d’essere dei politici; tutti s’immaginavano che si potesse
e si dovesse anzi far poesia di tutto, dopo tanti anni in cui era sembrato
che il mondo fosse ammutolito e pietrificato e la realtà era stata guardata
come di là da un vetro, in una vitrea, cristallina e muta immobilità. [...] Ora
c’erano di nuovo molte parole in circolazione, e la realtà di nuovo appariva
a portata di mano; perciò quegli antichi digiunatori si diedero a vendemmi-
arvi con delizia. E la vendemmia fu generale, perché tutti ebbero l’idea di
prendervi parte; e si determinò una confusione di linguaggio fra poesia e
politica, le quali erano apparse mescolate insieme.32
The post-war period was a time in which we all believed ourselves to be

poets and we all believed ourselves to be politicians. We all imagined that
we could – and in fact we should – take everything as the subject for our
poetry, after many years in which it seemed that the world was muted and
petrified, as if we were seeing reality behind glass, in a vitreous, crystalline,
and muffled stasis. [...] Now there were many words in circulation again,
and reality again appeared to be close to hand. Those of us who had been
fasting for a long time therefore took to the harvest with delight. And the
harvest was communal, because everyone wished to take part. And there
was a confusion of language between poetry and politics, which seemed to
have been mixed together.
In Ginzburg’s telling, post-war Italy was reshaped by the interaction – some

would say the contamination – of previously distinct discourses.33 As pol-
itics and the arts rapidly opened themselves up to new concerns and
new contestants, there arose a kind of festive tumult, a moment when
everything seemed possible and everything felt connected.
Rather than working to isolate neorealism from the post-war confu-
sion, this study attempts to interpret neorealism as a function of the
many connections that constituted the post-war cultural conversation.
I thus refrain from the kinds of artistic and intellectual taxonomy that
have tended to limit neorealism to one strand of that discourse or one
voice in that conversation. Despite the frequent acknowledgments of its
aesthetic hybridity and even its inherent obscurity – despite the declara-
tions that it is “conceptually nebulous,” “indefinibile e sfuggente [inde-
finable and elusive],” characterized by “una discreta dose di equivoci [a
Introduction 9
fair amount of misunderstanding]” – there have been repeated attempts

to distil a singular stylistic or theoretical essence that can define Italian
neorealism.34 Often such efforts take the form of a list of supposedly
identifying traits, such as the one put forward by Alberto Farassino:
Considereremo quindi per ora come “opera neorealista” un tipo di film

che comprende ampiamente le principali e ben note istanze neorealiste,
dalle riprese in esterni, o comunque fuori dagli studi, all’uso di attori non
professionisti, dalla contemporaneità del soggetto all’attenzione del reale
alla disinvoltura nei confronti delle regole convenzionali di messinscena,
recitazione e linguaggio, dalle esigenze morali calate nel racconto e nel
lavoro cinematografico e quelle autoriali di espressione e interpretazione
del mondo.35
Let us describe as a “neorealist work” a film that largely takes up the pri-
mary and best-known neorealist traits, from shooting on location, or oth-
erwise outside the studios, to the use of non-professional actors, from the
treatment of contemporary themes to an emphasis on the real and indiffer-
ence towards conventional rules of staging, acting, and language, from the
moral demands that are placed upon the story and the cinematography to
the authorial demands of expression and interpretation.
Tellingly, while such lists are sometimes treated authoritatively, as if they

could indeed claim to define their intended subject, Farassino prefaced
his with significant caveats. After all, he was one of the more outspo-
ken opponents of what he called the “concezione purista e ‘operista’
del neorealismo [purist and ‘text-based’ conception of neorealism],”
which would seek rigidly to adopt such a catalogue of creative choices as
a means of definition.36 In its place, he called for a more comprehensive
accounting, one founded on the belief that
la definizione più adeguata [del neorealismo] sarebbe quella tautologica

e paradossale che suonerebbe così: “Il cinema neorealista è il cinema ita-
liano dell’epoca del neorealismo.” In altri termini, forse più accettabile: il
neorealismo appare oggi non una tendenza limitata e elitaria collocata nel
mondo del pensiero, del sapere, del fare estetico e del discutere ideologico
ma un affare di vita quotidiana, qualcosa che (e che sia questo il realismo
del neorealismo?) riguardava la vita di tutti e che dai film passava alla realtà
e viceversa, senza subire sostanziali trasformazioni.37
the most appropriate definition [of neorealism] would be tautological and

paradoxical, and would go like this: “Neorealist cinema is the Italian cinema
of the era of neorealism.” In other words, and perhaps more acceptably: ne-
orealism today appears to be not a limited and elitist tendency belonging to
the world of thought, of knowledge, of aesthetic practice, and of ideological
discussion, but rather a quotidian affair, something that concerns the lives
of all people (and might this be the realism of neorealism?) and that passes
from film to reality, and vice versa, without undergoing substantial changes.
By this standard, neorealism was something both more significant and

less determinate than an amalgamation of formal touchstones. For
Farassino it was a “fenomeno complessivo [totalising phenomenon],”
a way of inhabiting, understanding, and representing the world in its
entirety, just as for other like-minded critics it has seemed a “quadro
culturale [cultural framework],” “una ‘civiltà’ [a ‘civilization’],” “uno
stato d’animo [a state of mind].”38 These descriptions suggest, as the
more restrictive definitions do not, the inclusivity, the plurivocality, the
universality of the neorealist conversation. This book will seek to expand
on, and to extend, the insights they have made possible.
“A Vast, Collective Movement, of All of Us”
In the chapters that follow I attempt to provide the most expansive

description yet compiled of the neorealist conversation. I do so with
the conviction that neorealism is best approached not through any
one medium, any one form of artistic realization, but rather through
the dialogue in which all of those diverse forms of expression took part.
I thus attempt to chart the network of representations that, throughout
the age of neorealism, linked all forms of creative production in a gen-
erative exchange. My investigation explores the shared discourse with
which Italian artists and intellectuals collectively engaged, the horizon
of expectations under which they pursued their various creative and crit-
ical activities, and the common conceptual structures with which they
articulated and evaluated their variegated cultural projects. It is a central
tenet of this book that the cultural conversation necessarily includes all
of the films, novels, poems, plays, paintings, sculptures, songs, essays,
reviews, and debates which together shaped and reflected their histor-
ical moment. Unconstrained by disciplinary boundaries, by normative
definitions, or by critical conventions, this study thus aims to redescribe
that historical moment by reinterpreting its expansive cultural discourse,
whose distinctive voices and characteristic statements I take together to
constitute Italian neorealism.
I begin in the first chapter by analysing neorealism’s conceptual his-
tory, conceived in its most extensive sense as stretching from the 1890s
Introduction 11
through the 1950s. Employing a critical semantics, I follow the develop-

ment of neorealism as a cultural category by tracking the spread of the
term neorealismo and its cognates through the diverse fields of Italian
creative enterprise, accentuating the terms’ changing linguistic pur-
chase over time. What emerges is an enduring cultural discourse, dif-
fuse and syncretic, which spanned decades and traversed all forms of
creative expression. I have chosen in this initial chapter to adopt as case
studies two works – Elio Vittorini’s 1945 novel Uomini e no and Luchino
Visconti’s 1948 film La terra trema – whose textual operation and critical
reception reveal with particular clarity symptomatic aspects of neoreal-
ism’s emergent cultural operation. Together, then, these two texts serve
to exemplify the specific developments that characterize the expansive
description of neorealism that I develop in chapter 1, and that provides
the basis for the three chapters to follow. In each of those subsequent
chapters, moreover, I follow the methodological pattern set in the first,
identifying two indicative works to illustrate the dynamic processes I seek
to highlight within neorealist discourse.
In each instance, these exemplary texts have been chosen as case stud-
ies because they can be understood to express with particular clarity the
issues under discussion. To put this another way, they can be recognized
as active participants in the neorealist conversation, and it is in this sense
that they are analysed. I seek to describe how these texts were shaped by
the major issues that occupied Italian culture and society, and how they
took up, reflected, and performed the conditions of their own creation,
not just at the level of narrative content, but also in their form, in their
language, in their structure. Yet I do not wish to imply that the texts I
have chosen are somehow unique, or uniquely privileged, in their neo-
realist status. Visconti’s La terra trema may have been called a “summa”
of Italian neorealism, but so too was Luigi Zampa’s 1947 Vivere in pace,
released one year before Visconti’s film; Vittorini may have explored
notions of neorealism in his critical essays of the 1930s, only to see the
term applied to his own creative output of the 1940s, but the same is
true of Francesco Jovine.39 There is no inherent reason why one set of
exemplars is to be preferred to the other, and I might just as readily have
explored the themes of my first chapter with reference to Zampa and
Jovine, or indeed to any number of potential case studies, including but
by no means limited to those I examine in the chapters to follow. To the
extent I am correct to identify each chapter’s themes as representative of
neorealism, these should be – and I argue they are – identifiable across
Italian culture. I have tried through my chosen exemplars to suggest
something of the breadth of that culture, drawing not only on some of
the most canonical neorealist films but also on others that have received
comparatively little critical or scholarly attention, and examining those

films alongside two novels, a play, and a poem, all of which, I maintain,
contributed substantially to the neorealist conversation. Since my analy-
sis addresses itself to that conversation, I hope it can be of interest even
to those readers unacquainted with one or more of the texts I have cho-
sen as case studies. At the same time, I hope these case studies will be
seen as not only informative but also innovative by readers long familiar
with the texts I have analysed.
In the second chapter, I bring together analyses of Giuseppe De Santis’s
1947 feature film Caccia tragica and Italo Calvino’s 1947 partisan novel Il
sentiero dei nidi di ragno in order to address the vexed question of neoreal-
ism’s periodization. Although in the first chapter I identify an extensive
neorealist genealogy dating back to the nineteenth century, and locate
neorealism’s conceptual crystallization in the 1930s, in those that follow
I adopt a more limited chronology, for reasons I set out in chapter 2. It is
a chronology shaped by post-war Italy’s complicated relationship to the
Fascist ventennio, the period from 1922 to 1943, when Benito Mussolini’s
Fascist Party governed Italian society and when neorealism emerged in
Italian culture. The central question addressed in the second chapter,
then, regards how to relate pre-war and post-war articulations of Italian
neorealism, and, more to the point, how to recognize the distinctiveness
of the latter without denying the relevance of the former.
Chapter 3 takes up the related issue of neorealism’s characteristic por-
trayal of the historical crises of post-war and post-Fascist Italy. As its name
reveals, neorealism denotes a determined claim to represent reality – a
reality that, in the period of neorealism’s greatest cultural prominence,
was shaped by the Second World War and its aftermath. The cultural con-
versation that attended Italy’s challenging post-war recovery understand-
ably gave rise to an ample critical vocabulary with which to scrutinize and
theorize the representation of a complex historical reality. This chapter
focuses on that theoretical vocabulary, which was used to express a series
of intricate strategies for structuring the depiction of recent history.
Drawing on a substantial critical debate, and exploring the implications
of that debate as it was reflected in two key texts – Leopoldo Trieste’s
1946 play Cronaca and Vittorio De Sica’s 1948 film Ladri di biciclette –
I investigate the conceptual tools with which neorealism sought to give
historical meaning to the portrayal of individual experience.
In the fourth and final chapter I seek to draw out the implications of
neorealism’s distinctive representation of history. That representation,
I argue, reveals a key tenet of neorealist faith, the abiding belief that art
could facilitate not just historical reconciliation but also national redemp-
tion. This belief animated the post-war Italian cultural conversation and
Introduction 13
reshaped Italian cultural politics in its image. Reconsidering the political

significance of that belief, I examine two of its most powerful expres-
sions, Alfonso Gatto’s 1944 poem “Per i martiri di Piazzale Loreto” and
Aldo Vergano’s 1946 film Il sole sorge ancora, in order to make the case for
a more ambitious description of neorealism’s professed social function,
one that emphasizes its defining aspiration to address and even to coun-
teract a cultural crisis. To the extent that it was communicated beyond
cinema, beyond the arts, beyond politics – to the extent, in other words,
that it was the explicit or implicit subject of the neorealist conversation –
it was this aspiration that made neorealism, as De Sica put it, “a vast,
collective movement, of all of us.”
1
What Was Neorealism?
Luchino Visconti’s La terra trema begins with an evocative rolling text that
has often been interpreted as a kind of “manifesto” of Italian neorealism:1
I fatti rappresentati in questo film accadono in Italia e precisamente in

Sicilia, nel paese di Acitrezza, che si trova sul Mare Ionio a poca distanza
da Catania. La storia che il film racconta è la stessa che nel mondo si rin-
nova da anni in tutti quei paesi dove uomini sfruttano altri uomini. Le case,
le strade, le barche, il mare, sono quelli di Acitrezza. Tutti gli attori del
film sono stati scelti tra gli abitanti del paese: pescatori, ragazze, braccianti,
muratori, grossisti di pesce. Essi non conoscono lingua diversa dal siciliano
per esprimere ribellioni, dolori, speranze. La lingua italiana non è in Sicilia
la lingua dei poveri.
The events depicted in this film take place in Italy, or in Sicily, to be more
precise, in the town of Acitrezza, which is located near the Ionian Sea, not
far from Catania. The story the film tells is the same all over the world and
is repeated every year everywhere that men exploit other men. The houses,
the streets, the boats, the sea are those of Acitrezza. All the actors have been
chosen from among the inhabitants of this town: fishermen, girls, labour-
ers, bricklayers, wholesalers. These people know no other language than
Sicilian in which to express their rebellions, pains, and hopes. Italian is not
the language of the poor in Sicily.2
Through a series of declarative statements, the text makes evident the

formal, stylistic, and ideological foundations of Visconti’s film, which
combines factual narration, geographical specificity, political com-
mitment, on location shooting, non-professional actors, and linguistic
authenticity – the standard criteria, it is claimed, of neorealist filmmak-
ing. Foregrounding its poetics in this way, La terra trema is said by critics
What Was Neorealism? 15
to be “confezionato secondo il più rigoroso dettato neorealistico [manu-

factured according to the strictest neorealist dictates]” and to adhere to
the “ortodossia neorealista rigorosa [strict neorealist orthodoxy].”3
Visconti, however, caustically rejected critics’ attempts to define a neo-
realist orthodoxy, insisting that their pronouncements had no purchase
over his work. As early as 1948, in fact, only a few months after La terra
trema debuted at the Venice Film Festival, he asked:
che cosa vuol dire neorealismo? In cinema è servito a definire i concetti

ispirativi della recente “scuola italiana.” Ha raccolto coloro (uomini, artisti)
che credevano che la poesia nascesse dalla realtà. Era un punto di partenza.
Comincia a diventare, a me sembra, una assurda etichetta che ci si è appic-
cicata addosso come un tatuaggio, e, invece di significare un metodo, un
momento, si fa addirittura confine, legge. Abbiamo già bisogno di confini?4
what does neorealism mean? In cinema the term has been used to define
the concepts that have inspired the recent “Italian school.” It has gathered
together all those (men, artists) who believe that poetry is born from reality.
It was a starting point. It seems to me it is starting to become an absurd la-
bel, stuck to us like a tattoo, and instead of identifying a method, a moment,
it is becoming a boundary, a law. Do we already need boundaries?
It seems difficult to reconcile Visconti’s declaration and his critical can-

onization. Celebrated in terms he disputed and made to epitomize dic-
tates he wished to transgress, the director would appear to have been
badly served by his critics. How could La terra trema offer the “ricetta del
neorealismo cinematografico [formula of cinematic neorealism],” as an
early review of the film announced, when Visconti questioned the need
to adhere to neorealism’s supposed formulae?5 Surely some explanation
is necessary if the film is to be considered the “epicentro del neorea-
lismo [epicentre of neorealism],” the “opera più esemplare e più alta
del cinema neorealista [most exemplary and highest work of neorealist
cinema],” “il vertice poetico di tutta l’esperienza neorealista [the poetic
peak of the entire neorealist experience],” “the masterpiece of neoreal-
ism,” “a summa of the movement.”6
The apparent discrepancy announces a disquieting fact: more than sev-
enty years after the release of La terra trema, the question Visconti posed
to his critics – “what does neorealism mean?” – remains effectively unre-
solved. If anything, the question has become more difficult to answer
with time. Visconti was querying a still-vital concept in order to raise
doubts about the status of his films as he prepared them. Today, more
than half a century later, that situation no longer obtains. Neorealism
has become a historical category, indeed a milestone in the history of cin-

ema. If Visconti’s question is to admit an answer, therefore, the grammar
of analysis must shift. Today one is bound to ask: what was neorealism?
Historicized in this way, the enquiry can open up to the eventualities of
change over time, allowing the evolving contexts and consequences of
neorealism’s development to come to the fore. Visconti’s single question
can thus become a series of historical problems to investigate. What was
neorealism in 1948, for instance, when La terra trema was greeted as a neo-
realist masterpiece, and when its director was led to voice his displeasure
with what he called this “absurd label”? Did it convey the same meaning,
did it impose the same conditions, as it had in 1936, when he first began
working in the film industry? How far had notions of neorealism pro-
gressed by 1942, when Visconti directed Ossessione, which has been called
a “proto-neorealist film”?7 And how had the terms of debate shifted by
1947, when Visconti began work on the project that would become La
terra trema? Had neorealism developed in the intervening years? Had it
transformed still further, one year later, when Visconti’s film was first pre-
sented to an international audience? And how has the understanding of
neorealism changed in the decades since the film’s debut?
Visconti proposed a question of definition – What is neorealism? – which
would seek to fix the term’s essence in a stable conceptual framework.
I propose a question of historicization – What was neorealism? – which, at
least in its ambition, invites a dynamic, contextual, and diachronic inves-
tigation of a cultural concept. This chapter is an attempt to carry out that
investigation. Instead of cataloguing the stylistic or ideological features
of neorealist films, therefore, I propose to trace a neorealist genealogy,
ranging widely across the arts and drawing on a cultural conversation that
spanned more than half a century of Italian history. Instead of determin-
ing whether La terra trema followed a theoretical inventory of neorealist
principles, I propose to demonstrate the film’s observable participation
in a neorealist discourse. The notions of n eorealism that emerge from
this discourse resist rigid categorization, but they cohere historically if
not always ideologically or aesthetically, revealing an expansive conversa-
tion in which much of modern Italian literature, art, and cinema, includ-
ing Visconti’s film, can be seen to participate.
Neorealism as Modernism
With Italy’s post-war cinema attracting increased international attention,

in October 1950 the Italian broadcasting company RAI invited the liter-
ary critic Carlo Bo to host an Inchiesta sul neorealismo (Investigation of neo-
realism), a series of radio interviews with many of the country’s leading
artists and intellectuals, participants who sought, in their responses to

Bo’s queries, to comprehend and to contextualize the latest develop-
ments in Italian culture after the war. Of all Bo’s accomplished interloc-
utors, it may have been the journalist and critic Goffredo Bellonci who
offered the most compelling account of neorealist mimesis. Identifying
what he believed to be the defining characteristics of this much-discussed
movement, Bellonci insisted that
bisogni definirlo, questo neorealismo, diverso come mostra il prefisso

“neo” dal realismo dell’Ottocento. Che il realismo si sia manifestato nei
tempi scorsi, prossimi o remoti, in forme di grande arte non si può dis-
conoscere. [...] Ma è realismo di espressione che rappresenta le cose,
i personaggi, le vicende direttamente con parole che in sé riassumono le
cose nella loro qualità e magari nel loro mistero: con una potenza che tal-
volta è vera e propria potenza di reazione di una nuova realtà: di un nuovo
mondo. Pensate ad ogni modo che nella narrativa sono realisti un De Foe
e uno Stendhal. Il neorealismo di oggi è del tutto diverso da questo stesso
realismo perché viene dopo la letteratura suggestiva che evocava le cose
piuttosto che rappresentarle: le evocava dal subcosciente, dalla memoria
che resta in noi senza che ne abbiamo la consapevolezza. Gli ottocentisti
credevano all’esistenza di un mondo oggettivo e cercavano di conoscerlo,
di descriverlo e di rappresentarlo, mentre i novecentisti sembrano piutto-
sto credere che un mondo oggettivo possa crearlo l’artista disponendo in
un certo ordine, con negligenza da cronisti, le immagini della vita rimaste
nella sua memoria o nei suoi occhi: immagini, fatti, nei quali si risolva o si
rapprenda il subcosciente. Pensate appunto di un De Foe che avesse scritto
con l’esperienza di un Proust o di un Joyce.8
neorealism needs to be distinguished from the realism of the nineteenth

century, as the prefix “neo” shows. We must recognize that realism, here
and elsewhere, has given rise, in the recent past, to forms of great art. [...]
But this has been a realism of expression, which represents objects, char-
acters, and events directly, with words that capture the quality and perhaps
the mystery of the things represented, doing so with a power that at times
offers a genuine response to the power of a new reality, a new world. Think
of the narrative realism of a Defoe or a Stendhal. Today’s neorealism is
quite different from this earlier realism because it follows upon the im-
pressionistic literature that evoked things rather than representing them,
a literature that evoked things from the subconscious, from the memories
that remain in us without our being aware of them. The nineteenth-century
realists believed in the existence of an objective world and tried to under-
stand it, to describe it, and to represent it, while the twentieth-century
writers seem rather to believe that they themselves can create an objective
world by ignoring the accounts of the chroniclers and instead arranging in
a particular order the images of life that remain in their memory or in their
vision: images, events, that reveal or capture the subconscious. Think of a
Defoe who writes with the experience of a Proust or a Joyce.
Bellonci was making a robust case for a radically original form of artis-
tic creation. Neorealism could have been, and in fact often has been,
interpreted to signify a return to the realism of the nineteenth century.
Bellonci forcefully rejected this interpretation, identifying in neoreal-
ism a fundamentally new mode of representation, the transformation or
evolution of realism, its intensification and amplification. In so doing,
he provided the critical armature on which to fashion a cogent, if not
entirely conventional, definition of neorealism.
Bellonci believed that recent Italian artists had developed a kind
of hypertrophic realism, enlarging the dominion of reality available
for representation. According to this theory, the nineteenth-century
realists – invoked, rather curiously, in the person of the eighteenth-
century English novelist Daniel Defoe – sought to represent an external,
objective reality. Breaking with this approach, the writers of the twen-
tieth century – exemplified for Bellonci by Marcel Proust and James
Joyce – had sought to represent subjectivity, the individual conscious-
ness, which processes and refracts the perception of reality. The neore-
alists, in Bellonci’s scheme, were the inheritors of both traditions, which
they sought to bring together, conjoining objectivity and subjectivity,
appearance and experience, in an attempt to represent reality holisti-
cally. Depicting the impression of reality realistically, that is to say, the
neorealists strove to integrate and to intensify earlier modes of realism,
significantly expanding their representative potential by harmonizing
their distinctive innovations. In short, Bellonci believed that neorealism
fused the preceding forms of representation, and completed them, in
order to represent the whole of reality. Neorealism entailed not a resto-
ration of traditional realism, therefore, but a resolutely new realism, a
total realism, amplified expressively by virtue of its modernist inflection.
As Bellonci well knew, that modernist inflection inheres in the notion
of “neorealism” itself, which originated as a term to identify the European
cultural currents that had supplanted naturalism with aspects of subjectiv-
ity and relativity. From the start, neorealism was understood to be “new”
because, coming after the age of realism, it sought to displace rather than
to restore customary notions of representation.9 Indeed, the first Italian
critics to trace neorealism’s semantic history made clear that, as they
employed it, the term had originated with the eclipse of naturalism, and
in particular with the French post-naturalists, whom the critic Jules Hûret
had categorized as néo-réalistes in his 1891 Enquête sur l’évolution littéraire.10
These writers rejected the conventions of literary naturalism, looking to
the innovations of the Symbolists and the Impressionists and adopting
new techniques such as collage and pastiche. In so doing, they created new
forms of realism – forms that struck both Carlo Bo, host of the Inchiesta,
and Giuseppe Ferrara, author of an influential early book on post-war
Italian cinema, as prefigurations of Italian neorealism.11 The same was
true of the Russian literary neorealists described by the scholar Ettore Lo
Gatto in his 1928 study Letteratura soviettista, the first major critical work in
Italian to employ the term “ neorealism” in a literary context. Like Hûret’s
néo-réalistes, the writers Lo Gatto discussed in his chapter on Soviet litera-
ture during the period stretching “[d]al futurismo al n eo-realismo [from
futurism to neorealism]” drew on experimental techniques – in this case,
those of the Russian Futurist avant-garde – in order to refresh the shop-
worn practices of literary realism.12 When it entered the Italian critical
vocabulary, as when it first emerged in a French context, neorealism was a
term for new modes of realist representation that followed from and were
shaped by the latest and most innovative artistic tendencies.
In the years that followed the publication of Lo Gatto’s study, Italian
commentators began to identify a similar fusion of realism and experi-
mentalism throughout the arts, and throughout Europe. The philoso-
pher and painter Julius Evola traced a current of “neorealismo” in Soviet
poetry; the critic and filmmaker Libero Solaroli identified a “neo-realismo
formale [formal neorealism]” in Soviet cinema; the Futurist photogra-
pher, filmmaker, and playwright Anton Giulio Bragaglia analysed a neo-
realist current in German, Austrian, Russian, and Czech theatre; and the
journalist and critic Giovanni Titta Rosa, in the most far-reaching of these
early analyses, described what he saw as the “neo-realismo descrittivistico
di tanta parte della letteratura narrativa europea [descriptive neorealism
of a great deal of European narrative literature].”13 The various expres-
sions of European neorealism quickly came to occupy a position of relative
prominence in the Italian cultural landscape, especially in the work of the
literary critic and film theorist Umberto Barbaro.14 Between November
1930 and January 1931, Barbaro published a series of articles that encap-
sulated the European tendency towards neorealism, referring together to
il Simbolismo, il Futurismo e il Neo-realismo, che pur rifacendosi alla let-

teratura dell’Ottocento non può dirsi un vero e proprio ritorno, ma invece
ha i caratteri di novità, se non di avanguardia, con qualche analogia con il
neo-realismo tedesco di Dôblin in letteratura, e dei Dix in pittura più che
con quello del nostro Moravia e che col ‘realismo magico di Bontempelli.15
Symbolism, futurism, and neorealism, which despite referring back to

nineteenth-century literature cannot be called a true return, instead
demonstrating originality, if not avant-garde tendencies, more akin to the
German neorealism of Dôblin in literature, and of Dix in painting than to
the realism of Moravia or the “magical realism” of Bontempelli.
Here Barbaro’s “neorealism,” in essence, is an Italian rendering of the

German Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity), a post-Expressionist form of
realism that flourished in art, architecture, film, theatre, and literature
in the years between the world wars.16 This is the way Giovanni Necco
employed the term in his 1933 analysis of “l’indirizzo letterario che si
è imposto col nome di ‘neue Sachlichkeit’ (nuova obiettività, neorea-
lismo) [the literary tendency that has been labelled ‘Neue Sachlichkeit’
(new objectivity, neorealism)]”.17 Many have argued that all references
to inter-war “neorealism” in Italy should be understood in the same light.
Yet the trend Barbaro was describing appears to be broader than such
an account would suggest. Indeed, in a 1931 essay on Soviet literature,
Barbaro referred to the “qualifica di realismo o anche di neo-realismo,
con cui si suole caratterizzare la nuova letteratura russa e coll’ausilio
di Proust, Joyce, la nuova e più viva letteratura europea [term realism
or even neorealism, with which we tend to characterize the new Russian
literature and, with the advent of Proust and Joyce, the new and most
vibrant European literature].”18 Elaborating on the same point one
year later, Barbaro examined the diffusion of this pan-European ten-
dency, explaining that “tra realismo, neorealismo, realismo magico,
Proust, Joyce, Neue Sachlichkeit e magari surrealismo, ci sono relazioni
abbastanza strette [between realism, neorealism, magic realism, Proust,
Joyce, Neue Sachlichkeit, and maybe surrealism as well, there is quite
a close relationship].”19 Barbaro was far from alone in identifying the
spread of neorealism at this time. Arnaldo Bocelli, too, said of those
whom “si sogliono chiamare ‘neorealisti’[we tend to call ‘neorealists’]”
that “Freud, Joyce, Proust, Svevo, i romanzieri e commediografi russi
contemporanei e anche Pirandello e i pirandelliani sono i loro padri
spirituali [Freud, Joyce, Proust, Svevo, and the contemporary Russian
novelists and playwrights, as well as Pirandello and his followers, are
their spiritual fathers].”20 A 1931 article entitled “Neorealismo” in the
journal L’Ambrosiano drew similar comparisons between the latest devel-
opments in German and French literature, which were said together to
represent a “corrente neorealistica [neorealistic current]” and those in
Italy where, it was argued, “un romanzo almeno, per non dirne altri, si
meritò l’appellativo [...]: Gli indifferenti [di Alberto Moravia] [at least one
novel, and perhaps others as well, deserved that title (...): Gli indifferenti
(by Alberto Moravia)].”21 A capacious category integrating many of the
most advanced tendencies in European art, neorealism included, but
was not limited to, the Neue Sachlichkeit.
Over the next decade, in fact, neorealism would continually expand its
critical coverage, eventually coming to include many of the most innova-
tive artists and movements in inter-war Europe. In the critical discourse
of the 1930s, as in Bellonci’s response to the 1951 Inchiesta, neorealism
served in particular to identify several of the artistic tendencies that are
today more commonly known as European modernism.22 Barbaro’s “new
and most vibrant European literature” and Bellonci’s “impressionistic lit-
erature that evoked things rather than representing them” were both invo-
cations of modernism avant la lettre, as evidenced by the critics’ repeated
references to Joyce and Proust, then as now the epigones of modernist
literature. This argument can be taken too far, however, and it would be a
mistake to conflate neorealism entirely with the current Anglo-American
conception of modernism. Although it is now commonly employed in
critical accounts of the arts, the historical and aesthetic category of mod-
ernism was codified only recently, and remains conceptually nebulous.23
It proves particularly problematic in Italy, where “the category of ‘mod-
ernism’ has never been really at home,” as Paolo Valesio puts it, and
where the classification of twentieth-century artists and movements has
tended in practice not to conform to international models.24 It would
thus be anachronistic, even wildly inaccurate, to suggest that the neoreal-
ists were the Italian representatives of all the hybrid and heterogeneous
tendencies that critics outside of Italy today retrospectively group under
the heading of modernism. To recognize that the term “neorealism” was
used in Italy to refer to writers and artists we now call modernists is not
to say that all of those now considered modernists were neorealists.25 It
would be better to say instead that some of the European artists whom
critics today classify as modernists were singled out in a previous era for
their innovative or experimental realism, and in mid-century Italy the
term for this experimental realism was neorealism.
Modernism as Neorealism
It is significant, in this regard, that throughout the first half of the twenti-
eth century the Italian critical reception of modernist authors, Joyce and
Proust most prominently, tended to interpret them as realists, or rather
hyper-naturalists, practitioners of a form of representation at once intro-
spective in its focus and exhaustive in its scope. In one of the first reviews
that Joyce’s work would receive in Italy, in fact, his style was described as
“verismo impressionista, [...] verismo sintetico e profondo [impression-
ist verismo, (...) integral and profound verismo],” judgments that placed
it in direct relationship with the Italian naturalist movement.26 In this
review, and in many that followed, Joyce was credited with developing
a realism of the psyche, an encyclopedic if not an exaggerated realism,
one that captured psychological as well as physical reality at a granular
level. Critics stressed not only his “realismo [realism],” therefore, but
his “realismo [...] assoluto [absolute (...) realism].”27 They called him
“passivamente analitica [passively analytic]” and insisted that his work
was “troppo legata alla nostra esistenza empirica [too closely tied to our
empirical existence].”28 The Italian reception of Proust was similar; in
the eyes of many critics, the French author was seen to investigate social
facts and personal responses with an almost scientific approach, and
thus to have produced a “studio di costumi [study of customs]” rather
than a true “creazione estetica [aesthetic creation].”29 Together, Joyce
and Proust were classified as “scrittori analitici [analytical writers],” as
the purveyors of a “nuovo naturalismo [new naturalism].”30 They were
understood to have taken to its logical extreme naturalism’s fastidiously
detailed representational aesthetic, and to have trained on the i ndividual
human mind the same clinical thoroughness with which earlier genera-
tions of naturalists had approached the intricacies of social relations. As
a result, in their work, as well as in that of their Italian followers, critics
tended to identify the rise of a “verismo interiore [interior verismo],”
one whose primary contribution to the world of letters was to “darci una
visione nuova della realtà [give us a new vision of reality].”31
Between the wars, many of Italy’s cultural traditionalists, often oper-
ating under the influence of Benedetto Croce, condemned such mod-
ernist hyper-naturalism as fundamentally antipoetic.32 The distinguished
critic Giovanni Battista Angioletti, for instance, attacked Joyce and his
Italian acolytes for what he saw as their fixation on the crudest and least
redeemable forms of realism that the novel would allow.
Con Joyce si chiude il ciclo della prosa narrativa veristica, del romanzo na-
turalistico; con Ulisse si è giunti all’estrema, congestionata decadenza dello
psicologismo; la concezione materialistica dell’Ottocento muore nella
colossale, spaventevole apoteosi joyciana.33
Joyce marks the close of the cycle of veristic narrative prose, of the natural-
istic novel. With Ulysses we have reached the extreme, congested decadence
of psychologism. Nineteenth-century materialism expires in its colossal,
dreadful apotheosis.
Joyce’s analytic and realistic approach would signal not just the death
of materialism but also that of the novel, Angioletti insisted, and would
perhaps even bring about the death of literature itself, unless writers
rejected his example and returned to the roots of their art. For literature
to survive, Angioletti argued, writers had to leave behind the descrip-
tion of base material existence and to create “una nuova aura poetica
[a new poetic aura].” As he put it, “[d]opo Joyce non c’è salvezza che
nella poesia [after Joyce the only salvation lies in poetry].”34
Among the literary intellectuals affiliated with the pioneering
Florentine cosmopolitan cultural journal Solaria, however, the realism
of Joyce, Proust, and the other modernists became a kind of a rally-
ing point.35 Replying to Angioletti and affirming Solaria’s position,
Giansiro Ferrata argued in a 1929 essay that the distinction between
analysis and poiesis was flawed, that realism, even in its most extreme
forms, could be art. He maintained that there was a “doppia alleanza
fra l’atmosfera d’analisi e l’atmosfera, che Angioletti chiama di poesia
[twofold alliance between the sphere of analysis and the sphere of what
Angioletti calls poetry]” – an alliance that was evident in the work of
writers such as Joyce and Proust.36 Ferrata did not deny Angioletti’s
characterization of these authors and their modernist contempo-
raries as hyper-realists, but insisted instead that it was through such
hyper-realism that a new form of poetry would be achieved. As Alberto
Moravia put it several years later in a 1940 “Omaggio a Joyce” (Homage
to Joyce), “sforzando il verismo con i mezzi stessi che gli sono propri,
e cioè con la più minuziosa e integrale trascrizione di tutta la verità, per
vie impensate, Joyce raggiunse una zona metafisica, fantastica, poetica
[pushing the limits of realism in his characteristic way, with the most
meticulous and complete transcription of the truth in its entirety, a
transcription conducted in unimaginable ways, Joyce arrived at some-
thing that was metaphysical, fantastic, poetic].”37 In this reading – the
neorealist reading – Joyce’s extension and expansion of realism consti-
tuted the source of his greatest literary innovation; it was his original
interpretation of realism, then, that made Joyce the pinnacle of mod-
ernism, or rather neorealism.
The suggestive link between modernism and realism may surprise
readers grown accustomed to the conventional opposition of modern-
ists to realists in the manner of the Brecht–Lukács debates.38 It should
be remembered, however, that artists and critics both in the era of High
Modernism and in more recent times have seen in the arts in early
twentieth-century Europe a tendency towards “another form of realism,”
one characterized by its manifest subjectivity, to be sure, but one that nev-
ertheless conformed to recognizable notions of realist representation.39
Joyce’s contemporary Wyndham Lewis, for instance, identified in Ulysses

a “doctrinaire naturalism,” an attempt to extend, or rather to escalate,
the artistic innovations of the nineteenth-century novel.40 In reaching
this judgment, he was joined not only by Ezra Pound, who pronounced
Ulysses to be “un roman réaliste par excellence [a realist novel par excel-
lence],” but also by Joyce himself, who declared that “from it you may date
a new orientation in literature – the new realism.”41 From Joyce’s “new
realism” to Barbaro’s “neorealism, with which we tend to characterize the
new Russian literature and, with the advent of Proust and Joyce, the new
and most vibrant European literature,” the path is much straighter and
shorter than some previous accounts would suggest. Indeed, it is evi-
dent that for Barbaro, Bocelli, and Bellonci, as well as for many of their
contemporaries, neorealism was nothing less than the new modernist
realism.42
Neorealism and Verismo
What neorealism was not, as Bellonci vigorously asserted in his response

to the Inchiesta, was a return to nineteenth-century realism. On this point,
as we have seen, he could not have been clearer, maintaining that “neo-
realism needs to be distinguished from the realism of the nineteenth
century, as the prefix ‘neo’ shows.” His contemporaries tended to argue
similarly, insisting that neorealism was “[d]iverso e quasi opposto al rea-
lismo dell’ottocento [different from, almost the opposite of, the r ealism
of the nineteenth century].”43 “Dalla parola ‘realismo’ bisogna [...]
allontanare qualsiasi interpretazione in senso veristico o naturalistico
[It is necessary (...) to divorce the world ‘realism’ from any veristic or
naturalistic interpretation],” said the art critic Mario De Micheli in his
1946 manifesto “Realismo e poesia” (Realism and poetry).44 “Il neorea-
lismo non ha [...] niente in comune [...] con il realismo del grande
Ottocento [Neorealism has (...) nothing in common with the realism
of the nineteenth century],” the philosopher Arturo Massolo argued in
the 1951 Inchiesta.45 The screenwriter, director, and critic Luigi Chiarini
made the point even more forcefully in the same year in his influential
“Discorso sul neorealismo” (Discourse on neorealism): “Neorealismo
non è verismo [Neorealism is not verismo].”46
Such strong and inflexible distinctions would seem to complicate, if
not actually negate, a relationship that has come to define Italian neo-
realism in certain sectors. Giovanni Verga, the pioneer and paragon of
Italian verismo, has frequently been seen as the progenitor of and inspi-
ration for Italian neorealism.47 Undoubtedly, there is some truth to this
claim. In the 1940s and throughout the age of neorealism, many sought
to emphasize the nineteenth-century provenance of Italy’s post-war cin-

ematic and literary innovations, suggesting that “il cinema italiano ha
trovato la via buona ispirandosi al verismo [Italian cinema has found the
right path by taking up the inspiration of verismo],” and even referring
to neorealism as neo-verismo.48 Yet the evidence suggests that Verga’s influ-
ence on post-war Italian culture has been somewhat overstated, while the
true nature of Verga’s undeniable importance for neorealism has been
misunderstood.49
Rather than a “return to Verga,” as has sometimes been argued, neore-
alism is better understood as a revisionary rereading of this nineteenth-
century precedent. From the 1920s onwards, Verga became the object
of sporadic critical conflict, his legacy contested by competing camps
in a series of literary and ideological skirmishes that provoked repeated
reappraisals of his poetic project. Downgraded both by the advocates
of prosa d’arte and by the anti-positivist and anti-naturalist acolytes of
Benedetto Croce, Verga was instead promoted by many of the Solariani,
as well as by many future neorealists, who reinterpreted his work as the
vital link between naturalism and symbolism, an Italian precursor of
the new, modernist realism.50 Frequently, therefore, if far from unani-
mously, Verga was reclassified, placed within the same lineage as Joyce
and Proust, who, as we have seen, were linked in turn to the Sicilian
writer and his followers by virtue of what Italian critics interpreted as
their “interior verismo” or “impressionist verismo.”51
Championing Verga by no means suggested a desire to reprise
nineteenth-century realism. Such an effort would have struck intellec-
tuals at the time as all but impossible because, in Italy as elsewhere,
Joyce and Proust were understood to have marked a watershed moment
in the history of representation, from which there was no going back.
Alberto Moravia offered a persuasive account of this watershed in his
“Omaggio a Joyce,” arguing that “il libro di Joyce chiude un’epoca
intera, quella del naturalismo, e ne apre un’altra [Joyce’s book closed
an entire epoch, that of naturalism, and opened another].”52 Joyce and
Proust, he went on to explain in another essay the following year, were
thus “gli affossatori del romanzo ottocentesco e al tempo stesso gli ini-
ziatori del nuovo romanzo [the gravediggers of the nineteenth-century
novel and at the same time the inventors of the new novel].”53 As Enrico
Emanuelli explained in his 1945 essay “Romanzi fra due tempi” (Novels
between two ages), artists and critics after the war saw themselves stand-
ing between two representational epochs: “quello conchiuso con Proust
e con Joyce e quello che si apre davanti a noi [the one that concluded
with Proust and Joyce and the one that is opening up before us].”54 A vast
and potentially unbridgeable gulf thus separated Verga from those who
are often alleged ingenuously to have returned to his notions of realism

after the war. Recognizing this gulf, the neorealists sought not to revert
to verismo but rather to rehabilitate Verga by rereading his work in a new,
modernist, light. As the poet and critic Eurialo De Michelis put it in a
1948 essay, using terms that prefigure those of Bellonci three years later
in the Inchiesta, neorealism offered “un Verga riscoperto dopo Joyce e
dopo gli americani moderni [a Verga rediscovered after Joyce and after
the modern American writers].”55
The neorealist rereading of Verga, a bid for modernism and not a
lapse into received notions of verismo, was most prominently the work of
the artists and intellectuals affiliated with the journal Cinema in the late
1930s and early 1940s. An incubator for many of the talents who would
help to shape Italian neorealism, including Michelangelo Antonioni,
Guido Aristarco, Carlo Lizzani, Luchino Visconti, and Cesare Zavattini,
Cinema stood at the vanguard of Italian film theory between the wars.56
The watchword that signalled and sustained that vanguard was Verga.
“Verga era un po’ la nostra bandiera [Verga was kind of our emblem],”
one of the group’s members, Gianni Puccini, would later recall.57 In two
essays the journal published in 1941, “Verità e poesia: Verga e il cinema
italiano” (Truth and poetry: Verga and Italian cinema) and “Ancora di
Verga e del cinema italiano” (More on Verga and Italian cinema), the
fledgling director Giuseppe De Santis and the editor and critic Mario
Alicata argued for Verga’s crucial importance for the renewal of Italian
cinema.58 De Santis himself would insist in later years that the two essays
represented “un vero e proprio manifesto del neorealismo [a veritable
manifesto of neorealism],” which they did, in two distinct senses.59 The
first sense was resolutely political. Invoking Verga, Alicata and De Santis
signalled their emphasis on the struggles of Italy’s poorest citizens, mak-
ing verismo a virtual synecdoche for the radical attack on social injustice,
the “arte rivoluzionaria ispirata ad un’umanità che soffre e spera [revolu-
tionary art inspired by those who suffer and hope],” with which the young
intellectuals sought to remake Italian film culture under Fascism.60
Cinema’s renewal of Verga had a second and no less significant ambi-
tion, however, which was to modernize the substance and style of cine-
matic realism. For Alicata and De Santis, Verga exemplified realism on
a human scale, a form of representation shaped by individual and com-
munal subjectivity even as it aspired to embrace the breadth of social and
physical reality: “il realismo, non come passivo ossequio ad una statica
verità obbiettiva, ma come forza creatrice, nella fantasia, d’una ‘storia’ di
eventi e di persone [realism not as passive obedience to a static, objective
truth, but as a creative, imaginative force, shaping the ‘history’ of events
and people].”61 They found in Verga a model for forms of realism that
went beyond indexicality, capturing but also supplementing fact and

detail. For this reason, they attracted a significant backlash from prom-
inent advocates of documentary cinema, who were convinced that film-
makers had the revolutionary potential to capture reality directly, freed
from the interference of subjectivity and without literary mediation.62
Responding to the accusation that by looking to Verga they were subor-
dinating cinema to literature, Alicata and De Santis called into question
their accusers’ rigid distinction between the image-capture of the film
camera and the imagination of the artist. On the one hand, therefore,
they reiterated their commitment to realist reportage: “[a]nche noi [...]
vogliamo portare la nostra macchina da presa nelle strade, nei campi,
nei porti, nelle fabbriche del nostro paese [we too (...) want to bring
our camera into our country’s streets, fields, ports, and factories],” they
wrote, rehearsing one of the clichés of Italian inter-war documentary
realism.63 On the other hand, breaking decisively with the more dog-
matic advocates of documentarism, they insisted on the value of literary
invention, from which, they argued, cinema “ha spesso avuto la migliore
lezione di verità e di umanità [has often learned its most important les-
sons about truth and humanity].”64 Alicata and De Santis insisted that
the two tendencies were complementary, not mutually exclusive: the
human eye, no less than the camera eye, could penetrate reality; subjec-
tivity, no less than objectivity, could capture authentic truths.
Defending this position, the intellectuals of the Cinema group were to
a significant degree reprising the arguments in favour of the “twofold
alliance between the sphere of analysis and the sphere of [...] poetry”
that buttressed the inter-war Italian reception of the “impressionist
verismo” of Joyce and Proust. They refused, therefore, to distinguish
between literary and documentary modes of representation, instead
arguing that the two could work in concert to achieve a fidelity to the
real that would surpass mere indexicality. In reaching this conclusion,
they echoed some of the earliest Italian critical formulations of neoreal-
ism, and in particular those of Umberto Barbaro, whose advocacy of the
pan-European tendency towards subjective hyper-realism can be traced
throughout Cinema.65 Emphasizing what they termed the “poesia della
verità [poetry of truth],” in fact, Alicata and De Santis drew substantially
on Barbaro’s work, and in particular on his analyses of what today is
known as European modernism, which was an important influence on
Cinema, especially its reinterpretation of Verga.66 By providing a venue
for exploring the potential cinematic applications of such theories, and
with them the most innovative tendencies in literature and the arts, the
journal helped to adapt the developing notion of neorealism to the ter-
rain of Italian filmmaking.
Italian Cinema Becomes Neorealist
This was hardly new terrain, however. As a term used in film criticism,
neorealism’s circulation in Italy significantly predated Cinema’s interven-
tion, originating in the late 1920s and early 1930s in conjunction with
similar developments in literature and the arts. Well before the first issue
of Cinema was published, Libero Solaroli had already highlighted the
“formal neorealism” of Soviet cinema; Umberto Barbaro had invoked
neorealism in his introduction to the collected film criticism of Vsevolod
Pudovkin; Ettore Maria Margadonna had identified a “forma di neo-
realismo o realismo integrale [form of neorealism or integral realism]”
in both American and European cinema; and Alberto Cavalcanti had
analysed “[l]e mouvement néo-réaliste [the neorealist movement]” in
British filmmaking.67 Yet Cinema nevertheless played a critical role in
neorealism’s development. A conduit for many of the most advanced
ideas circulating in European culture between the wars, the journal
helped to keep the film community abreast of the bourgeoning mod-
ernist realism, along with other advances in the arts in Italy and beyond.
In so doing, Cinema facilitated neorealism’s transition from a notion in
Italian cultural theory into an ambition in Italian filmmaking.
That transition has often been linked to Luchino Visconti’s Ossessione,
the film that came closest to realizing Cinema’s vision, becoming “una
sorta di manifesto di questo gruppo [a sort of manifesto of the group],”
as De Santis would describe it in later years.68 Whether Ossessione inau-
gurated Italian neorealist cinema, however, remains in doubt. Most now
seem to believe that the film was as much noir as neorealist and that at
most it represented a kind of pre-neorealist inflection point, signalling
the end of the cinema of the Fascist ventennio and laying the groundwork
for tendencies that would rise to prominence after the war.69 Yet there
may be good reasons for seeing Ossessione as something more than this.
Indeed, the genealogy of neorealism runs directly through Visconti’s
film, a function both of its style and its source material. Contrary to
expectations, perhaps, given Ossessione’s role as the unofficial manifesto
of Cinema, the film was an adaptation not of Giovanni Verga but rather
of the American novelist James M. Cain.70 The Postman Always Rings Twice,
Cain’s most famous work and the source for no fewer than five films, had
attracted the interest of the French director Julien Duvivier, who sug-
gested it to Jean Renoir, who in turn passed it on to Visconti, directorial
assistant on the set of Renoir’s 1936 film Partie de campagne.71 Determined
to adapt the novel for the cinema, Visconti could find neither an Italian
translation nor an English original, and enlisted the help of his pro-
ducer, Libero Solaroli, to track down a copy. Solaroli sent Giuseppe De
Santis, who was to serve as one of the film’s screenwriters, to find Giorgio
Bassani, at the time a virtual unknown, later a celebrated novelist, who

agreed both to translate The Postman Always Rings Twice into Italian and
to assist Visconti in its cinematic adaptation.72 For a cultural history of
neorealism, this chain of influence is remarkable: each of these figures –
Cain, Duvivier, Renoir, Visconti, Solaroli, De Santis, and Bassani – was
key to neorealism’s development, and each in a way that bears directly
on the production and reception of Ossessione.
Among Visconti’s contemporaries, Duvivier and Renoir had been
credited with inventing “neo-realismo francese [French neorealism],”
a label that Umberto Barbaro traced back to the latter’s 1931 film La
Chienne.73 Although he found no direct equivalents to this cinematic
current in Italy, Barbaro did identify one film that seemed at least to
point in a similar direction: Visconti’s Ossessione, which demonstrated
“la rappresentazione artistica di una realtà angosciata [the artistic rep-
resentation of an anguished reality],” as he detailed in a 1943 review of
the film.74 In his own review, published in the same year, Walter Ronchi
argued similarly. Contrasting the latest developments in French and
Italian cinema, Ronchi insisted that “[g]li allettamenti del più vieto for-
malismo, del calligrafismo [italiano] sono stati certamente evitati dal
miglior film francese che è passato alla storia dell’arte e della civiltà col
nome di neo-realismo [The trappings of the most involuted formalism,
of (Italian) calligrafismo, have certainly been avoided by the best French
films that have been handed down into the history of art and civilization
under the name of neorealism].”75 Among the exemplars of French neo-
realism, Ronchi explained, “basti citare i nomi di Renoir, di Carné, di
Duvivier [it is enough to cite the names of Renoir, Carné, and Duvivier],”
all of whom – and especially Duvivier – he believed to have exerted a
visible influence on Visconti’s Ossessione.76 Guido Aristarco made a sim-
ilar case in each of the two 1943 reviews he devoted to Visconti’s film.
Ossessione, he demonstrated,
è improntato ad un crudo realismo che ricorda in qualche battuta S teinbeck

e il neorealismo francese: dei Renoir, dei Carné, dei Duvivier. E un evidente
influsso di questa corrente cinematografica ha tutto il film. Specialmente
nella crudezza del contenuto che risente soprattutto del maestro Renoir.77
is marked by a raw realism that in certain instances recalls Steinbeck and

French neorealism: Renoir, Carné, Duvivier. This cinematic current has
an obvious influence on the entire film. The crudity of the film’s content
reveals above all the influence of the maestro Renoir.
In keeping with the cinematic conventions of the day, Aristarco, Ronchi,

and Barbaro all invoked neorealism to refer to a mode of French
filmmaking; they were following the lead of the Belgian film critic Carl
Vincent, who had first drawn attention to what he termed “le néo-réalisme
du cinéma français [the neorealism of French cinema]” in an essay of
1929 – the same year in which Solaroli had identified Soviet cinema’s
“formal neorealism.”78
As we have seen, however, Barbaro’s understanding of neorealism
was considerably broader than this borrowing might imply, encompass-
ing as it did tendencies in literature and the arts in addition to cinema.
In the context of his critical corpus, therefore, Barbaro’s reference to
“neo-realismo francese [French neorealism]” suggested a certain rela-
tionship between the films of Renoir, Carné, and Duvivier and the “title
of realism or even neorealism, with which we tend to characterize [...] the
new and most vibrant European literature” that he had invoked more
than a decade earlier.79 What his reference did not do, at least not yet,
was identify the birth of a specifically Italian current of cinematic neo-
realism. Credit for that discovery is instead frequently ascribed to Mario
Serandrei, Visconti’s long-time collaborator and Ossessione’s editor. In a
1965 interview, in fact, Visconti claimed that “[i]l termine ‘neo-realismo’
nacque con Ossessione [the term ‘neorealism’ was born with Ossessione],”
and credited this birth to Serandrei, who had allegedly written from
the set to say “[n]on so come potrei definire questo tipo di cinema se
non con l’appellativo di ‘neo-realistico’ [I don’t know how to define this
type of cinema except with the label ‘neorealist’].”80 Unpublished and
apparently unnoticed until Visconti’s testimonial, twenty-two years after
Ossessione’s debut, Serandrei’s letter may be significant, but it was not
resonant enough rightly to be credited with announcing the arrival of
neorealism in Italian cinema.
News of that arrival was instead delivered by Giorgio Bassani, who
observed in a 1947 essay that Ossessione was “uno dei primi film neore-
alistici italiani [one of the first Italian neorealist films].”81 For Bassani,
this designation appears to have signified much the same tendency that
it did for Barbaro, and later for Bellonci. In his words, neorealism con-
stituted a “ritorno alle fonti del naturalismo attraverso le estreme con-
seguenze decadentistiche, francesi e americane [return to the sources
of naturalism by way of the extreme consequences of French and
American decadentism].”82 Neorealism was new, Bassani recognized,
because it drew on the innovations of modernism – commonly referred
to as decadentism in the Italian critical discourse of the time – in order
to renew and to surpass outmoded notions of naturalism.83 When neo-
realism entered the Italian critical consciousness after the war, there-
fore, the term embraced cultural currents dating back to the late 1920s
– currents that were literary as well as cinematic, modernist as well as
realist. Bassani undoubtedly used the term in this way, commenting in a

1948 review of the young generation of Italian novelists, published not
long after his discussion of Ossessione, that “già intorno al ’40 aveva tutta
l’aria di rappresentare una tendenza letteraria ben precisa (neorealista,
si disse) [already around 1940 they seemed to represent a very distinct
literary tendency (neorealist, we used to say)].”84 There was an evi-
dent connection between this neorealist tendency in literature and the
growing number of “Italian neorealist films” to which Bassani believed
Ossessione belonged.
In no small part, that connection was carried through the work of
James M. Cain, whose brand of American realism had influenced a gen-
eration of Italian novelists – Cesare Pavese and Elio Vittorini especially –
deemed to exemplify Italian literary neorealism.85 As Pavese himself put
it in an interview in 1950, “[q]uando si parla di Hemingway, Faulkner,
Cain, Lee Masters, Dos Passos, del vecchio Dreiser, e del loro deprecato
influsso su noi scrittori italiani, presto o tardi si pronuncia la parola
fatale e accusatrice: neo-realismo [when they speak of Hemingway,
Faulkner, Cain, Lee Masters, old Dreiser, and their much maligned
influence on Italian writers, sooner or later they utter that fatal and
accusatory word: neorealism].”86 The arrival of Cain’s novel in Italy, in
the hands of Visconti, to whom it had been given by Renoir on the
recommendation of his colleague Duvivier, and for whom it would be
translated by Bassani on the suggestion of Solaroli and De Santis, was in
a symbolic but also a very real sense the arrival of cinematic neorealism.
The chain of influence that began with Cain eventually led Visconti
to adapt what was, in the Italian cultural context of the early 1940s, a
recognizably neorealist (American) novel in a recognizably (French)
neorealist style. Unsurprisingly, both his critics and his collaborators
began to consider Ossessione, the product of this effort, itself to be a
work of neorealism.
Neorealism Becomes Italian Cinema
As a category of Italian cinema production, neorealism was thus know-

ingly borrowed from the extant critical vocabulary and enlisted to
describe tendencies in filmmaking that drew directly and indirectly on
the most advanced international currents in the arts in the first half of
the twentieth century. This process of adaptation can be located, albeit
imprecisely, in the four-year gap between Aristarco and Barbaro’s dis-
cussion of French cinematic neorealism and Bassani’s reference to the
“Italian neorealist films.” During that gap, critics recognized many of
Ossessione’s most noteworthy innovations, but they did not yet describe
those innovations as neorealist. Indicative, in this regard, is the work

of Antonio Pietrangeli, a prominent critic as well as one of the con-
tributors to Ossessione’s screenplay. In a 1944 review of Visconti’s film,
Pietrangeli argued that, with Ossessione, “la realtà è entrata tutta intera
e bruciante nel nostro cinema [reality, uncut and red-hot, entered into
our cinema],” a forceful statement of Visconti’s contribution to Italian
filmmaking.87 In his 1947 account of the making of the director’s
follow-up, La terra trema, Pietrangeli took this point further still, assign-
ing Ossessione to what he called “la nuova scuola cinematografica italiana
[the new Italian cinematic school].”88 In both instances, the tendencies
he was describing – a new form of realism and a new current in Italian
filmmaking – were effectively neorealist, but Pietrangeli did not yet rec-
ognize them as such.
Quite soon, however, the situation would change dramatically.
“Vogliamo dare noi un nome al Gino di Ossessione? [Do we want to give a
new name to Gino in Ossessione?]” – the critic asked in his influential 1948
essay “Panoramique sur le cinéma italien” (A panoramic view of Italian
cinema) – “[l]o potremmo chiamare il neo-realismo italiano [we can call
him Italian neorealism].”89 Pietrangeli had now found the name for the
phenomenon that for some years he had been tracing in his film criticism.
Several of Visconti’s other collaborators likewise seem to have embraced
this sense of the term at roughly the same time. Bassani, as we have seen,
adopted neorealism to classify Ossessione in 1947; Barbaro first referred spe-
cifically to Italy’s “scuola neorealistica [neorealist school]” in 1948; even
Serandrei, letter to Visconti notwithstanding, seems to have used the term
“neorealism” in a published work for the first time in 1948.90 A palpable
shift had evidently taken place just a few years after the end of the Second
World War: neorealism had become a category of Italian filmmaking.
While this shift was being set in motion, in the four-year hiatus between
Aristarco and Barbaro’s 1943 interventions and Bassani’s 1947 essay,
notions of neorealism remained common currency in the Italian cul-
tural conversation. The term and its cognates were repeatedly invoked,
for instance, to classify the work of novelists such as Elio Vittorini, Cesare
Pavese, Alberto Moravia, and Vasco Pratolini.91 They were used as well
to describe Soviet and French cinema.92 In painting, too, neorealism – a
term that had frequently been used to define the arts between the wars,
as in the writings of Carlo Carrà, Roberto Papini, Lionello Venturi, and
others – remained very much in circulation after 1945.93 Before notions
of neorealism took hold in the cinema, in fact, they were commonly
employed by leading critics and historians of the arts to classify the post-
war work of Renato Guttuso, Mario Mafai, Domenico Purificato, and
many other well-known artists.94 If neorealism was not yet the definitive
descriptor for the latest developments in Italian film, therefore, it was

anything but absent from Italian culture.
Once it was adopted as a description for a form of contemporary
Italian filmmaking, however, neorealism took on a new and more promi-
nent cultural role. Just a few months after Bassani’s essay, for example, a
1947 review of Giorgio Ferroni’s Tombolo, paradiso nero could confidently
assert that “[i]l film si inserisce senza fatica nel filone neorealistico del
cinema italiano [the film fits effortlessly into the neorealist current of
Italian cinema]” – a “filone [current]” that quickly came to include many
of the films that continue to make up the neorealist canon: Roma città
aperta, Sciuscià (Vittorio De Sica, 1946), Vivere in pace, Il bandito (Alberto
Lattuada, 1946), Senza pietà (Lattuada, 1948), Sotto il sole di Roma (Renato
Castellani, 1948), and Gioventù perduta (Pietro Germi, 1948).95 As these
and other films began to be grouped under a common banner, neore-
alism became largely if not entirely a cinematic designation. Already by
1948, in fact, this was said to be the “comune definizione di neo-realismo
[common definition of neorealism].”96 In that same year, a newsreel of
the Settimana Incom informed Italian viewers that their national cin-
ema represented “la voce dell’Italia fatta più autentica dall’esperienza
del dolore. Ecco il segreto del nostro neorealismo [the voice of Italy
made more authentic by her experience of pain. That is the secret of
our neorealism],” a triumphant declaration that amplified one voice in
the neorealist conversation while perhaps inadvertently silencing several
others.97 Less than a year later, and just a few years after notions of Italian
cinematic neorealism had first entered the cultural consciousness, the
term had effectively become “una etichetta, sinonimo di film girato ‘dal
vero’ [a label synonymous with films shot ‘on location’].”98 Italian cin-
ema had not only adopted neorealism; it had appropriated it.
Yet this appropriation was never complete. Even as notions of neoreal-
ism began to cohere in the cinema, the term retained a greater degree of
flexibility and a broader range of reference than is sometimes recognized.
Neorealism was not restricted to an Italian context, for example. After
the war, Italian critics identified a “neorealismo inglese [English neoreal-
ism]” in the documentary films of John Grierson; a “Neorealismo sovie-
tico [Soviet Neorealism]” in the work of Eisenstein and Pudovkin; and a
“‘neo-realismo’ americano [American ‘neorealism’]” in Hollywood films
such as Boomerang! (Elia Kazan, 1947), Crossfire (Edward Dmytyk, 1947),
The Naked City (Jules Dassin, 1948), Call Northside 777 (Henry Hathaway,
1948), and Cry of the City (Robert Siodmak, 1948).99 They also continued
to recognize currents of literary neorealism in international and Italian
prose, and to classify as neorealist many of the latest trends in painting,
sculpture, and eventually architecture and design.100
Nevertheless, for many neorealism had become, and perhaps

remains, primarily if not exclusively a cinematic designation, a label for
a short-lived tendency in post-war Italian filmmaking, with its broader
cultural manifestations at best relegated to secondary status. One telling
result is that it was and often still is assumed that neorealism spread from
film to literature and the arts, when the inverse is closer to the truth.101
The speed with which this mistaken genealogy managed to take hold in
Italy after the war is striking. In a 1953 article facetiously entitled “Prima
viene il film” (Film came first), Carlo Bo recounted how
[p]roprio un anno fa un critico anonimo mi accusò di aver adoperato per

la nuova letteratura il termine neorealistico che apparterrebbe invece alla
storia del cinema e precisamente alla storia dell’ultimo cinema italiano.
Ora le cose stanno diversamente.102
just one year ago, an anonymous critic accused me of having used the term
neorealist for the new literature when it belonged instead to the history of
cinema and precisely to the history of recent Italian cinema. The truth is
quite different.
One decade after the release of Ossessione, many of Bo’s contemporaries

had come to believe that neorealism was first and foremost a style of post-
war Italian filmmaking, as if all the preceding discussion of neorealism
in literature and the arts, in Italy and internationally, did not exist. The
success of the most celebrated neorealist films and filmmakers had man-
aged already to overshadow, even to occlude, neorealism’s many related
manifestations. It was in this context, and in response to this erroneous
narrative, that Bo insisted on neorealism’s nineteenth-century prov-
enance, reminding his readers of the work of Jules Hûret and of the
others who followed him in tracing a modernist neorealism throughout
the European arts. Cinema had all but taken over neorealism; Bo was
working to take it back.
Neorealism across the Arts
One way to read Bo’s 1951 Inchiesta sul neorealismo, therefore, is to see
it as an attempt to reassert neorealism’s long history and broad sweep,
to set the term’s burgeoning cinematic connotations in their proper
historical and artistic context, and perhaps even to claim for neoreal-
ism a more accommodating and inclusive definition than some of its
cinematic proponents appeared to offer. Emphasizing neorealism’s
cosmopolitan foundations, and especially its debts to the most advanced
currents in the European arts, was central to this enterprise. Many of

Bo’s respondents made clear that, however innovative Italy’s new cin-
ema may appear, neorealism was more than a post-war phenomenon,
more than a form of filmmaking, and more than an exclusively Italian
artistic tendency. “Per me il neorealismo è un processo di verità che si
svolge un po’ dappertutto nei campi dello spirito, impegna e impegnerà
gli sforzi di tutte le arti, e non può essere altrimenti, perché i dati reali
del mondo stanno cambiando egualmente per tutti [For me, neoreal-
ism is a process of truth-telling that occurs across the creative fields. It
engages and will engage the drives of all the arts, and it cannot do other-
wise, because the facts of the world are changing equally for everyone],”
the editor and critic Franco Antonicelli told the radio audience.103 The
Inchiesta sul neorealismo, and the term’s long cultural history – traced in
the critical interventions of Hûret and Lo Gatto; Evola, Solaroli, and
Titta Rosa; Barbaro and Bocelli; Carrà, Papini, and Venturi; and even-
tually Bassani and Pietrangeli – together suggest that no single art form
can make a definitive claim to ownership. Neorealism was “un clima
comune [a common climate],” Antonio Pietrangeli argued in 1948, an
ambitious project shared by “tutta la migliore cultura italiana [all of the
best Italian culture],” Gianni Puccini suggested in the same year.104 It
not only emerged and developed across the arts, it encouraged collab-
oration between the arts.105 Neorealism was “un realismo totale [a total
realism],” as the critic Pierantonio Bertè explained in a 1950 essay, bridg-
ing “romanzo, teatro, cinema, pittura [novel, theatre, cinema, paint-
ing].”106 Others extended the designation still further, until it included
music as well.107 Throughout the age of neorealism, specialization was
understood as both an artistic and an ethical failure. The goal was cul-
tural cross-pollination in the pursuit of a “sintesi fondata su autentici
valori spirituali, etici, estetici, razionali [synthesis founded on authen-
tic spiritual, ethical, aesthetic, and rational values],” in the words of the
industrialist and political theorist Adriano Olivetti.108
Elio Vittorini offers a representative case in point. As both author and
editor, Vittorini pursued an innovative combinatorial aesthetic, a cultural
synthesis uniting photography, literature, music, and cinema. Wishing
to prepare an illustrated edition of his most famous novel, Conversazione
in Sicilia, he had first sought the collaboration of Renato Guttuso, who
produced sixteen designs for the novel in 1943, but never completed
the project.109 Luchino Visconti had already pursued a similar collabora-
tion, inviting Guttuso to illustrate “Tradizione e invenzione” (Tradition
and invention), the 1941 essay in which he explored the possibility of
adapting Verga for the cinema.110 Moreover, when he later succeeded
in carrying out that adaptation in La terra trema, Visconti cited Vittorini’s
Conversazione in Sicilia as a key influence on his thinking.111 The lines of

influence went both ways. Vittorini at one point sought to acquire the
photographs taken in Acitrezza in preparation for Visconti’s film; the
novelist planned a new illustrated edition of Conversazione, completed in
1953, which he prepared with what he called a “criterio cinematografico
[cinematic criterion],” with the photographs working in conjunction with
the text, like “una specie di film immobile [a sort of motionless film].”112
These suggestive links between painterly, novelistic, photographic, and
cinematic developments in the age of neorealism demonstrate something
of the intermedial character of artistic exploration during the period.
Those links would have been even more substantial had Visconti’s
planned film adaptation of Vittorini’s 1945 partisan novel Uomini e no
come to fruition.113 Although that project was never realized, Uomini e no
can nevertheless be said to constitute one of the most significant explo-
rations of neorealism’s syncretic spirit. Vittorini had long wished to move
beyond the standard language of literary realism, “[o]ttimo per rac-
cogliere i dati espliciti di una realtà [ideal for capturing the explicit data
of reality],” as he argued in a 1947 summation of his poetics, but “inade-
guato per un tipo di rappresentazione nel quale si voglia esprimere un
sentimento complessivo o un’idea complessiva, un’idea riassuntiva di
speranze o insofferenze degli uomini in genere, tanto più se segrete
[inadequate for a type of representation in which one tries to express a
general feeling or a general idea, an idea that encapsulates mankind’s
general hopes or prejudices, especially if these are kept secret].”114 To
put it in the terms of Bellonci’s assessment of neorealism, with which
Vittorini’s account shares many points in common, traditional realism
succeeds in capturing the “objective world” (what Vittorini calls “explicit
data”) but fails to capture the experience of reality, the “memories that
remain in us without our being aware of them” (what Vittorini calls “a
general feeling or a general idea”). As a result, Vittorini argued, tra-
ditional realism fundamentally misrepresents the human experience
of reality, insofar as that reality remains at least partially hidden from
human consciousness.
The exploration of reality as reflected in human subjectivity, the exam-
ination of what Vittorini called “mankind’s general hopes or prejudices,”
undergirds the ambitious representation of the partisan struggle in Uomini
e no, a fact announced in the novel’s title. Unfortunately, the ambiguity
of that title has led to much confusion, and many of Vittorini’s critics
continue to misinterpret his intentions, insisting that the novel posits a
Manichean division between partisans (“Uomini [Men]”) and Fascists
(“Non uomini [Not men]”).115 Vittorini himself sought actively to avoid
this confusion, explaining in an interview, an essay, and a letter to his pub-

lisher that “Uomini e no significa esattamente che noi, gli uomini, possiamo
anche essere ‘non uomini.’ Mira cioè a ricordare che vi sono, nell’uomo,
molte possibilità inumane [Uomini e no means precisely that men can also
be ‘non-men.’ That is, it aims to remind us that there are many inhuman
possibilities in mankind].”116 Vittorini’s expressed ambition, in other
words, was to represent the anti-Fascist Resistance as a struggle within each
individual partisan to retain his or her humanity while fighting against an
enemy unburdened by such scruples. A new representational style thus
proved necessary, he believed, because, although traditional realism was
suitable for the representation of the Resistance as armed conflict, it was
not up to the task of representing at the same time the partisans’ interior
conflict, the manifestation of their conflicted humanity.
In Uomini e no, therefore, Vittorini pursued a new and more holistic
form of realism, one that he hoped could convey the reality of the strug-
gle in its entirety. As he made clear in his 1947 précis, his goal was to
“andare [...] oltre i riferimenti realistici [...] a farli suonare dei signifi-
cati di una realtà maggiore [go (...) beyond realist references (...) to
make them give voice to the sense of a greater reality].”117 That “greater
reality” is not separate from or opposed to material reality in Vittorini’s
poetics, but is rather an added dimension – what Vittorini sometimes
called “l’in più [the something more],” the “quarta dimensione [fourth
dimension]” – of reality itself. It is more real, or, as he put it, “due volte
reale [twice real]”: objective and subjective together, material reality and
the human experience of reality at one and the same time.118 In Uomini
e no, however, the sense of hyper-realism that cohered in his earlier and
more acclaimed Conversazione in Sicilia appears to break down, a sign, it
is often argued, of a “crisis” in Vittorini’s poetics.119 Unlike the earlier
novel, which pursues a unity between subjective and objective reality,
in Uomini e no the exploration of the subjectivity of the author-figure’s
reflections on the Resistance is largely confined to a series of metaliter-
ary passages, set off from the rest of the text in italic script.120 What was
once one, in other words, here seems to have been cleaved in two. Yet
this dissolution can better be understood as a poetic strategy than as a
poetic crisis.
Indeed, dramatizing a divide between representation and reality, Uomini
e no seeks to portray an ethical and political crisis to which the novel’s
divided poetics can be understood as a partial response. For Vittorini the
crisis was occasioned by the Resistance itself, which in Uomini e no comes
to represent much more than a fight for liberation from the German
occupation: it is nothing less than the struggle for the fate of humanity.
This struggle is problematized, however, by the suggestion that humanity

is a liability in wartime. Attacking a man, the novel’s narrator explains, the
Nazis and Fascists aimed to “colpirlo dove l’uomo era più debole, dove
aveva l’infanzia, dove aveva la vecchiaia, dove aveva la sua costola staccata
e il cuore scoperto: dov’era più uomo [strike him where a human being is
at his weakest, in childhood, in old age, in the opening in his ribs where
his heart is exposed: where he is most human].”121 To be human is to be
vulnerable, that is to say, and to be more human is to be more vulnerable.
An enemy can exploit that vulnerability by suppressing his own humanity,
choosing – and the novel’s narrator emphasizes that this is always a choice –
to behave inhumanely. Uomini e no thus raises a series of disturbing
questions. Were humanity and victory incommensurable goods? Could the
partisans achieve the tactical goal of the Resistance (victory over the Nazis
and the Fascists) only at the expense of nullifying the ethical goal (the
advancement of humanity)? Could they defeat their enemy only through
the temporary suppression of their own humanity? If so, did the means
invalidate the ends, such that tactical victory entailed ethical defeat?
Instead of positing definitive answers to these probing questions,
Uomini e no internalizes them in its very structure, so that the solutions
are held – or rather withheld – by the form of the novel itself. Ultimately,
therefore, the poetic coherence of the text is made both to depend
on and to suggest the ethical coherence of the Resistance. In the itali-
cized sections, evocative and dreamlike, the author-figure engages in a
lengthy conversation with the novel’s protagonist, the partisan Enne 2,
about his memory, his childhood, his love and desire. In the back-slant
portions, insistent and descriptive, the novel’s narrative describes the
anti-Fascist activities of Enne 2 and his fellow partisans, their commit-
ment to the cause, the trauma they endure in their effort to liberate
Milan. By self-consciously dividing these two discourses, the novel pro-
vocatively conjoins two otherwise separate sets of questions: Can a par-
tisan achieve a coherent synthesis between his humanity (italics) and
his fight against the Nazi occupiers (back-slant)? Can literature achieve
a coherent synthesis between subjective (italics) and objective (back-
slant) modes of representation? Adopting these questions as a structur-
ing mechanism, Uomini e no deliberately withholds any definitive fusion
in the service of a profound exploration of the interrelations between
ethics, politics, and poetics.
Critics at the time had a word for searching, ambitious, and experimen-
tal works such as Vittorini’s: subjective as well as objective; hyper-realist
but also allusive and symbolic. They called Uomini e no neorealist, invok-
ing the same term they had likewise used to describe Vittorini’s earlier
efforts.122 And they continued to refer to his work as neorealist even after
the term began to take on its cinematic connotations.123 In the 1951

Inchiesta, Vittorini reached a similar verdict, identifying in his own liter-
ary biography a phase corresponding to the same neorealist tradition he
had helped to define more than a decade earlier, when he argued that
the neorealists were the “eredi naturali proprio di coloro che dieci anni
fa passavano per supertori del reale [natural heirs of those who ten years
ago were understood to have transcended reality],” and thus that James
Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, Richard Hughes, Katherine Mansfield, Virginia
Woolf “e i neo-realisti degli ultimi anni formano [...] un’unica famiglia
[and the neorealists of recent years form (...) a single family].”124 For
both the author and his contemporary critics, it is clear, neorealism des-
ignated forms of introspective and experiential realism, inflected with
modernist subjectivity, with which the arts – all of the arts – sought to
capture the complex realities of human existence.
Neorealism as Art Cinema
In subsequent years, however, critical definitions of neorealism con-

stricted so significantly that it is now frequently argued, against the judg-
ment of his contemporaries – indeed, against his own judgment – that
Vittorini was never in fact a neorealist.125 Neither, it is often claimed,
were Vittorini’s celebrated (and formerly neorealist) contemporar-
ies Italo Calvino, Carlo Levi, Alberto Moravia, and Cesare Pavese.126
Disentangling the syncretic tendencies that once united all of the arts
under the banner of neorealism, later accounts have so drastically
reduced the term’s critical coverage that it no longer applies to many if
not most of the artworks it once encompassed. Instead, over time neore-
alism has for many come to signify “primarily an ‘art’ cinema,” “a cinema
of auteurs.”127 This usage of the term, far more restrictive than those that
earlier obtained, tends in practice to crowd out all others.
More problematically still, it appears to have severed current usage
from much of neorealism’s history. Indeed, even as interest in neoreal-
ism’s early history has increased in recent years, most accounts of neo-
realism’s semantic roots tend to break off at 1945, implying, when not
actually stipulating, a strict division between the broad and inclusive defi-
nitions of neorealism that held for the first five decades – from Hûret’s
1891 Enquête sur l’évolution littéraire through the end of the Second World
War – and the later use of the term as a “synonym for films shot ‘on loca-
tion.’” When it is acknowledged at all, this division is typically ascribed
either to amnesia or to ignorance. Those who theorized and practised
neorealism after the war had either forgotten the pre-war history of their
adopted moniker, it is claimed, or else they were entirely unaware of that
history, certain that they had invented the term themselves.128 Neither
explanation is entirely convincing.
In large measure, this is because the division was never as clear as such
accounts would seem to suggest. After all, Alberto Moravia was deemed
Italy’s leading neorealist writer in 1931 and then again in 1951; when
his 1929 novel Gli indifferenti was republished in 1949, the publicity put
out by its editor labelled the text “[l]’inizio del neorealismo [the start of
neorealism].”129 The same pattern holds in the case of the screenwriter
Cesare Zavattini, designated a neorealist in 1938 and again in 1949.130
Conventional definitions and interpretations of neorealism likewise
bridged the supposed divide. Witness, for example, Giovanni Battista
Angioletti’s 1950 attack on the “ingenuo e depauperato ‘neo-realismo’
[naïve and impoverished ‘neorealism’]” of those “imitatori dello stesso
Joyce [imitators of Joyce]” he had similarly condemned in 1929.131
Moreover, as this last example suggests, the term not only conveyed the
same meaning and identified the same artists, it was also wielded by
many of the same critics. Thus, for instance, Umberto Barbaro, who had
done as much as anyone else to disseminate notions of neorealism in
the 1930s, continued after the war, as we have seen, to follow the devel-
opment of what he called Italy’s “neorealist school.”132 Such self-evident
continuities must surely dispel any strict divisions between pre-war and
post-war definitions.
What seems to have happened, instead, is that soon after the war
neorealism underwent a process of retrenchment: its dominion shrank
markedly, and borders were erected where none had existed before.
Thanks largely to the international success of a handful of celebrated
films, neorealism began to take on a set of entailments, increasingly
enforced as a set of rules, which considerably reduced its scope. The
result was not a recognizably different definition of neorealism – after
all, the term had been used to identify modes of filmmaking since
the 1920s – but it was certainly more limited, more circumscribed.
A fraction of the former category was increasingly taken for the whole,
and as time went on, the size of that fraction continued to shrink. By
the standards at work in the immediate post-war period, which for
the moment still reflected decades-old definitions of the term, both
Ossessione and Uomini e no could be considered neorealist. Vittorini’s
novel was soon displaced; in a few more years, Visconti’s film would
also be removed from neorealism’s critical remit, with its earlier clas-
sification dismissed as “sheer, indiscriminate mystification.”133 Rather
than a firm and fixed distinction between pre- and post-war neorealism,
then, a process of gradual rigidification brought about neorealism’s
continual contraction.
Rebelling against this contraction, externally imposed and often

unwelcome, many of those responsible for neorealism’s pre-war devel-
opment began to question if not in fact to abandon the term in subse-
quent years. This is certainly true of Cesare Pavese, formerly recognized
as one of neorealism’s leaders, its capiscuola, and a writer who had been
labelled a neorealist well before 1945.134 In a 1950 radio address Pavese
insisted that the term “ha soprattutto oggi un senso cinematografico,
definisce dei film che, come Ossessione, Roma città aperta, Ladri di biciclette,
hanno stupito il mondo [today has above all a cinematic meaning: it
defines those films like Ossessione, Roma città aperta, and Ladri di biciclette,
that have astonished the world].”135 Pavese was not denying neorealism’s
pre-war history as a literary and artistic term, a history in which he had
played no small role. Rather, he was trying to extricate himself from a
critical characterization that, thanks to neorealism’s post-war retrench-
ment, no longer applied to his work.
This effort did not invalidate earlier notions of neorealism. If any-
thing, it called into question the more restrictive notions in vogue at
the time. Indeed, many of Pavese’s contemporaries argued this latter
point quite vehemently. Reconsidering neorealism’s purchase in the
visual arts, for example, Domenico Purificato lamented that “si è fatto
del neorealismo un atteggiamento programmatico, preconcetto, a volte
settario e dogmatico [neorealism has become a programmatic, precon-
ceived, at times sectarian and dogmatic attitude],” while Renato Guttuso
made evident his “buone ragioni per aborrire questo termine equivoco
e giornalistico [good reasons for abhorring this misunderstood and jour-
nalistic term].”136 Like Pavese, both artists had been associated with neo-
realism well before the term’s appropriation by Italian film critics. Once
its definition narrowed, however, it no longer appeared to describe their
projects. Neorealism narrowed so far, in fact, and so quickly, that leading
filmmakers and film critics likewise came to reject it at the same time and
in remarkably similar terms as Pavese, Purificato, and Guttuso. Accusing
neorealism of “fossilizzazione [fossilization],” many argued that it had
become little more than a “comoda ricetta [convenient recipe],” “una
formula già troppo sfruttata [a formula that has already been used too
much]”: it had been turned into an advertising slogan, a trick of the
production companies eager to identify a brand in order to sell their
films to the public.137 Those who advanced this case were not ignorant of
neorealism’s history; they were dissatisfied with its increasing orthodoxy.
Even many of the filmmakers most closely associated with neore-
alism in the public imagination began to rebel against the label. At
the 1949 International Cinema Conference in Perugia, for instance,
Cesare Zavattini, perhaps neorealism’s most recognized theorist, all but
disavowed the term’s increasingly limited and limiting application. “Il

cinema italiano è stato assalito dagli elogi più ambiti [Italian cinema has
been assailed by its most coveted honours],” Zavattini argued.
Non gli riuscirà facile difendersi da questi elogi, che involontariamente limi-
tano il suo orizzonte con la definizione del neorealismo. Il nostro cinema ha
qualche cosa di più duraturo di uno stile dentro di sé e di molto diverso da
quello che lo portò alla gloria trent’anni fa: questo bisogno di verità.138
It will not be easy for it to defend itself from these honours, which involun-
tarily limit its horizons with the definition of neorealism. Our cinema has
within it something more enduring than a style, something very different
from that which brought it glory thirty years ago: the need for truth.
Precisely because of his admiration for the accomplishments of Italian

cinema, in other words, Zavattini was wary of the mounting strictures
of neorealism, a term that he believed was beginning to stifle artistic
creation, impeding the development of a cultural conversation that tran-
scended any one set of stylistic innovations. Once the definition of neo-
realism ceased to recognize the far-reaching ambitions of filmmakers or
to encompass the most advanced tendencies in literature and the arts,
many, Zavattini included, came to question its usefulness.
The Convergence of Neorealism
Among those to raise such questions, as we have already seen, was Luchino
Visconti, who maintained that neorealism was not only “an absurd label”
but also an impediment to artistic innovation, a “boundary, a law.”139
For Visconti, the desire to move beyond neorealism’s increasingly strin-
gent confines was particularly acute. La terra trema, like the other Italian
selections at the 1948 Venice Film Festival, had been conscripted into
a battle on behalf of what critics defined as “la validità del [...] neore-
alismo [the validity of (...) neorealism]” and Visconti himself had been
enlisted in what they christened “[l]a banda dei neorealisti [the band of
neorealists].”140 Acclaimed as a neorealist, despite his reservations about
that designation, Visconti found himself exposed to condemnation on
the same grounds, the target of misguided reproach when the inevitable
critical backlash began. “I nostri registi devono sentire nel subcosciente
la fragilità di questo cosiddetto ‘neo-realismo’ [Our directors must feel
in their subconscious the fragility of this so-called ‘neorealism’],” Luigi
Chiarini wrote in 1948, “perché sono troppo preoccupati di far sapere al
pubblico che tutto è vero nei loro film: i pescatori e le barche di Acitrezza
come i gabinetti di decenza e la ‘pipinara’ di Roma [because they are

all too concerned to let the public know that everything in their films is
true: the fishermen and the boats of Acitrezza as well as the toilets and
the lice of Rome].”141 Evidently, not everyone was persuaded by the “man-
ifesto” set forth in the rolling text that opens La terra trema. What such
analyses overlook, however, is that even as La terra trema announces its
indexical fidelity to the people, language, and landscape of Acitrezza, it
makes use of a diverse array of representational strategies that transcend
this limited notion of realism. Fixated on the question of neorealism’s
legitimacy, both those who would celebrate Visconti’s film and those who
would denigrate it did so in terms that tended to distort its intentions
and innovations, focusing on its truth-claims at the expense of its stylistic
originality and heterogeneity.
Yet the film’s hybrid realism was far more consonant with the his-
tory of neorealism than were the restrictive definitions subsequently
imposed on Visconti and the rest of the supposed “band of neorealists.”
Of particular note, in this regard, is the film’s reliance on elements
borrowed from classical mythology, which augment and advance its
realistic depiction of the Valastro family’s struggle for survival. After
all, as Visconti explained in his 1941 essay “Tradizione e invenzione,”
what first drew him to Verga was the sense of legend that infused his
depictions of Sicily:
A me, lettore lombardo, abituato per tradizionale consuetudine al limpido

rigore della fantasia manzoniana, il mondo primitivo e gigantesco dei pe
scatori di Aci Trezza e dei pastori di Marineo era sempre apparso sollevato
in un tono immaginoso e violento di epopea: ai miei occhi lombardi, pur
contenti del cielo della mia terra che è “così bello quand’è bello,” la Sicilia
di Verga era apparsa davvero l’isola di Ulisse, un’isola di avventure e di
fervide passioni, situata immobile e fiera contro i marosi del mare Jonio.142
To me, a reader from Lombardy, accustomed by traditional habits to the

limpid rigour of Manzoni’s imagination, the primitive and gigantic world
of the fishermen of Acitrezza and the shepherds of Marineo had always
appeared elevated by the imaginative and violent tenor of epics: to my Lom-
bard eyes, although content with the sky of my land that is “so beautiful
when it is beautiful,” the Sicily of Verga really appeared to be the island of
Ulysses, an island of adventures and fervent passions, lying motionless and
proud against the waves of the Ionian sea.
The reverberations of Visconti’s reading of Verga can be felt through-

out La terra trema, but in ways that complicate the filmmaker’s initial
interpretation. As Visconti put it, in light of the political upheaval of the

Second World War,
[l]a chiave mitica in cui fino a quel momento avevo gustato Verga, non
mi fu più sufficiente. Sentii impellente il bisogno di scoprire quali fossero
le basi storiche, economiche e sociali sulle quali era cresciuto il dramma
meridionale.143
the mythic key in which up to that moment I had appreciated Verga was no
longer sufficient for me. I felt the need to discover the historical, economic,
and social bases on which the southern drama had taken shape.
Envisioning the cinematic portrayal of the fishermen’s exploitation,

Visconti believed he had to move beyond mythology, and beyond Verga,
in pursuit of a historically informed and politically engaged account
of Acitrezza’s structural inequalities. Whereas in Verga’s 1890 novel
I Malavoglia the lives of the fishermen are determined by fate and the down-
fall of the Toscano family is attributed to the capriciousness of nature –
timeless and abstract forces, like those of mythology – in La terra trema it is
the social structure, the contemporary human order of manipulation and
exploitation, that condemns the Valastro family.144 Visconti’s fishermen,
that is to say, are the victims of historical forces, exploited in terms that are
contingent rather than eternal, economic rather than mythological.
In its representation of the exploitation of the fishermen, however, La
terra trema relies on expressionistic intimations of mythology, conjoining
indexical realism with visual and narrative invocations of mythic symbol-
ism. Visconti’s Acitrezza, like Verga’s, thus remains fundamentally “the
island of Ulysses,” and the language and imagery of Homeric conflict
reinforce the film’s realistic portrayal of post-war capitalist exploita-
tion.145 In La terra trema, the systemic inequities of Sicilian village life
are elevated to the level of epic, with the mistreatment of the fishermen
shown to be barbarous and the profiteering of the wholesalers to be
monstrous. As the sign on their headquarters proclaims, those whole-
salers are the Cyclopes, one-eyed monsters of Homeric legend, who
ignore the customs of generosity and hospitality in their greedy desire
to devour the shipwrecked mariners. ’Ntoni, in turn, figures as a kind
of Odysseus, a prisoner of the bloodthirsty giants, who must struggle to
free himself from their perilous grasp. The dialogue of La terra trema
plays up this contrast between ’Ntoni/Odysseus and the wholesalers/
Cyclopes by placing repeated emphasis on the eyes: clear and perceptive
in the former case, myopic and distorting in the latter. “Per tanti e tanti
anni, e anche secoli, abbiamo tenuti tutti gli occhi chiusi [...] che non ci
vediamo più chiaro [For many, many years, and even for centuries, we
have all kept our eyes so closed (...) that we can no longer see clearly],”
’Ntoni declares in an effort to incite his fellow fishermen, who are said by
the narrator to have “gli occhi aperti [their eyes open]” when they deter-
mine to renegotiate their agreement with the wholesalers.146 Likewise,
in his final moments, ’Ntoni’s grandfather is described as having “occhi
spenti [dead eyes],” and his family as having nothing left but “gli occhi
per piangere [their eyes to cry]” after their bid for self-determination
has failed.147 Catalyst for rebellion, signal of vitality, source of resilience,
the eyes serve metonymically to symbolize the film’s ethical and political
outlook, a function of the clash between ’Ntoni’s growing understanding
of the need to revolt, symbolized as a kind of vision, and the wholesalers’
opposition to ’Ntoni’s just cause, their symbolic blindness.
Underlying the realism of La terra trema, then, are the structures of
Homeric myth, a creative scheme that recalls nothing so much as James
Joyce’s Ulysses. Visconti’s interest in the literature that we call modern-
ism and that his Italian contemporaries called neorealism – Mann,
Musil, and Proust especially – has been well documented.148 So, too,
have the modernist activities of his collaborators, and in particular his
editor Mario Serandrei, who in 1930 published a cinematic treatment
of Joyce’s Ulysses, praising the novel at that time as “oggettiva e sog-
gettiva insieme [objective and subjective together],” a judgment that
seems to contain, in nuce, his own subsequent theorization of cine-
matic neorealism.149 In La terra trema, in which Serandrei played a key
role, a similar process is at work, with the empirical facts of ’Ntoni’s
rebellion amplified and given symbolic resonance by virtue of the figu-
rative parallels between his exploitation at the hands of the wholesalers
and Odysseus’s imprisonment in the Cyclopes’ cave. Whereas Visconti
sometimes claimed that his political awakening led him to reject his
mythological reading of Verga, it is more accurate to say that it led
him to repurpose mythology in the service of his political message. If
I am correct, Ulysses was a significant analogue for that project, mak-
ing Visconti’s “a Verga rediscovered after Joyce,” to adopt once again
De Michelis’s formulation.
The Homeric borrowings in La terra trema certainly appear to follow the
same general pattern as those of Ulysses, in which, as Hugh Kenner once
said, the parallels to the Odyssey owe “less to analogy of incident or char-
acter than to analogy of situation.”150 In Joyce’s novel, this means that the
encounter with the Cyclops becomes a confrontation between Leopold
Bloom, the novel’s Jewish protagonist, and the Citizen, an Irish nationalist
who taunts Bloom for his allegedly divided loyalties. In Visconti’s film, it
becomes the climactic clash between ’Ntoni and Raimondo, a cross-eyed
wholesaler – note again the film’s emphasis on eyes – who taunts the
fisherman for the alleged hubris that has brought about his financial
misfortune.151 Moreover, as this scene plays out, on the wall behind
Raimondo is printed a celebrated saying of Mussolini – “Decisamente
verso il popolo [Decisively towards the people]” – which endures more
than two years after Fascism’s defeat: a clear indictment of the wholesal-
ers’ monstrous revanchism as well as their officious authoritarianism.152
The accumulated symbolic density thus makes Raimondo an avatar of
both Cyclopean villainy and Fascist iniquity, heightening the drama of the
film’s conclusion beyond that which its realist narration conveys.
The same underlying structure, which generates Homeric parallels in
a Joycean manner in order to superimpose layers of symbolism on the
film’s spare realism, provides a sense of uplift in the otherwise dispirit-
ing conclusion. Indeed, if it is true that ’Ntoni becomes a “vinto vincitore
[vanquished victor]” in the final scenes of La terra trema, as some have
argued, this message is conveyed largely, if not entirely, by means of the
Joycean-Homeric echoes.153 In Homer, Odysseus succeeds in freeing him-
self, blinding the Cyclops and then deriding him as he sails away from the
island. In Joyce, the scene is made parodic, mock-heroic, as Odysseus’s
spear becomes Bloom’s cigar, and the Cyclops is “defeated” when his
anti-Semitic nationalism is punctured by Bloom’s stingingly apposite
rebuke. In Visconti’s film, the resolution becomes even less decisive, such
that if the Homeric victory is symptomatically diminished in Ulysses, in La
terra trema it is almost entirely denied. After all, ’Ntoni exits the Cyclopes’
cave not only having lost his family’s home and boat, their only means
of support, but also having submitted once again to the unjust rule of
the wholesalers. Considered symbolically, however, and interpreted in
conjunction with his analogues in Homer and Joyce, ’Ntoni can in fact
be seen to emerge triumphant. Mocked by the wholesalers, he responds
with a withering glare that penetrates and punctures the lie of their
demagogic populism, their claim to go “towards the people,” in this way
metaphorically blinding the Cyclops and combatively asserting his uncon-
querable independence. Glowering defiantly, ’Ntoni makes it known that
he has seen through the deceit, seen beyond it to the foundations of a
more just order, and thus he remains a danger to the wholesalers even as
he is forced temporarily to acquiesce to their authority.
Crucially, this implied sense of an imminent political reckoning inheres
in ’Ntoni’s penetrating glare, magnified by the expressive density of the
film’s structuring mythology rather than the authenticity of its realist
veneer. Put differently, the victory belongs to ’Ntoni as Odysseus, whose
spear blinds the Cyclops, more than to ’Ntoni as fisherman, whose boat
remains grounded. His is a metaphorical triumph, conveyed through
classical analogy rather than realist indexicality. At the crux of Visconti’s

film, therefore, the supposed “orthodoxy of neorealism,” with its dictates
about authentic speech and non-professional actors, proved insufficient
to the task at hand. To ennoble the struggles of the Valastro family, and
to signal the hope for future rebellion that persists even in the moment
of ’Ntoni’s defeat, something more than indexical realism was needed.
This “something more” was neorealism itself. Indeed, one may extend
not only to Visconti but to all of neorealism the claim that Peter Brunette
makes of Roberto Rossellini, namely that “[t]he lack of a total commit-
ment to realism [...] enables the director to get at things that lie beyond
realism.”154 Exploiting the representational innovations of the twentieth
century’s most advanced tendencies in literature, cinema, and the arts,
neorealism was conceived as nothing less than a total realism, a creative
adaptation of the techniques of symbolism and modernism in order to
encompass both the subjective and the objective experience of reality in
its human dimensions. No abstract set of “dictates” could ever hope to
encompass the entirety of this process, which embraced a stylistic hybrid-
ity that always entailed something more than meticulous fidelity to the
facts. Codifying neorealism into a “boundary, a law,” to put it in Visconti’s
terms, thus inevitably results in omissions and oversimplifications.
Neorealism’s unity in diversity emerges more fully when it is understood
as “a moment” (again, the word is Visconti’s): a historical epoch whose
complex unfolding shaped both artistic creation and critical reflection.
The neorealism of La terra trema, too, is best understood as a func-
tion of its history, and it is thus to be located beyond the program set
forth in the rolling text that opens the film. Adopting a historicist rather
than a formalist definition, we can understand La terra trema as neo-
realist because of the interventions of the man who wrote that rolling
text, the art critic Antonello Trombadori, a passionate advocate of what
he called the “rinnovamento umano e realistico delle arti figurative
[human and realistic renewal of the figurative arts]” and a central figure
in the debates over neorealist painting and sculpture.155 It was neoreal-
ist because of the contributions of Antonio Pietrangeli, whose earlier
collaboration with Visconti on Ossessione – a film he identified in 1948
as the origin-point of “Italian neorealism” – proved instrumental in the
director’s development, just as his impassioned 1947 plea for a cinematic
adaptation of Verga was instrumental in the director’s decision to adapt
I Malavoglia.156 It was neorealist because its adaptation of I Malavoglia
drew on the treatment of the novel by Mario Alicata, an assignment he
undertook soon after collaborating with Giuseppe De Santis on the two
influential Cinema essays on Verga and Italian film.157 It was neorealist
because its editor, Mario Serandrei, had been one of the first to theorize
cinematic neorealism, as well as to attempt the cinematic adaptation

of Joyce, an author identified as early as 1931 as one of neorealism’s
“spiritual fathers.” And it was neorealist because it represented so suc-
cessfully what Visconti referred to in 1944 as his “eterno progetto, la
realizzazione de I Malavoglia di Verga [eternal project, the realization of
Verga’s I Malavoglia]” – a project that brought together influences which
had been accruing since his early collaborations with Jean Renoir, exem-
plar of “French neorealism,” and which he had developed in the making
of his “proto-neorealist” film, Ossessione.158
La terra trema thus proves to be something more than the “epicentre
of neorealism,” a misplaced analogy that suggests neorealism radiated
outward from Visconti’s film. The opposite was true: La terra trema was
one of many points of convergence for the various, hybrid discourses
that neorealism conveyed across the arts. Integrating a diverse set of
cultural influences – Italian and international; cinematic, literary, and
artistic – the film synthesized many of the most innovative tendencies
of the modernist era. The breadth of those influences ensures that the
film’s contribution to neorealism cannot be confined to any “manifesto.”
Approached historically rather than doctrinally, however, La terra trema
can indeed be seen to offer a kind of summa of neorealism, but to do so
in a manner that, like Dante’s Ulysses at the Pillars of Hercules, wilfully
surpasses the boundaries imposed by orthodoxy.
2
“Renewal through Conservation”:
Neorealism after Fascism
As his pursuers arrive ever closer to the abandoned Nazi headquarters

that serves as his gang’s hideout, Alberto (Andrea Cecchi) is faced with
a formidable decision. On the one hand, he can continue his flight,
remaining loyal to Daniela (Vivi Gioi), his lover and partner in crime,
who insists on fighting to the end, as if the war were still ongoing, as if
she were still a Nazi informant, as if her adversaries were still partisans, as
if the conflict between Fascists and anti-Fascists were not just intractable
but eternal. On the other hand, he can surrender, trusting his fate to the
vigilante mob that has tracked him down in order to rescue the woman
he has kidnapped, Giovanna (Carla Del Poggio), the wife of his former
best friend and fellow concentration camp survivor, Michele (Massimo
Girotti). To Daniela, the choice is clear. “Sei maledetto insieme a me
[You and I are cursed together],” she tells Alberto, “non possiamo
tornare indietro [we can’t turn back]”: there will be no forgiveness for
Nazi collaborators and former Fascists after the war; the only hope lies
in continued opposition.1 Yet Alberto disagrees. He knows that he has
transgressed against civil society but he retains some hope that his judges
will be merciful, that peace can bring with it reconciliation, clemency, a
return to the community.
In his moment of decision, the dramatic turning-point of Giuseppe
De Santis’s under-appreciated 1947 neorealist classic Caccia tragica,
Alberto forces his pursuers, as well as the film’s viewers, to confront one
of the most pressing dilemmas facing Italy after the Second World War:
what was to be done with the Fascists in a reformed country that claimed
not only to be post-Fascist but also explicitly anti-Fascist? A cultural cor-
ollary, crucial for understanding the development of neorealism after
1945, regarded the post-war viability of the artistic, cinematic, and liter-
ary tendencies that had flourished in Italy during the Fascist ventennio.
Would a new, anti-Fascist culture start with a clean slate, breaking with
the culture of the past? That question, too, underpins the analysis of
De Santis’s film.
It is a question that has proved problematic in the scholarship on neo-
realism. As the previous chapter was intended to establish, neorealism’s
definition did not change immediately or substantially after 1945: the
use of the term in the 1930s, when Italy was under Fascist rule, con-
tinued to inform its application even to explicitly anti-Fascist texts like
Vittorini’s Uomini e no and Visconti’s La terra trema. This argument is to be
distinguished, however, from the superficially related but fundamentally
specious claim that Italian culture remained largely – or, as is sometimes
claimed, entirely – unaffected by the war, maintaining the same tenden-
cies, the same biases, even the same ideologies as before. For decades,
scholars have called for increased emphasis on post-war neorealism’s sig-
nificant debts to the culture of the Fascist period, providing a needed
corrective to the earlier, ahistorical tendency to sever neorealism from
its past, as if the war changed everything.2 At the margins, however, the
emphasis on post-war continuities always risks implying that the war
changed nothing. Indeed, even in its more rigorous manifestations it
has often tended in this direction, eliding neorealism’s post-war meta-
morphosis and scanting Italy’s cultural response to the depredations of
Fascism and the horrors of total war.
This chapter offers an alternative account and with it a more robust
framework for interpreting neorealism’s post-war development, embrac-
ing the cogent arguments for continuity while recognizing Italy’s signifi-
cant cultural transformation after 1945. It is an account that unreservedly
renounces the position caricatured as “la favola dell’‘anno zero’ [the
‘Year Zero’ fable],” which wrongly insists that neorealism was entirely
a post-war invention, anti-Fascist at its origins, whose aim was to cancel
out the previous twenty years of Italian culture and to begin again from
scratch.3 Yet it is an account that also renounces, no less forcefully, the
standard arguments against the “the ‘Year Zero’ fable,” which wrongly
imply that, failing to effect a sufficient break with the past, neorealism
covertly perpetuated the culture of the Fascist ventennio, undermining its
vocal claims to anti-Fascism and its solemn rhetoric of post-war renewal.
Rejecting both of these competing extremes, this chapter reassesses neo-
realism’s periodization in light of the more supple standards of reform
articulated in Italy’s emphatic post-war political, social, and cultural dis-
course. In their conceptual care and precision, these standards are more
conducive to evaluating a cultural conversation begun under Fascism
and nurtured by elements within the Fascist hierarchy, which neverthe-
less came to offer a powerful expression of anti-Fascism, and which did
so catalysed by a critical rehabilitation of its own problematic origins.
Neorealism after Fascism 51
“A Certain Continuity”
In his 1951 study Cinema italiano oggi (Italian cinema today), Gian Luigi
Rondi examined several of the most consequential films of post-war
Italian cinema – among them Roma città aperta, La terra trema, Ladri di bici-
clette, Il sole sorge ancora, and Caccia tragica – and argued that they repre-
sented something entirely new not only in the history of filmmaking but
also in the history of Italy. Adopting a fateful phrase, Rondi asserted that
“[l]’anno zero del cinema italiano coincide con l’anno zero d’Italia, il
1944 [Italian cinema’s Year Zero coincides with Italy’s Year Zero, 1944].”4
As he went on to explain in some detail, he believed that the war rep-
resented a watershed in Italian politics and culture, washing away all
that had come before and baptizing all that would come after. Arguing
that the triumphs of neorealism corroborated this interpretation, Rondi
insisted that Italian cinema had been “rinato sulle macerie dell’anno
zero [reborn on the rubble of the Year Zero].”5 This statement, a claim at
once for neorealism’s radical originality and for Italy’s national rebirth,
seems to have been the unacknowledged source for what has come to
be known as “the ‘Year Zero’ fable.” The source for Rondi’s claim, how-
ever, is not entirely clear. Quite possibly it was adapted from the third
film of Roberto Rossellini’s neorealist trilogy, 1948’s Germania anno zero
(Germany Year Zero), whose title was itself borrowed from Edgar Morin’s
1946 volume L’an zéro de l’Allemagne (Germany’s Year Zero).6 Neither
Morin’s book, which sought to ascertain how Germany had descended
into Nazism and to analyse the country’s hopes for a post-war recovery,
nor Rossellini’s film, which offers a profoundly troubling account of the
struggle to survive in a Berlin that has been reduced to rubble, can plau-
sibly be accused of offering an optimistic portrait of post-war renewal.
Neither suggests that history would begin again from scratch.
Nevertheless, this appears to be the meaning subsequently imposed
on the notion of a post-war “Year Zero” and then vigorously contested
in much of the historical literature.7 That has certainly been the pattern
as regards Italy. Seeking to diagnose the causes of the political crises of
the 1960s and 1970s – the Tambroni affair, the social upheaval of 1968,
the Piazza Fontana bombing, and the terrorism of the “Years of Lead”
that followed – historians have repeatedly insisted that their origins are
to be located in the substantial and detrimental “continuità dello Stato
[continuity of the state]” after Fascism.8 Adopting this more critical
and less consolatory historical narrative, scholars have been inspired to
reconsider Italian cultural history as well, largely rejecting what some
have come to see as the “mythology of a radical rupture between the
Fascist era and post-war Italy” and insisting that, culturally no less than
politically, “a significant degree of continuity existed between the pre-war

and the post-war period.”9 Like their historical counterparts, these cul-
tural correctives first began to circulate in the late 1960s, as critics sought
to emphasize what Giorgio Bàrberi Squarotti identified at the time as
the “segno di una continuità storico-sociologica (e anche culturale)
che il dopoguerra offre rispetto agli anni trenta [sign of the post-war
period’s historical and sociological (as well as cultural) continuity with
the 1930s].”10 With growing conviction, many began at this time to cast
doubt on the triumphant narrative of a country and a culture refounded
on the values of the Resistance and born anew after the war, released
from its Fascist past and reconsecrated in a Year Zero.
In cinema circles, such doubts came to a head in the programs for
the 1974 and 1976 Pesaro Film Festivals.11 At the former, dedicated to
a re-evaluation of neorealism, an upstart group of young contrarians
polemically insisted that “non si può definire il neorealismo senza fare
riferimenti al cinema degli anni trenta [neorealism cannot be defined
without reference to the cinema of the 1930s]” and identified “una certa
continuità [a certain continuity]” in Italian film production.12 Building
on this insight, the latter festival offered a retrospective of “Cinema ita-
liano sotto il fascismo” (Italian cinema under Fascism), inspiring a polit-
ically and emotionally charged debate that spilled over into the popular
press. Many of the younger critics in attendance insisted that new his-
toriographies of Italian cinema were needed: “è ora di dire basta alla
lezione di padri che, per quanto ‘buoni’, hanno per trent’anni favorito
l’occultamento di non poche scomode verità [it’s time to say enough
to the lessons of our fathers who, however ‘good’ they may be, have for
thirty years favoured the concealment of more than a few uncomfortable
truths],” as Gian Piero Brunetta put it at the time.13 Strongly opposed
to this revisionist tendency, the older generation argued that those who
wished to reconsider Italian cinema under Fascism were in fact working
surreptitiously to redeem Fascism itself: “Hanno fatto pace col nonno
fascista” (They’ve made peace with their Fascist grandfathers), read the
incendiary title of Tullio Kezich’s response to the retrospective.14 As the
tenor of the debate makes clear, the arguments for cultural continuity,
and in particular for neorealism’s debts to Italian culture under Fascism,
were very much live issues, contested on political as well as aesthetic
grounds and inseparable from the roiling social conflicts of the day.
By the end of the decade, however, this once-provocative analysis had
become a point of such evident consensus that a critic could confidently
assert of the post-war moment
è ormai storiograficamente assodato che tale stagione, nei suoi aspetti

appunto “neorealistici,” [...] affondava le sue origini nel periodo precedente
e nel lavoro di quella “generazione degli anni Trenta” [...] che aveva attra-
versato, operando e producendo, il fascismo.15
by now it is historiographically certain that this period, precisely in its “neo-

realistic” aspects, [...] had its origins in the previous era, in the work of that
“generation of the 1930s” [...] that had had its first experience, managing
and producing, under Fascism.
The signs of continuity were so clear, so incontrovertible, that the oppos-

ing arguments were unsustainable. Today the continuities between neo-
realism and the culture of the Fascist ventennio have become a critical
commonplace, the new orthodoxy.16 Yet even now scholars argue vehe-
mently against the existence of a post-war Year Zero and in favour of
cultural continuity as if the defence of this consummately mainstream
position were still as contentious, still as iconoclastic, still as necessary as
it was forty years ago.
The intensity with which the argument is repeatedly advanced belies
the unanimity with which it is already accepted. Who today would
deny, for example, the significant personal, practical, and stylistic
continuities between pre- and post-war Italian cinema?17 The major
genre traditions, including melodramas, adventure films, and come-
dies, carried on after the war all but unchanged.18 So, too, did most of
the personnel working in the film industry. While hearings were held
to arbitrate the cases of some of the filmmakers who had served the
Fascist regime, and while some did receive temporary bans – two stars,
Osvaldo Valenti and Luisa Ferida, were even executed as Nazi collabo-
rators – the majority of those who had worked under or even in close
association with Mussolini’s regime were allowed to continue their
careers without sanction after the war.19 As a result, post-war Italian cin-
ema, including neorealism, inherited its major producers, directors,
actors, technicians, theorists, and critics from the film culture that had
developed under Fascism.20
Continuities of genre and of personnel were paralleled by significant
continuities of method, tone, and technique. It is indisputable, there-
fore, that even the supposedly defining stylistic traits of neorealism can
be identified in Italian cinema of the Fascist ventennio.21 Every one of
the identifying features of Italian neorealism catalogued by Alberto
Farassino in the list discussed in the introduction to this volume, in fact,
would just as readily have described films of the Fascist era; some of
these features were recognized as defining elements of Fascist cinema.22
In his analysis, Farassino emphasized “the authorial [...] demands of
expression and interpretation” at work in many neorealist films, and
it is true that in the first reviews of Roberto Rossellini’s 1945 Roma città
aperta, for instance, critics repeatedly called the film “un documentario
romanzato [a fictionalized documentary],” recognizing that its rigorous
realism was filtered through the director’s interpretive lens.23 Yet the
very notion of the “documentario romanzato” said to characterize neo-
realism had been developed in Italian film theory during the Fascist
ventennio and advocated by major figures in the Fascist film industry,
most notably Luigi Freddi.24 Before the term was applied to Roma città
aperta, it had been invoked in reviews of 1941’s La nave bianca, a film
Rossellini directed and co-wrote in support of the Fascist war effort.25
A similar situation obtains with the second trait identified by Farassino,
neorealism’s “use of non-professional actors.” Again, post-war Italian
critics did indeed emphasize neorealism’s r eliance on “attori presi dalla
vita [actors taken from real life],” as a 1949 essay in Bianco e nero put
it.26 So did their counterparts during the Fascist ventennio, however: a
1933 review of Giovacchino Forzano’s propagandistic celebration of
the rise of Fascism, Camicia nera, likewise championed the film for its
use of “attori presi dalla vita” – precisely the same phrase that would be
invoked sixteen years later to define neorealism.27 Examples of similar
continuities can easily be multiplied, since Fascist-era filmmakers, film
genres, and film aesthetics retained the dominant position in Italian
film production after the war.
“Neorealism avant la lettre ”
To prove that neorealism had a Fascist past is by no means the same as to

prove that the neorealists sought deceptively to suppress that past, how-
ever, and while critics have polemically insisted on the former point for at
least the last four decades, they have not yet succeeded in establishing the
latter. Nevertheless, many continue sententiously to assert that the
proponents of neorealism “ignored,” “repressed,” or “denied” their
Fascist origins.28 These accusations are often abetted by claims that
the post-war Italian intelligentsia itself propagated the now discredited
myth of a Year Zero, that this was done in order deliberately to dis-
guise their debts to Fascism, and that the myth was thus designed from
the start to hide what one scholar has referred to as the “mani sporchi
[sic], or ‘dirty hands,’ of neorealism.”29 Even when it is conceded that
many after the war acknowledged and even accentuated neorealism’s
long history, it is said that they produced a selective account, singling
out a few films that could be “saved” while discarding or eliding the
broader tradition in which those works emerged.30 Thus, it is claimed
that films like Alessandro Blasetti’s Quattro passi fra le nuvole (1942),
Luchino Visconti’s Ossessione (1943), and Vittorio De Sica’s I bambini
ci guardano (1944) were granted token status as anticipations of neo-

realism by critics otherwise eager to conceal the early history of this
cultural category.
Such accusations are untenable. From the beginning, it was readily
apparent and widely affirmed that neorealism drew on a vast cultural
inheritance. Artists and critics articulated a historical lineage that was
far more inclusive and far less exculpatory than is often recognized.
As we saw in the last chapter, for example, many of the respondents to
Carlo Bo’s Inchiesta sul neorealismo – published, it might be remembered,
in the same year as Rondi’s Cinema italiano oggi – traced the origins of the
term “neorealism” back well before the Second World War. Similarly, as
notions of neorealism began to be applied more consistently to post-war
filmmaking, there was a concerted effort to locate the emerging tradi-
tion within the history of Italian cinematic realism.31 An editorial in a
1946 issue of the journal Quarta parete, for instance, argued that any
hope for the success of Italy’s film industry after the war necessarily
rested on the many gains made by the cinema of the Fascist period. In
those years, the editorial maintained, “si sono pure fatti molti buoni
e anche ottimi films [they made many good and even a few excellent
films],” a claim supported not only by citing the early work of Blasetti,
Visconti, De Sica, and Rossellini, but also by praising such filmmakers
as Luigi Chiarini, Ferdinando Maria Poggioli, Gianni Franciolini, Mario
Soldati, Renato Castellani, Alberto Lattuada, Mario Camerini, Goffredo
Alessandrini, and Augusto Genina. Even when some of these filmmak-
ers had worked for Mussolini’s regime, even when they had directed
Fascist films, they had produced work of lasting value, the editorial-
ists at Quarta parete explained: “non abbiamo difficoltà a riconoscere
che durante il fascismo è sorta in Italia un’industria cinematografica
per tanti aspetti rispettabile e che sarebbe doveroso salvare proprio da
quella rovina alla quale il fascismo stesso ha condotto tutto il paese [we
have no difficulty in recognizing that under Fascism there arose in Italy
a film industry that was in many respects reputable, and it would only
be right to save that industry from the ruin to which Fascism has led
the entire country].”32 Likewise, in the journal Sud, an unsigned 1946
essay entitled “Nomi, possibilità del cinema italiano” (Names and pros-
pects for Italian cinema) cited a lengthy list of the directors whose inter-
war work would continue to prove influential after the war, a list that
included many of the same filmmakers enumerated in Quarta parete, as
well as several more, such as Mario Mattòli, Carmine Gallone, Giorgio
Simonelli, and Francesco De Robertis, whose 1941 film Uomini sul fondo
the article called “un ‘classico’ [a ‘classic’]” even if it was a work of
Fascist propaganda.33
De Robertis was far from the only director after the war to be granted
artistic absolution for his Fascist past. Indeed, amid scattered calls to cen-
sure the director Augusto Genina because of the propagandistic nature
of some of his Fascist films – Lo squadrone bianco (1936), L’assedio dell’Al-
cazar (1939), and Bengasi (1942) especially – the journal Quarta parete
leapt to his defence on the grounds that virtually the entire film industry
would need to be shuttered if that standard were applied:
nessuno osa scrivere che Blasetti, Alessandrini, Gallone, Vergano, Rossellini,

Simonelli, Camerini e altri, non sono meno colpevoli di Genina (qui
non vogliamo specificare se sieno meno o più capaci tecnicamente e
artisticamente), e che meno colpevoli non sono gli attori, i soggettisti, gli
sceneggiatori, i produttori che concorsero alla realizzazione di tutti i film
di propaganda fascista.34
no one dares write that Blasetti, Alessandrini, Gallone, Vergano, Rossellini,

Simonelli, Camerini, and others are any less guilty than Genina (here we
do not want to discuss whether they are any more or less worthy techni-
cally and artistically), nor do they dare write that the actors, screenwriters,
scriptwriters, and producers who joined Genina in creating all of his Fascist
propaganda films are any less guilty than he is.
Genina might have made propaganda, it was admitted, but so too did
many of Italy’s most respected filmmakers, including those who led
the charge for neorealism. In the event, Genina would soon find him-
self included among their ranks, directing one of the more acclaimed
post-war films, 1949’s Cielo sulla palude, for which he won the Nastro
d’Argento, and which critics explicitly acknowledged both as a triumph
of post-war neorealism and as an outgrowth of his pre-war production.35
A few years later his Fascist films were returned to circulation, receiving
a wide post-war re-release in Italian theatres.36
Moreover, such films, despite their problematic history and ideology,
were frequently invoked as important antecedents in the first accounts
of neorealist cinema produced after the war. Thus, for instance, in his
influential 1948 “Panoramique sur le cinéma italien” – the same essay
in which, as we have seen, he identified Ossessione’s Gino as marking
the birth of “Italian neorealism” – Antonio Pietrangeli explicitly located
the “retroterra [...] della nostra tradizione cinematografica [background
(...) of our cinematic tradition]” in Fascist-era films by Blasetti, Camerini,
De Robertis, and Romolo Marcellini, among others, identifying these
directors as the origin point of “la scuola del cosiddetto neo-realismo
italiano [the school of so-called Italian neorealism].”37 This is a striking
declaration, because while Ossessione is often associated or even con-

flated with the anti-Fascist Resistance, all of the filmmakers named by
Pietrangeli made explicitly Fascist films during the ventennio: Vecchia
guardia (Alessandro Blasetti, 1934), Kif Tebbi (Mario Camerini, 1928),
Alfa Tau! (Francesco De Robertis, 1942), and Sentinelle di bronzo (Romolo
Marcellini, 1937). Drawing on such a politically problematic heritage,
Pietrangeli’s can hardly be considered a partial or expurgated history.
Neither can Franco Venturini’s 1950 analysis, “Origini del neorealismo”
(Origins of neorealism), which traced the development of Italian filmmak-
ing as far back as 1900, and which identified the “genesi del neorealismo
[genesis of neorealism]” within Italian cinema under Fascism.38 In his
wide-ranging history, Venturini stressed the importance of cinematic
calligrafismo – citing the work of Chiarini, Castellani, and Lattuada, in
particular – as well as the influence of French realism (Renoir, Carné,
Duvivier), examined in the previous chapter. Alongside Ossessione, more-
over, he declared Camerini’s films, as well as Genina’s L’assedio dell’Alcazar
and Bengasi, to be milestones in neorealism’s development. Most impor-
tant, he drew attention to the crucial role played by the “filone del docu-
mentario di guerra [current of war documentaries],” in particular De
Robertis’s Uomini sul fondo and Alfa Tau!, even as he recognized the films’
“carattere propagandistico [propagandistic character].”39 In fact, he
argued that these Fascist films were more important for the development
of neorealism than was Ossessione, calling Visconti’s work “un punto d’ar-
rivo [a point of arrival],” the end of inter-war cinema, and De Robertis’s
“un punto di partenza [a point of departure],” the beginning of a new tra-
dition.40 Politically and historically this was a decidedly problematic claim,
compromised by the recognition that Venturini, like De Robertis, had
played a major role in the cinema of the virulently Fascist Italian Social
Republic whereas, in the same period, Visconti had been arrested for his
anti-Fascist activities.41 Venturini’s effort to reclaim and even to promote
Fascist filmmaking as part of the history of neorealism was thus anything
but disinterested. Neither, however, was it evasive or deceptive.
Nor, in the end, was Roberto Rossellini’s explanation of neorealism’s
origins under Fascism, which must certainly cast doubt on the accusa-
tions that the director had tried to hide his “dirty hands” by concealing
his pre-war productions. In fact, Rossellini declared in a noteworthy 1952
interview that
[s]e il cosiddetto neorealismo si è rivelato in modo più impressionante al

mondo attraverso Roma città aperta, sta agli altri giudicare. Io vedo la na
scita del neorealismo più in là: anzitutto in certi documentari romanzati di
guerra, dove anche io sono rappresentato con La nave bianca; poi in veri e
propri film di guerra a soggetto, che mi hanno visto collaboratore per lo

scenario, come Luciano Serra pilota, o realizzatore come in L’uomo dalla croce;
e in fine e soprattutto in certi film minori, come Avanti c’è posto, L’ultima
carrozzella, Campo de’ Fiori, in cui la formula, se così vogliamo chiamarla, del
neorealismo, si viene componendo attraverso le spontanee creazioni degli
attori: di Anna Magnani e di Aldo Fabrizi in particolare.42
I’ll leave it to others to judge whether so-called neorealism first caught the
world’s attention with Roma città aperta. I trace the birth of neorealism fur-
ther in the past: first of all in certain fictional documentaries about the war,
such as my own La nave bianca; then in fictional war films, on which I also
collaborated, as a screenwriter on Luciano Serra pilota and as the director of
L’uomo dalla croce; lastly, and above all, in certain minor films, such as Avanti
c’è posto, L’ultima carrozzella, and Campo de’ Fiori, in which the neorealist for-
mula, if we want to call it that, took shape in the improvisation of the actors,
and in particular that of Anna Magnani and Aldo Fabrizi.
Rossellini might be accused of offering a solipsistic history, citing as he

did two films he had directed and another he had written, and focusing
on the early careers of the stars of his neorealist classic Roma città aperta.
He cannot, however, be accused of severing pre-war from post-war neo-
realism. Quite the opposite: by 1954 Rossellini came to identify La nave
bianca as “neorealismo ante-litteram [neorealism avant la lettre]” because
it offered “lo stesso atteggiamento morale [the same moral stance]” as
his post-war films.43 Whatever one makes of such claims, it cannot be said
that they were offered in the service of “the ‘Year Zero’ fable.”
It is apparent, therefore, that well before the revisionist tendencies of
the 1960s and 1970s, Rondi’s account of a new post-war cinema “reborn
on the rubble of the Year Zero” had been successfully undermined by the
efforts of the artists and intellectuals who first developed and debated
neorealism. In fact, Rondi’s account was directly refuted before it had
ever been elaborated. Among the contributors to Cinema italiano oggi
was the director Alessandro Blasetti, whose essay on the history of Italian
cinema, “Cinema italiano ieri” (Italian cinema yesterday), immediately
preceded Rondi’s own contribution to the volume. Emphasizing the
importance of historical perspective for an analysis of post-war Italian
filmmaking, Blasetti argued in this essay that neorealism
sottintende una comune condizione morale che non può essere spuntata
da un giorno all’altro come un fungo; ma che è nata, al contrario, su di una
certa tradizione ed è giunta ad esprimersi con chiarezza solo perché cer-
cava, vagliava e affinava da anni il suo linguaggio. Un modo di riassumere
la folla di opere e di nomi compresa nel cinema italiano prima di quello

che Rondi chiama l’anno zero potrà consistere, credo, nel ricercarvi e ri-
cordare gli antenati che competono di diritto a Roma città aperta ed a Ladri
di biciclette, negando giustificazione al senso di imprevisto che ha spesso ac-
compagnato i loro successi [...]. Rossellini, De Sica, Visconti, De Robertis,
Vergano, Castellani, Lattuada, De Santis, Germi, Zampa, tutti noi già opera-
vamo da tempo prima della guerra nel cinema italiano.44
implies a common moral condition, which could not just spring up from
one day to the next like a mushroom, but which was instead born from a
particular tradition and which has come to express itself clearly only be-
cause it had already sought, sifted, and refined its language for years. One
way to bring together the many creations and creators of Italian cinema be-
fore what Rondi calls the Year Zero, I believe, may be to seek and to recog-
nize among them our predecessors, who rightfully bear some responsibility
for Roma città aperta and Ladri di biciclette, rejecting the impression that these
films’ success is in some way unexpected [...]. Rossellini, De Sica, Visconti,
De Robertis, Vergano, Castellani, Lattuada, De Santis, Germa, Zampa, all
of us were already working in Italian cinema for some time before the war.
Without its pre-war history, Blasetti insisted, neorealism could not have
emerged fully formed after the war. It needed a long gestation and a
fertile cultural terrain in order to blossom after 1945.
That it did blossom after 1945, however, Blasetti was not in doubt.
While emphasizing neorealism’s long history, in other words, Blasetti
continued to insist on the significant innovations of Italian cinema after
the war. He did not believe the two claims to be in conflict. Recalling the
debut of Roma città aperta, Blasetti wrote:
Quel giorno del 1945 in cui, uscendo dalla prima proiezione del film data
alla stampa e ai tecnici in una saletta ministeriale, sentii il bisogno di andare
incontro a Rossellini che attendeva fuori l’esito con “indifferente” trepi-
dazione e lo abbracciai per tutti noi, il gesto era veramente commosso e
grato. Grato verso Rossellini, grato verso tutti quelli che Rossellini aveva
letto, quelli di cui Rossellini aveva seguito e studiato il lavoro, quelli che
costituivano, cioè, la precedente generazione del nostro cinema. I quali,
quel giorno, potevano dire di aver ben lavorato e passare le consegne alla
nuova, con coscienza appagata e tranquilla.45
On that day in 1945 when, leaving the first screening of the film, which
took place in a government building in which the assembled press and tech-
nicians had gathered, I felt the need to greet Rossellini, who was waiting
outside to gauge the response with “indifferent” trepidation, and I em-

braced him, on behalf of all of us, with emotion and gratitude. I was grate-
ful to Rossellini, grateful to all those whose work Rossellini had read, all
those whose work Rossellini had followed and studied, all of those, that is,
who constituted the preceding generation of Italian cinema, and who, on
that day, could say, with satisfaction and a clear conscience, that they had
done their job well and had passed the torch on to the new generation.
Having drawn attention to Rossellini’s collaborations with De Robertis

during the ventennio, and having explained in unstinting detail the prop-
agandistic nature of Rossellini’s Fascist trilogy, Blasetti nevertheless iden-
tified in Roma città aperta the birth of a new era in Italian filmmaking.
More recently, critics have argued that the film carries a significant birth
defect, that it is “ambivalently postfascist,” a sign of Rossellini’s decep-
tiveness, his conspiratorial “indirection and faulty memory.”46 Blasetti’s
remarks, however, point the way towards a rather more sympathetic
interpretation of Rossellini’s ideological transformation and neoreal-
ism’s thematic revitalization. Neither concealing nor condemning Roma
città aperta’s continuities with Italian cinema under Fascism, Blasetti
argued that it was precisely such continuities, evidence of neorealism’s
development during the ventennio, which allowed Rossellini and his con-
temporaries so effectively to innovate after the Second World War.
This position merits renewed consideration in the present climate.
Having long since moved beyond the more simplistic arguments for a
post-war Year Zero – having recognized, in fact, that those arguments
were disclaimed and effectively disproved from the very beginning –
there is no longer any need to advance the more polemical and condem-
natory case for continuity. What is needed, instead, is a new paradigm, or
better still, new paradigms, which can account for neorealism’s innova-
tions as well as for its debts to the past. Neorealism’s pre-war history has
been widely recognized; even its derivations from Fascist cinema have
long been beyond doubt. The question of its true relationship to the pro-
cesses of post-war cultural renewal, however, remains to be reconsidered.
“Hopes for a New World”
“Ciò che distingue il neorealismo d’anteguerra (anni Trenta) dal neore-

alismo del dopoguerra (anni Quaranta-Cinquanta) è, appunto, la Guerra
[What distinguishes pre-war neorealism (of the 1930s) from post-war neo-
realism (of the 1940s–1950s) is, precisely, the war],” argued the critic Paolo
Mario Sipala.47 Without denying neorealism’s origins under Fascism,
without asserting its creation from scratch, Sipala thus managed to
recommend a renewed emphasis on the shaping force of the Second

World War. Were this recommendation to be adopted more consistently,
post-war Italian neorealism could plausibly be described as an extension of
pre-war developments and yet meaningfully, perhaps even fundamentally,
new. There would be no need to perpetuate the false dichotomy between
continuity and innovation, as if new growth implied no roots, as if the only
form of development were ex novo, as if the only distinctions were binary
in nature. Freed from this encumbrance, analyses could aspire compre-
hensively to address continuities while also attending to the specificity and
complexity of the “new” in the discourse of Italian neorealism.
In contrast, the more polemical efforts to debunk categorical asser-
tions of a political and cultural sea-change after 1945 and to accentu-
ate post-war continuities have inspired not only a sceptical but at times
even a cynical approach to the expressions of revival and renewal that
greeted the end of hostilities in Italy. Even before the war had finished,
prominent politicians, philosophers, and critics began to proclaim the
necessity of a new, post-war era in Italian culture. With spirited rhetoric,
they explored the borders of the “nuova Italia [new Italy],” aiming for
the “creazione di un nuovo spirito sociale e politico [creation of a new
social and political spirit]” and working to bring about a “nuova civiltà
[new civilization]” and a “nuova società [new society].”48 Artists and
intellectuals likewise sought to develop a “cultura nuova [new culture],”
a “nuova arte [new art],” a “nuova letteratura [new literature],” and a
“nuovo cinema italiano [new Italian cinema].”49 Across the ideological
spectrum, and despite significant political divisions, there was a wide-
spread, unequivocal, and irrepressible sense that, with the fall of Fascism,
Italy could begin anew. Yet many now insist that claims to post-war
renewal were entirely an illusion, a contradiction, a myth, or, worse
still, a lie, intended to distract from the many post-war continuities.50
To speak of a new Italy, according to this account, was to deny historical
memory, to ignore Italy’s recent travails, to conceal Italians’ activities
during the years of dictatorship and war.
This framing misrepresents the rhetoric of renewal, which, far from a
denial of history, was in reality an expression of historical introspection, of
critical self-examination, of public contrition and national reckoning.51
That national reckoning was conducted largely in the language of crisis.
Indeed, however joyous they may have been when peace was declared,
however hopeful for reconstruction, Italy’s social and cultural leaders
feared they had witnessed the “crollo dell’Europa [collapse of Europe]”
and believed themselves to inhabit “un mondo sconfitto [a defeated
world].”52 They spoke of “[l]a grave crisi che l’Italia oggi attraversa
[the grave crisis that Italy is experiencing now],” “[l]a crisi dei valori
[the crisis of values],” “una crisi universale che avvolge tutti gli uomini
[universal crisis that afflicts all mankind],” a “crisi di civiltà [crisis of
civilization].”53 More than a year after Italy’s liberation, they continued
to pose as an open question whether “viviamo come transitoria crisi di
civiltà o definitiva civiltà di crisi [we are living in a temporary crisis of
civilization or a definitive civilization of crisis].”54 That is, they contin-
ued to entertain the thought that the crisis of the war, the crisis that
had caused the war, the civilizational crisis through which they under-
stood themselves still to be living after the war, might yet bring about the
end of Italy, the end of Europe, or even the end of the world.
At the same time, however, they also understood the crisis to be the
fundamental and necessary condition for renewal. Thus, for instance, in
a 1944 essay entitled “Crisi di civiltà” (Crisis of civilization), the writer,
painter, and political activist Carlo Levi spoke of the contemporary sit-
uation not only as “una crisi totale [a total crisis]” but also as “una frat-
tura fra due civiltà [a fracture between two civilizations],” and on these
grounds insisted that
[l]a nostra [civiltà], quella in cui oggi noi viviamo tutti, non ha ancora
preso forma, e ha ancora l’aspetto ambiguo di una creatura in formazione:
ma è certo che non potrà, mai, riprendere le vecchie forme e rivolgersi in-
dietro. Quella età dell’oro non ritornerà più per noi: altre strade dovremo
seguire. La morte, e il senso della morte, si è interposta fra noi e i nostri pa-
dri. Non sapremo più dimenticarci della morte. Le famiglie sono disperse,
le case devastate, le proprietà distrutte, gli Stati sconvolti. Se queste rovine
fossero soltanto materiali, il mondo ritornerebbe rapidamente quello che
era. Ma il vecchio senso della famiglia è perduto, il vecchio senso della casa
è mutato, il vecchio senso della proprietà non regge più, il vecchio senso
dello Stato ha perso ogni potere. E qualcosa di anche più profondo è cam-
biato nell’animo degli uomini, qualcosa che è difficile definire, ma che si
esprime inconsapevolmente, in ogni atto, in ogni parola, in ogni gesto: la
visione stessa del mondo, il senso del rapporto degli uomini con sé stessi,
con le cose e col destino.55
our [civilization], the one in which we all live today, has not yet taken shape,
and still has the ambiguous characteristics of a creature in the process of
being born. What is certain, however, is that it cannot revert back to its old
shape, it cannot turn back. The golden age will not return; we will have
to follow other paths. Death, and the understanding of death, now stands
between us and our fathers. We will never again be able to forget about
death. Families are scattered, homes devastated, properties destroyed,
countries shaken up. If today’s ruins were merely material, the world would
quickly return to what it had been. But the old sense of family is lost, the
old sense of home has changed, the old sense of property no longer holds,
the old sense of the state has lost all power. And something even deeper
has changed in the soul of mankind, something that is difficult to define,
but which is expressed unconsciously, in every act, in every word, in every
gesture. What has changed is the very image of the world, the sense of the
relationships between men, and between men and their possessions, be-
tween men and their destiny.
The kinds of irreversible, epochal change surveyed in this essay were

widely understood to have been set in motion by a crisis of which the
war was only one symptom. In the midst of that crisis, it was unclear what
would come next, but it was certain that whatever was to come would
necessarily be different from what had existed before.
In fact, that was precisely what Italian intellectuals seem to have
intended when they spoke of crisis. As Gabriele Pepe explained in
his 1945 treatise La crisi dell’uomo (The crisis of man), “[c]risi – oggi –
significa appunto quel contrastato processo di svolgimento per cui
un’epoca storica si dibatte nelle sue contraddizioni per uscirne con un
ordine nuovo [crisis – today – means precisely this oppositional process
of development through which the contradictions of a historical epoch
are debated so as to produce a new order].”56 The crisis not only antic-
ipated or facilitated historical transformation; it was itself the historical
transformation in progress. The signs of crisis were thus taken to be
the symbols both of ruination and of renewal. In the first issue of the
poetry journal La Via, for example, an editorial took an inventory of
the devastation caused by the war – “Distruzione. Rovine. Labirinto di
problemi materiali e morali. Società sconvolta, disorientata. Individuo
bisognoso di ritrovare tutto se stesso e la propria libertà [Destruction.
Ruins. A labyrinth of material and moral problems. Societies upset, dis-
oriented. Individuals needing to find themselves and their freedom]” –
and then went on immediately after to explain that the attempt to con-
front and to communicate that devastation defined what could only be
called “la nuova Arte, la nuova Poesia [the new Art, the new Poetry].”57
In the journal Costume, Enrico Emanuelli made a similar case, describing
the destruction of the war, spiritual as well as physical – “[l]e città, le
cattedrali, le campagne sono state distrutte anche dentro di noi [cities,
cathedrals, croplands have been destroyed within ourselves as well]” –
before concluding that all of this destruction pointed towards “il nascere
d’una nuova società [the birth of a new society].”58 Most telling, perhaps,
was a 1945 essay in Risorgimento liberale, which seemed to offer a particu-
larly pessimistic take on the war’s effect: “le distruzioni più gravi sono
dentro di noi. Gli anni che abbiamo attraversato, hanno profondamente

scosso – dobbiamo riconoscerlo – molte nostre convinzioni e principi
morali, su cui era fondata poi l’intera nostra civiltà [the most devastating
destruction has taken place within ourselves. We must recognize that the
years we have lived through have deeply shaken many of our moral con-
victions and principles, including those on which our entire civilization
was founded].” The essay’s title: “Speranze di un nuovo mondo” (Hopes
for a new world).59
This twinned rhetoric of crisis and renewal has been underempha-
sized in many accounts of the post-war moment, which tend to overesti-
mate the influence of the position staked out by Benedetto Croce, who
insisted that the Fascist ventennio had been little more than a temporary
interruption in the nation’s illustrious tradition – an “interregno fascis-
tico [Fascistic interregnum],” as Croce himself put it – which could sim-
ply be set aside as the country returned to the traditions of the liberal
state.60 Croce dismissed those who argued that Fascism signalled a pro-
found social crisis, and in particular those who argued that it signalled
an Italian crisis. “Che cosa è nella nostra storia una parentesi di venti
anni? Ed è poi questa parentesi tutta storia italiana o anche europea e
mondiale [What is the importance of a parenthesis of twenty years in our
history? And is this parenthesis only a part of Italian history or does it
also belong to European and world history],” he asked in a much-quoted
1944 speech.61 From this perspective, Fascism was little more than a
momentary disease; as Croce argued in a November 1943 article in the
New York Times, “now Italy is free of the Fascist infection.”62 Croce’s insin-
uation was that the extent of the damage and the need for renewal had
been overstated. Nothing essential, nothing epochal, had changed; the
post-Fascist order would and should resemble the pre-Fascist order.
Yet this belief was neither as prevalent nor as influential as has com-
monly been assumed. In fact, there was widespread opposition to Croce’s
arguments, particularly, but not only, among left-leaning intellectuals.63
Croce’s critics and opponents tended to argue, as Eugenio Artom put
it in a 1945 essay, that “[i]l fascismo non è stato una semplice parent-
esi nella nostra storia che chiudendosi consenta la ripresa del ritmo di
vita rotto violentemente vent’anni or sono [Fascism was not just a sim-
ple parenthesis in our history that, once closed, allows us to resume the
rhythms of life that were violently interrupted twenty years ago].”64 As
Giaime Pintor explained one year earlier, they believed that “il fascismo
non era stato una parentesi, ma una grave malattia e aveva intaccato
quasi dappertutto le fibre della nazione [Fascism was not a parenthesis
but a grave disease that infected the very fibres of the nation].”65 In fact,
many were convinced, as Vittore Branca insisted, that Fascism in Italy “si
rifletteva e propagava, come un cancro, a tutte le attività di tutto il paese,

dall’economia alla cultura, dal lavoro alla vita morale [had metastasized
like a cancer, infecting all of the activities of the entire country, from the
economy to culture, from work to moral life].”66 They opposed Croce’s
apparent optimism, then, by arguing that Fascism and the war were signs
of a convulsion that was too profound, too widespread, too cataclysmic
to permit a return to the pre-Fascist past. Where Croce saw a parenthesis,
they saw a deep-seated crisis.
In this context, to speak of a “new society” or a “new culture” was to
speak of a continuing danger, a destabilization of the present caused by
the catastrophes of recent history. It was to say that a new order did not
yet exist, that a new foundation had not yet been created. The claims to
renewal were thus anything but credulously or deceptively optimistic,
as those who question the supposed post-war watershed often seem to
imply. Instead, they were directly opposed to what was understood to
be the naïvely idealistic interpretation of events, the Crocean interpre-
tation, which posited that things could go on as they had before. The
cogency and authority of the arguments for renewal rested on the belief
that the crisis was not over, that civilization was still under threat. For the
advocates of a “new Italy,” crisis entailed renewal, and renewal was pred-
icated on crisis. The two were inseparable.
“Decisions in the Cultural Field”
Founded on a sense of crisis, the arguments for renewal were thus as

much about Italy’s history as they were about its future. Much of the
crisis discourse, in fact, presumed that a confrontation with the current
catastrophe, whose consequences could be seen in the present but whose
causes were to be traced to the recent past, was a necessary step in the
rebuilding process. As the editor, translator, and cultural commentator
Giuseppe Del Bo argued in an essay of 1947, “solo quando tutti saranno
veramente arrivati al fondo della crisi in completa sincerità, solo allora si
potrà veramente ricostruire [only when everyone, with complete sincer-
ity, has truly arrived at the bottom of the crisis, only then can we really
begin to rebuild].”67 The point, in other words, was to recognize the
crisis, to recognize why and how the crisis had come about, and through
that recognition to begin to envision a new and different state of affairs.
In La crisi dell’uomo, Gabriele Pepe explained the situation clearly: “Se
noi sapremo comprendere il significato di queste guerre, potremo vera-
mente creare una nuova storia. Il futuro è oggi nelle nostre mani: la
crisi è al suo punto culminante [If we can understand the meaning of
these wars, we can really create a new history. Today the future is in our
hands: the crisis has reached its climax].”68 In a moment of crisis, it was
said, hope for the future required a reconsideration of the mistakes and
misdeeds of the recent past.
The claim behind “the ‘Year Zero’ fable,” however, is that the post-war
reconstruction was predicated on a comprehensive rejection of the recent
past. No less problematically, the arguments against that fable and against
the post-war watershed – the arguments, that is to say, for continuity
between pre- and post-war culture – have also largely accepted as true the
assertion that the calls for renewal after 1945 intended to effect a defin-
itive break with the culture of the past.69 They argue that such a break
was never achieved, but they assume nonetheless that it was desired, even
expected. From opposing sides, therefore, post-war culture tends to be
judged against an absolute standard – a standard of total rupture with the
past – on the presumption that the rhetoric of renewal, the claims to “a
new Italy” or “a new culture,” posited a thorough renunciation of recent
history. It is said that artists and intellectuals sought to enact “una rottura
profonda e definitiva con il passato [a profound and definitive break with
the past],” “ricominciare da zero [to begin again from scratch], and when
it is shown that they did not achieve this supposed objective, the rhetoric
of renewal is said to have been undermined.70 Indeed, in an attempt to
undermine still further the claim to renewal it has even been said that the
desire for historical rupture united the supporters of the Resistance with
the Fascist true believers, whom they had overthrown, so that paradoxi-
cally the post-war drive to do away with the Fascist past was itself the sign
of an ironic ideological continuity with Fascism.71
Such arguments fundamentally misread the post-war rhetoric of
renewal, which did not propose “a profound and definitive break with
the past” and which did not call for Italy to “restart from scratch.” To
speak of “a new Italy” after the war did not imply that the country would
wilfully do away with everything that had come before. To speak of a
“new Italian cinema” did not require that the films, filmmakers, and
film aesthetics of the Fascist ventennio be rejected entirely. Such absolut-
ist, apocalyptic claims were almost entirely absent from the arguments
for renewal. Even in the heated debates that erupted over the culpa-
bility of those artists and intellectuals who had supported or accepted
Fascism, the positions were far more judicious, far more pragmatic.
These debates, which began even before the war’s conclusion, gave rise
to reconsiderations of the shortcomings of the arts under Fascist con-
trol, as well as to ambitious programs for the arts in a post-Fascist soci-
ety, but they did not demand or even imply the abandonment of the
culture of the ventennio in its entirety.72 Focused on artists’ responsibil-
ity for Fascism, their irresponsibility under Fascism, and their duty after
Fascism, Italian intellectuals appear never seriously to have imagined

that the “new society” they sought to create could immediately wipe
away the remnants of Fascism and start again from scratch.73 The
opposite is true.
In a prominent 1946 debate over “letteratura e popolo [literature
and the people]” in the pages of La Fiera letteraria, for example, Gaetano
Trombatore argued that authors had forsaken their calling under
Fascism, a situation he wished to overturn after the war with what he
called “un appello ad una letteratura di rinnovata ispirazione umana
[an appeal for a literature of renewed human inspiration].”74 Insisting
that literature had to take on new themes – “[u]na poesia nuova può
nascere solo da un nuovo contenuto [new poetry cannot be born except
from new content],” as he put it – Trombatore argued that in a country
damaged by war and in a society recovering from dictatorship, a popu-
lar literature, a literature addressed to the concerns of the people, was
the only virtuous option.75 To counteract the contemporary crisis, the
new literature would need to take on new responsibilities, examining
previously ignored realities. Trombatore’s message to Italian writers was
clear: “Uscite dalla vostra solitudine. Mescolatevi col popolo. Ascoltatene
e condividetene il dolore e la speranza [Abandon your solitude. Interact
with the people. Listen to them and share their pain and their hope].”76
For this, Trombatore was accused by Giovanni Battista Angioletti of
rejecting literature itself, since for Angioletti “Uscite dalla vostra solitu-
dine [Abandon your solitude]” meant nothing less than to forsake the
purpose and practice of literary creation, to “uscire dalla letteratura [aban-
don literature].”77 Moreover, Angioletti questioned the very need for a “new
poetry” after the war because he refused to accept Trombatore’s critique
of the literature of the Fascist ventennio: “Gli scrittori che si vogliono met-
tere in istato d’accusa furono (e sono) soprattutto artisti, e come tali
non subirono influenze esteriori se non in modo, appunto, esteriore
[The writers who are being confronted with these accusations were (and
are) above all artists, and as such they did not absorb external influences
except superficially].”78 With that argument, the debate over “literature
and the people” explicitly became a debate over Fascism, a common fate
in the post-war intellectual and political climate. Trombatore’s invoca-
tion of a new popular literature was founded on a critique of Fascist cul-
ture; Angioletti’s opposition to literary renewal drew on his defence of
Italian culture under Fascism. Even in his defence, however, Angioletti
did not go so far as to accuse Trombatore of wishing to reject the cul-
ture of the past in its entirety. In any event it would have been a difficult
accusation to prove, since Trombatore had said quite clearly, in calling
for a “new poetry,” that “si rivolge in un invito a ritornare alle migliori
tradizioni della nostra poesia [we extend an invitation to return to the

best traditions of Italian poetry].”79 Trombatore insisted that a new liter-
ature was made necessary by the failures of recent history – failures that
had led to Fascism and the war – but he nevertheless argued with equal
conviction that any new literature would need to draw on the best of that
history in order to thrive.
Gabriele Pepe made largely the same point, in broader cultural terms,
in the conclusion to La crisi dell’uomo. Having detailed the extent of the
crisis that he and others saw as a continuing threat to civilization, Pepe
argued that “per uscire dalla crisi della nostra civiltà, non bisogna distruggerla,
ma sanarla [to get out of this crisis of civilization we need to heal civilization, not
destroy it].”80 Even at the height of the crisis, then, Pepe insisted that the
solution was not to do away with history, even recent history, and to start
over, but instead to pursue incremental reform founded on a careful his-
torical reexamination and reconsideration. In keeping with such a vision,
advocates of renewal invited intellectuals to rethink the role of culture,
and to do so by engaging with the culture of the past. Thus, for instance,
stressing the importance both of “innovazione e tradizione [innovation
and tradition],” Giuseppe Petronio argued in Avanti! in 1948 that the
task facing the post-war generation was to “esprimere se stessa non solo
con opere nuove, ma reinterpretando tutto il passato dal proprio nuovo
punto di vista [express itself not just with new works but by reinterpret-
ing the entirety of the past from a new point of view].”81 “Così la crea-
zione di una cultura nuova non apparirà più una messianica creazione
dal nulla [Thus the creation of a new culture will no longer seem like a
messianic creation from nothing],” he wrote in another essay the same
year, “ma una lenta ed organica costruzione [but rather a gradual and
organic construction].”82 “Creare una cultura veramente nuova significa
infatti riuscire a vedere con altro occhio i momenti più tipici della stessa
storia del nostro popolo [Creating a truly new culture, in fact, means
being able to see with new eyes the most representative moments of our
history],” argued the essayist Renato Nicolai in Vie Nuove in 1947.83 The
goal, in other words, was to make culture new, not to reject the culture of
the past, and not even the culture of the Fascist past. As the artist Mario
Mafai put it in a 1945 essay, “Possibilità per un’arte nuova” (Possibility of
a new art), even under Fascism “un’arte c’è stata, ha avuto la sua funzi-
one [...]. Può darsi che quest’arte abbia esaurito le sue funzioni; ma non
si può dimenticare il contributo che hanno dato questi artisti: le loro
esperienze, le loro conquiste sono state assimilate più o meno da tutti i
pittori di oggi [there was art, it had its function (...). It may be that this art
has exhausted its function; but we cannot forget the contribution made
by these artists: their experiences, their achievements, have been more
or less assimilated by all of today’s painters].”84 The new painters were

new, in other words, because they had learned the lessons of the previous
generations, even the generation that came of age under Fascism, and
they could therefore begin to develop in new directions. Cultural conti-
nuity was thus no obstacle to renewal; it was, rather, a key weapon in the
ongoing struggle for recovery, for a new culture after Fascism.
This was no “‘Year Zero’ fable.” After the war, Italian artists and intel-
lectuals had a far more nuanced, sophisticated, and realistic under-
standing of Italy’s post-war reconstruction. They refused to be bound by
the literalism and positivism that underwrite the moralistic distinction
between continuity and renewal in current scholarship. Instead, they
tended to heed, whether knowingly or not, the warning issued in the
Roman cultural journal Mercurio in July 1945:
Bisogna liberarsi da questa concezione astratta intellettualistica, per cui un

mondo nuovo dovrebbe sorgere tutto di un tratto, senza nessun legame col
passato, anzi con netto distacco da esso. Non vi sono né miraggi sociali, né
catastrofi sociali, ma lenta e difficile conquista dell’umanità di un assetto
sociale migliore, creazione quotidiana di un mondo migliore che si deve
faticosamente conquistare giorno per giorno, che non può quindi sorgere
bello e fatto, tutto di un tratto come Minerva dal cervello di Giove, ma rap-
presenta un processo legato alle sue fasi precedenti di sviluppo.85
We have to free ourselves from this abstract, intellectualistic notion accord-

ing to which a new world will take shape suddenly, without any links to the
past, indeed with a sharp break from the past. There are neither social
illusions nor social catastrophes, only slow and hard-won victories of the
human race. To create a better social order, to build a better world, we must
work tirelessly, day after day. These things will not emerge fully formed,
all at once, like Minerva from Jupiter’s head. They will be the result of an
ongoing process, with links to all the previous phases of their development.
Rather than radical rupture, that is to say, they offered a vision of gradual
reform, rejecting outright the possibility of starting over from an entirely
new beginning.
In fact, post-war Italian cultural commentators consistently made clear
their opposition to what the critic Mario Bonfantini dismissed in Società
Nuova in 1946 as “l’ottimismo avventista (che è poi anch’esso un pessi-
mismo) d’una cultura tutta nuova che sorgerà come per incanto da un
giorno all’altro, sol che si sappia far tabula rasa del passato [the Adventist
optimism (which is also a form of pessimism), which holds that an entirely
new culture will arise as if by magic from one day to the next, so long
as we are able to make a tabula rasa of the past].”86 Italy’s post-war “new
culture” was thus explicitly and repeatedly declared not to consist in the
abandonment of history, of the culture of the past. “[S]i sta lavorando
a un rinnovamento [we are working towards renewal],” Renato Guttuso
explained in Rinascita in 1945:
in questo rinnovamento di valori, di sentimenti e di firme noi non siamo

certo di quelli che propugnano di fare tabula rasa del passato antico o
recente; crediamo anzi, il più fermamente possibile, che ogni progresso
avverrà attraverso l’utilizzazione, attraverso l’esistere in noi di tutto quel
che è stato fatto prima di noi.87
in pursuing this renewal of values, of feelings, and of men we do not advo-

cate making a tabula rasa of the ancient or recent past. On the contrary, we
believe, as firmly as possible, that all progress must occur through the use –
through the presence within all of us – of all that has been done before us.
When they called for a new culture after Fascism, they did not mean a
culture stripped of its roots, but rather a culture that would draw sus-
tenance from the fertile soil of Italy’s cultural tradition, growing and
extending itself in new directions.
What Italian intellectuals were after, and what they meant when they
spoke of a new culture and a new society, was a revitalization and repur-
posing of literature, cinema, and the arts in the pursuit of a better world
after the war. The art historian Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli gave voice
to Italy’s post-war ambitions in a November 1944 speech at the University
of Florence that would be repeatedly republished in the months and
years to follow. In a revealing passage, he declared:
Tocca a noi, uomini di cultura aperti alle idee progressiste, effettuare

la selezione nel campo della cultura, per mantenere ciò che ha valore
universale e sfrondare coraggiosamente ciò che appare legato a condizioni
ormai superate o in via di superamento. Questo è il nostro compito, quello
che giustifica la nostra esistenza, quello che giustifica la nostra presenza in
un’aula, intenti a discussioni teoriche, mentre ai limiti della nostra provin-
cia ancora si soffre, si combatte e si muore per compiere il primo passo verso
la liberazione e verso la nuova civiltà dell’Europa unita. Il primo compito
degli uomini ai quali la cultura è affidata, che di essa hanno fatto la propria
ragione di vita, è, in tali tempi, di trapasso, il rinnovare conservando.88
It is up to us, as men of letters open to progressive ideas, to make deci-

sions in the cultural field, to maintain whatever has universal value and
courageously to lop off whatever appears to be linked to conditions that

are now outdated or in the process of being superseded. This is our task,
this is what justifies our existence, what justifies our presence in a lecture
hall, fixated on theoretical discussions, while at the boundaries of our prov-
ince men are still suffering, still fighting, and still dying for that first step
towards liberation and towards the new civilization of a united Europe. In
these times, the first task of all men to whom culture has been entrusted,
the first task of all men who have made culture their very reason for being,
is renewal through conservation.
To renew culture while conserving it, and to renew culture by conserv-

ing it, were the primary objectives of even the more militant Italian art-
ists and intellectuals after the war.89 Bianchi Bandinelli compared that
process to pruning a tree: intellectuals were to cut away culture’s dead
branches to allow for new growth; what they were not to do was to uproot
the living tree itself. “Rinnovare conservando [Renewal through conser-
vation],” in Bianchi Bandinelli’s memorable phrase, required both the
promotion of future progress and the protection of past production. The
processes were in fact understood to be one and the same. The discourse
of renewal after the war inspired and encompassed an incisive discus-
sion of the gradual reforms by which culture could be transformed over
time. To cite aspects of cultural continuity as evidence for an absence of
cultural renewal is thus fundamentally to misunderstand Italy’s post-war
project. The question was not whether to break with or to maintain the
culture of the past. Rather, after the war Italian artists and intellectuals
were faced with the question of how to redeem the past.
“A Good Opportunity, but the Challenges Are Greater”
Imbued with a sense of civilizational crisis and immersed in reflections

on cultural history, the calls for “a new Italy” and “a new culture” pre-
sented more questions than answers, more challenges than solutions. As
a result, they led to a series of profound debates regarding the possibility
of creating a new future on the unstable foundations of the present, the
opportunity for culture to respond to a social and political crisis, and the
necessity for artists to envision, inspire, and initiate practical reforms.
Too often these questions have been shunted aside, making it seem in
retrospect as if the underlying ambition in Italian culture after the war
had been to “rinnegare tutto il lavoro passato [reject all the work of
the past].”90 In fact, post-war Italian cultural debates turned on a quite
different ambition – an ambition that can help to clarify neorealism’s
relationship to Fascism.
In the consequential 1948 battle over “letteratura e società [literature

and society]” in the pages of L’Unità and Vie Nuove, for instance, calls
for reform were inseparable from invocations of the challenges facing
the reformers – a situation that can provide a kind of template for a
more historically accurate and critically perceptive understanding of the
discourse of post-war renewal. Beginning as a dispute between Libero
Bigiaretti, the poet and novelist, and Emilio Sereni, the cultural direc-
tor of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), the debate quickly spread to
include many of the most celebrated writers and intellectuals of post-war
Italy: Italo Calvino, Alfonso Gatto, Francesco Jovine, Alberto Moravia,
and others, as well as important political figures, such as the leading
trade unionist Giuseppe Di Vittorio, and Luigi Longo, a prominent
Member of Parliament representing the PCI.91 At its origins, the “liter-
ature and society” debate focused on literature’s potential to speak to
and even to create a new society that did not yet exist, a society that most
believed would come into being after the defeat of Fascism, but that all
agreed was still far from becoming a reality.
Bigiaretti, who wrote an open letter to Emilio Sereni published in
L’Unità in November 1948, raised serious doubts about the viability of
that new society, questioning in particular the role that individual artists
and intellectuals could play in bringing it about. He put that question
to Sereni directly: “può uno scrittore recidere d’un colpo i legami con
la cultura del suo tempo e del suo paese [...]. E ancora: può uno scrit-
tore rappresentare una società diversa da quella in cui vive, una realtà
sociale diversa da quella che lo condizionano? [can a writer suddenly
sever ties with the culture of his age and his country (...)? And again: can
a writer represent a society that is different from the one in which he
lives, a social reality that is different from the one that affects him?]”92
Responding to Bigiaretti, Sereni largely concurred with the novelist’s
assessment of the current climate but sought to reconsider his conclu-
sions. Whereas Bigiaretti had wished to underscore literature’s necessary
exposure to society’s imperfections, Sereni instead emphasized the writ-
er’s responsibility for society’s transformation:
Quel che noi richiediamo all’artista è [...] di esprimere, di rappresentare

compiutamente la realtà del suo mondo, nel suo vivo contesto e nella sua
interna dialettica. [...] Da un artista, da un’opera d’arte, noi richiediamo
l’espressione artisticamente compiuta della sua società, del suo mondo,
della sua realtà: che sarà sempre colta, quanto alla materia, al soggetto
dell’opera singola, in un dettaglio, ma dovrà esprimerci, in questo detta-
glio, al mondo dell’artista nella sua unità, nella sua totalità. Il guaio si è che
il mondo in cui viviamo è una realtà non immobile e ferma, ma una realtà
che si muove, che si sviluppa, che si trasforma. E qui sta la difficoltà per
l’artista, come per lo scienziato. Non vi è conoscenza o rappresentazione
compiuta di una realtà se questa realtà non viene conosciuta ed espressa nei
suoi intimi mezzi, nella sua interna dialettica, nel suo movimento.93
What we ask is that artists [...] give expression, give full representation, to
the reality of their world, in its vibrant contexts and in its internal dialectic.
[...] From artists, from works of art, we demand the artistically complete ex-
pression of society, of the world, of reality. In terms of content, that expres-
sion will always suggest the subject of a single work, a single detail, but it will
have to give voice, in this detail, to the unity, the totality of the artist’s world.
The trouble has been that the reality of the world we inhabit is not fixed
and immobile. It is a reality in motion, one that develops and transforms.
And here is the difficulty for the artist, and for the scientist as well. There
can be no complete knowledge or representation of reality if reality itself
is not understood and expressed in its innermost processes, in its internal
dialectic, in its movement.
Society is neither monolithic nor static, Sereni insisted, and if its influ-
ence is not purely generative, neither is it entirely destructive. Even in a
moment of crisis, writers should be able to differentiate one influence
from the other, grasping the first signs of constructive change and help-
ing them to flourish. They should quicken and guide positive social pro-
cesses, Sereni argued, by reflecting society as it is, reimagining society in
their works, and redirecting the society of the future.
For many of Sereni’s respondents, however, the passage from present
crisis to future cohesion was neither obvious nor assured. Animated by
the pressing need to work out literature’s proper contribution to the
recovery from Fascism, the participants in the “literature and society”
debate struggled to articulate the processes of representation and trans-
formation that would make the society of the present into the “new
society” of the future.94 They disagreed about how this might be accom-
plished, and even about whether it was possible, but they all agreed that
society needed to transform, and that a new literature would be a part of
that transformation. Crucially, they also agreed that this transformation
would necessarily begin from a thorough examination of recent history.
Of all the debate’s participants, it was the poet Alfonso Gatto who
made this point most forcefully, announcing in the very title of his essay
“I debiti e i crediti” (Debts and credits), that his argument rested on a
critical re-evaluation of the recent past. Gatto argued, in his response to
Bigiaretti and Sereni, that, after the Second World War, “[d]obbiamo
rivedere tutta la cultura che ci ha preceduto e della quale siamo stati
spesso attori e responsabili; non possiamo abbandonarla credendo d’es-

sere scampati [we must re-examine all the culture that preceded us, the
culture that shaped us and that we have shaped. We cannot toss it aside
believing we have escaped it].”95 Intellectuals could not be expected to
remake culture and society, Gatto insisted, without first reflecting seri-
ously on the failures of the culture and society that had led to Fascism,
as well as on their own complicity with those failures. They could not be
expected merely to leave behind the past, as if Italy’s history, culture, and
society were free of Fascism. As Gatto insinuated, Italian literature could
not move on to the future before it had accounted for the errors and the
accomplishments – “debts” and “credits” – of Italian history.
This was precisely the point that Italo Calvino stressed in his own con-
tribution to the “literature and society” debate. Sereni had emphasized
only the creation of the society of the future, not the analysis of the soci-
eties of the past, arguing that the writers’ task was to “fare quel che han
sempre fatto i grandi artisti che ancor oggi ammiriamo. Omero e Dante,
Michelangelo e Cervantes, Balzac e Tolstoi, progressi o reazionari che
fossero in quanto singoli individui politici [do what was always done by
the great artists we continue to admire: Homer and Dante, Michelangelo
and Cervantes, Balzac and Tolstoy, whether they were themselves polit-
ical progressives or reactionaries].”96 Challenging Sereni in a response
entitled, not without sarcasm, “Saremo come Omero!” (We’ll be like
Homer!), Calvino called into question the evident, and to his mind over-
simplified, analogy that Sereni had drawn between the classics of literary
history and the role of literature in the present moment.97 As Calvino
put it, “tu, Sereni, te la cavi a buon mercato, quando dici a Bigiaretti: sii
Omero. Alla grazia! Ma la distanza tra noi e Omero, come la colmi? [you,
Sereni, let yourself off too easily when you say to Bigiaretti: be Homer.
By all means! But the distance between Homer and us, how would you
bridge it?]”98 Writers would surely reclaim the status of a Homer if only
they could, Calvino asserted, and for politicians to ignore the root causes
of their inability to do so was useless if not downright pernicious. Rather
than insisting on the impossible, political leaders should join artists and
intellectuals in the attempt to remake society and to facilitate future
artistic achievements.
Despite his argument’s implications for present actions and future
ambitions, however, Calvino seemed to place his greatest emphasis on the
analysis of the past. Seeking to historicize the debate, he identified dispa-
rate and dissimilar periods in literature’s shifting relationship to society,
some more and some less favourable to literary greatness. As he saw it,
there were moments in history when society had been particularly con-
ducive to literary advances, “momenti pieni per condizioni di civiltà o di
genio individuale, in cui il poeta è cantore ‘diretto’ di tutta una società

e un’epoca [moments filled with possibility for civilization and for indi-
vidual genius, in which the poet can sing ‘directly’ of his society and his
age],” and there were, likewise, moments, such as that in which Italy found
itself after the war, when social conditions not only impaired but actively
impeded literary greatness. What Calvino wanted to know from Sereni,
therefore, was how writers were supposed to pass from one moment to
the next, to attain the status of the classics when the social foundations for
such an achievement were not yet (or were no longer) in place.
The problem with Sereni’s demands, Calvino implied, was that they
failed to account for the state of Italian literature and society after the
war, after Fascism. Sereni wanted writers to reach new heights; Calvino
cautioned that writers were bound to an old society, a society that had
been brought low by totalitarianism. Calvino was insisting that real and
lasting changes in society would have to be achieved before writers could
be expected to achieve literary immortality. In the meantime, Calvino
made clear, it was foolish to place demands on writers that they could
not hope to meet. The vestiges of the old order would obstruct artis-
tic achievement in the here and now; better, then, to reflect seriously
on past accomplishments, to nurture present ambitions, and to prepare
future attainment than to lament enduring imperfections. Better to pre-
pare the ground for prospective successes than to demand the impossi-
ble under current conditions.
Calvino’s “Saremo come Omero!” thus casts doubt upon one of the
most celebrated and oft-cited invocations of “the ‘Year Zero’ fable.” In
the 1964 preface to the republished edition his 1947 partisan novel,
Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno, Calvino famously wrote that, after the fall of
Fascism, he and his fellow Italians were filled with a sense of almost
infinite possibility: “quello di cui ci sentivamo depositari era un senso
della vita come qualcosa che può ricominciare da zero [we felt ourselves
imbued with the belief that life could begin again from zero].”99 For a fleet-
ing moment, at least in Calvino’s memory, it was as if the sins of the past
had been washed away, as if Fascism had left no mark on the Italian land-
scape, as if Italian culture could spontaneously regenerate, freed from
the burdens of everything that had come before. Twenty years after the
fact, Calvino remembered the post-war period as one of unlimited and
unconditional renewal.100 Yet, while he was living through that period,
and helping to shape its literary culture, Calvino understood the situ-
ation differently. Against Sereni, Calvino had at that time argued that
writers could not immediately become the Homers of a new era because
literature, culture, and society could not transcend so easily or so wil-
fully the limitations of a country and of a historical moment marred
by Fascism. To put this another way, Calvino made the case that Italy
and the Italians could not simply begin again with a clean slate, as if
they were no longer stained by their problematic history. In a nation
deeply wounded by Fascism, new beginnings and new directions might
be hoped for, even cultivated, but not immediately expected. If, in 1964,
Calvino remembered the post-war period as one of perfectly new begin-
nings, in 1947 he experienced it instead as one of unstable foundations,
partial restoration, and ongoing transition.
Indeed, Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno – the very novel that inspired, two dec-
ades later, Calvino’s memory of a society that could “begin again from zero” –
seems far more symptomatic of the difficult, partial, and conservative
renewal of the post-war years than indicative of the optimistic faith in abso-
lute renewal, renewal from scratch, that its author would later recollect.
Over the course of the novel’s picaresque narrative, its young protagonist,
Pin, passes from the indifferent care of his sister, a prostitute, to the harsh
oversight of a Fascist prison, before an escape brings him into the orbit of
a ragtag band of misfit partisans – “ i peggiori possibili [the worst partisans
imaginable],” as Calvino would describe them.101 Pin shares with these
partisans an inchoate rage, “una voglia d’uccidere [...] aspra e ruvida [a
sharp, rasping urge to kill]”; this intense emotion nearly leads him to join
the Fascist Black Brigades, but instead comes to inspire his contributions
to the Resistance.102 In Calvino’s novel, the line between Fascism and the
Resistance is not only thin but also frequently traversed. Kim, the medical
student and Resistance leader responsible for forming the unit into which
Calvino’s protagonist stumbles, is forthright in his assertion that the deep-
seated rage motivating Pin and his fellow partisans is the same rage that
motivates the Fascists, a rage that the war itself will not mollify. It seems
clear, in fact, and more than a little disconcerting, that Pin’s rage has not
dissipated significantly by the novel’s conclusion. There is a real risk that
he will continue as before, with the same tendencies that nearly led him
to Fascism guiding his future decisions. After all, having left the partisan
band and returned home, Pin seems almost unchanged: even after the
war, the narrator announces, for Pin “tutto è lo stesso [everything is just
as it was].”103 Yet this statement is not entirely true.
If only in part, Pin’s attitude and his outlook have both begun to
improve, shaped by his contribution to Italy’s liberation, which has
helped to channel if not to calm his anger. What is more, he has found a
new and more reliable adult guardian, Cugino, a fellow partisan. These
developments should be seen to mark a new beginning for Pin.104 At the
same time, however, having survived interrogation in a Fascist prison,
having experienced first-hand the brutal Italian civil war, and having
been party to the murder of his sister at the hands of his new guardian,
Pin can hardly be said to have begun a new life from scratch. Scars from
his previous experiences inevitably remain, and will undoubtedly mar
his remaining childhood years. Pin begins his new life, then, bearing
signs of trauma, but with the opportunity and the support to recover
from the traumas of his past. In a free Italy – an Italy that he himself has
helped to free – he can both grapple with his difficult history and pursue
his hopeful future.105 Life may not begin again with a clean slate in Il
sentiero dei nidi di ragno, but the novel nonetheless expresses real hope
for new beginnings. What it does not do, despite the fairy-tale qualities
that Calvino’s readers have often adduced in his work, is offer a “‘Year
Zero’ fable.” Rather than the limitless faith in revolutionary transforma-
tion that he would later remember, Calvino’s more guarded optimism
in 1947 could take him no further than the tentative and provisional
solutions signalled by the conclusion of Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno. Yet,
if they contradict Calvino’s subsequent nostalgia for his youthful faith
in Italy’s post-war transformation “from zero,” the novel’s ambiguous
conclusion and Pin’s incomplete transformation do not necessarily indi-
cate the author’s outright rejection of Italy’s ongoing post-war renewal.
They seem instead to point to Calvino’s recognition of the difficult task
with which Italians were faced, a difficulty that he acknowledged and
explored in numerous essays at the time.
In a particularly striking comment published in 1947 in L’Unità, the
same Communist daily that would host the “literature and society”
debate the following year, Calvino insisted that, in the wake of Fascism’s
defeat, “per noi che aspireremmo a fondare la cultura di una classe,
di una società nuova, l’occasione sarebbe buona, ma più gravi le diffi-
coltà [for those of us seeking to found the culture of a new class, of a
new society, this might be a good opportunity, but the challenges are
greater].”106 It was here, it would seem, rather than in his 1964 pref-
ace, that Calvino expressed the sense of history and possibility that he
explored in Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno, where he balanced a very real hope
for Italy’s cultural and social renewal after Fascism with the recognition
that any such renewal would be fraught with challenges. The ambition
articulated by Calvino thus appears rather far from the supposed naïveté
of which the neorealists were subsequently accused. After all, it would
be difficult to say that he was offering anything like the “mythology of a
radical rupture between the Fascist era and post-war Italy.”107 It would be
difficult, in fact, to make that accusation of any of the contestants in the
“literature and society” debate. Even as they discussed various proposals
for transforming Italian culture after Fascism – even as they questioned
the status of that transformation, and the rate at which it would occur –
Italian artists and intellectuals insisted that they were living through a
period of crisis in which old certainties were giving way to new possibili-
ties. They hoped that these new possibilities could be nurtured through
a critical reassessment of the past, not a rejection, and they envisioned
Italy’s transformation, its post-war renewal, as the impetus for a consid-
ered redeployment of cultural traditions in pursuit of an auspicious but
still uncertain future.
“Continuity between the Past and the Future”
Like Calvino, Giuseppe De Santis in later years would look back on the
age of neorealism as a time of new beginnings, of radical transformation,
of rupture with the past. Like Calvino, too, he would do so in more abso-
lute terms than those he and his contemporaries had employed after
the war. “Il neorealismo nasce perché ci sono due avvenimenti storici, la
caduta del fascismo e la resistenza [Neorealism was born thanks to two
historical events: the fall of Fascism and the rise of the Resistance],” De
Santis explained in a 1998 celebration of Giorni di gloria, the anti-Fascist
documentary he had helped to direct more than forty years earlier,
in 1945. “La resistenza libera grandi masse popolari che si riscattano.
[...] La resistenza segna l’anno zero, l’anno in cui l’Italia cambia volto
[The Resistance liberated and redeemed large swaths of the popular
masses. (...) The Resistance marked the Year Zero, the year in which
Italy changed face].”108 The director was here making the case for Giorni
di gloria as the origin-point of Italian neorealism, a contextual detail that
may help to account for a certain rhetorical excess in his pronounce-
ment, which seems to diverge significantly from his own portrayal of the
post-war period in his neorealist films, and in particular in Caccia tragica.
De Santis’s first feature film, Caccia tragica dramatizes the resolution of
a localized instance of the post-war crisis, and does so precisely by calling
into question belief either in the total elimination or in the absolute
continuation of the Fascist past. Its narrative of redemption thus seems
ideally calibrated to disabuse its audience of two opposing dangers: cyn-
ical fatalism to one side; naïve moralizing to the other. In Caccia tragica,
hope for a new beginning is predicated on a confrontation with histori-
cal guilt, not on starting from scratch. Indeed, it is predicated on the rec-
lamation of a character with a problematic past – a reclamation opposed
on one side by Daniela, for whom the war continues unabated, and on
the other side by Alberto’s pursuers, former partisans, who believe their
victory over Fascism to have been so definitive that they can consign the
struggle entirely to the past. For Daniela, post-war peace frequently gives
way to revanchist violence. Even the representatives of the landowners,
who have suborned the thefts and kidnappings she carries out, condemn
her frightening bellicosity: “Tu credi che ci sia sempre la guerra [You
think the war is still going on],” they tell her; “la guerra è finita [the war
is finished].” Daniela cannot and will not recognize that the situation
has changed, that a new era has begun, and she continues her battle
against the former partisans with the same ferocity as ever. Conversely,
the partisans, now workers on a cooperative farm, are characterized by
an ingenuous and unjustified optimism, telling the landowners’ repre-
sentatives that they will soon reclaim all the land scarred by war, wip-
ing away the lingering threats in order to permit future growth: “Vedete
quante mine? È l’ultimo campo. Non ci resta niente da sminare ormai.
Domani si può incominciare ad arare anche qui [Do you see all those
mines? That’s the last field. There are no more mines to clear after that.
Tomorrow we can begin to plough here, too],” they declare. “Abbiamo
finito i conti. Paghiamo i debiti, restiamo puliti puliti [We’ve completed
our accounts. We’ve paid our debts. Now we’re all clean].”
These are resonant phrases, and the screenwriters responsible for
Caccia tragica – a team that brought together many of neorealism’s
most prominent theorists and practitioners, including Corrado Alvaro,
Michelangelo Antonioni, Umberto Barbaro, Carlo Lizzani, and Cesare
Zavattini – were surely aware of the reverberations of the words they had
chosen. In the debates over Italian culture after Fascism, the need to
“pagare i debiti con il passato [pay the debts from the past]” recurred
with remarkable frequency: remember, for instance, that Alfonso Gatto’s
important entry in the “literature and society” debate was entitled
“Debiti e crediti” (Debts and Credits).109 In the efforts to reimagine the
role of cinema after the war, too, the phrase had significant purchase,
as in Alberto Lattuada’s celebrated exhortation to his fellow filmmak-
ers: “Paghiamo tutti i nostri debiti con un feroce amore di onestà [Let’s
pay all our debts with a fierce love of honesty],” Lattuada insisted, “e il
mondo parteciperà commosso a questa grande partita con la verità [and
the world, moved, will join us in this great struggle for the truth].”110
The partisans-turned-farmhands in Caccia tragica are thus suggestively
echoing a language of post-war recovery whose implications exceed the
specific terrain they are working to reclaim. They are declaring that they
will soon purge the dangers of the past, literal landmines that signify met-
aphorically the persistent threat of war, and declaring, too, that they will
then have paid the necessary debts, literally reimbursing the landowners
and figuratively repenting for the sins of Italian history. They are insist-
ing, in other words, on their freedom to begin again from a clean slate,
from zero. Alberto thus finds himself torn between two opposing visions:
Daniela’s, which conflates past and present and insists on absolute con-
tinuity between war and post-war; and the farmers’, which claims to have
expunged the past and insists on an absolutely new beginning after

Fascism. Both Daniela and the farmers understand their relationship as
one of irreconcilable difference, categorical conflict, which will either
be perennially contested (as Daniela insists) or definitively consigned to
history (as the farmers believe). Alberto recognizes that neither presents
a viable solution. The conflicts of the past have not yet been resolved:
despite the farmers’ attempts to clear the landmines, Daniela still holds
her hand on a lever that can explode this leftover ordnance, negating
the recovery they believe they have almost completed and destroying
the community they have worked to rebuild. With such dangers certain
to remain as long as the conflict persists, it becomes apparent that true
recovery, a true resolution, will have to be predicated on reconciliation.
This is the argument that Michele advances on Alberto’s behalf in the
makeshift trial that the farmers have set up to determine the criminal’s
fate. Alberto, he says,
è stato un debole, si, ma chi di noi non è debole quando è solo? Se non
trovavo gli amici quando sono tornato dalla prigionia, se non mi aiutavano
quelli che sono rimasti qui, se non mi facevano lavorare.... Lo sapete che
significa essere a un passo dalla morte per due anni? Ci mangiavamo dalla
fame tra di noi. E quando siamo tornati, e abbiamo cominciato a morire
dalla fame anche a casa nostra, è venuta a tutti, la voglia di sparare. Noi...
Voi non avete nessun diritto di fargliela pagare. Quelli che hanno pensato
di farlo fuori è segno che non hanno capito niente di tutto quello che
abbiamo sofferto, noi, che siamo stati lontani, in prigionia, e voi, che avete
penato qui, a casa vostra. [...] Non si può continuare per tutta la vita a fare
i carnefici.
was weak, it’s true, but who among us is not weak when he’s alone? If I had
not managed to find my friends when I came back from imprisonment, if
those who were left here had not helped me, if they had not allowed me to
work ... Do you know what it means to be on death’s door for two years? The
two of us shared our hunger together. And when we came back, starving
even at home, we both felt it, the desire to start shooting. We ... You have
no right to make him pay for it. That some of you wish to do so is a sign
you haven’t understood anything at all of what we suffered: we who were
far away, imprisoned, and you who suffered here in your homes. [...] You
cannot continue to be executioners your whole life.
Michele builds his case for reconciliation on a recognition of the contin-

uing crisis of the war. He wants his audience to understand that to appre-
ciate the suffering inflicted at home and abroad, in Italian towns and in
foreign concentration camps, is to recognize the need to resolve the con-

flict, to end the suffering, to find a peaceful solution. Those who would
perpetuate the conflict, whether by refusing to abandon prior struggles,
as Daniela does, or by refusing to forgive prior mistakes, as the farmers
do, must not have understood the extent of the crisis, or else they could
not stand for it to continue. The crisis thus compels its own resolution –
a resolution that seeks neither to perpetuate nor to deny the past, but
rather to redeem it and through that redemption to create a new and
lasting order. The farmers must allow for forgiveness and Alberto must
work towards restitution, but a new unity can be achieved.
An intricate intertextuality informs the vision of impending unity set
forth in Caccia tragica’s hopeful resolution. In the film’s dénouement,
Michele makes clear to Alberto that to earn his absolution he will need
to contribute to the cause. “Lo sai, sul fiume stanno ricostruendo i ponti
[You know, they’re rebuilding the bridges over the river],” Michele tells
him. “Dicono che c’è lavoro per molta gente. Anche tu non hai tempo
da perdere [They say that there’s plenty of work. You don’t have any time
to lose].” This statement, which holds out the promise of redemption,
echoes a significant precedent from the cinema of Italy’s recent past,
repurposing one of the central conceits of Luchino Visconti’s Ossessione.
Caccia tragica has much in common with that earlier film, which De
Santis had worked on as a screenwriter and assistant director.111 Not only
were both films set in the countryside surrounding the Po River, but they
also both starred Massimo Girotti, who played the part of Michele in
Caccia tragica four years after appearing as Gino in Ossessione.112 Near the
end of Visconti’s film, having conspired in the murder of his lover’s hus-
band only to find himself trapped running the dead man’s inn, Girotti’s
Gino is confronted by Lo Spagnolo (Elio Marcuzzo), who at an earlier
moment had held out to him the promise of another life, of travel and
freedom rather than bourgeois conformity. Sitting on a hillside together,
Lo Spagnolo reprimands Gino for returning to the domestic embrace of
his lover, as well as for the consequences that this decision has brought
about, but he also offers him one last chance to escape his impending
fate. If Gino will only come with him to Genoa, Lo Spagnolo explains,
he can begin a new life. “So che stanno facendo una camionabile da
quelle parti [I know they’re building a road for heavy vehicles there],”
Lo Spagnolo tells him. “Si può facilmente trovare lavoro. Si passa la gior-
nata a far brillare le mine, per via della montagna [You can easily find
work there. They spend all day exploding mines to blast through the
mountain].” In both Ossessione and Caccia tragica, as these echoed lines
serve to indicate, the offer of work conveys the promise of redemption.
In the earlier film, Girotti’s Gino refuses the offer and meets his demise;
in Caccia tragica’s subsequent reworking of this scene, Girotti’s Michele

extends a similar offer to Alberto, who accepts it, and who can thus be
redeemed as Gino was not.
There are thus several meaningful connections between the two
scenes, but also consequential differences. In Ossessione, released in 1943,
the job Gino refused had entailed exploding mines to clear a new road;
in Caccia tragica, released four years later, after the end of the war, the
job Alberto accepts will entail rebuilding bridges destroyed by German
mines, which the former partisans are now working to clear from their
fields. In a sense, the resolution of De Santis’s film thus suggests that the
paths abandoned in an earlier era, when they were impeded by conven-
tionality or cowardice, must now be followed for salvation to be achieved.
At the same time, however, it also suggests that those paths are not
entirely the same; after the war the terrain has changed and, as a result,
new and different tasks must be undertaken. Caccia tragica’s Alberto may
then be said to take up the offer Ossessione’s Gino had refused, but only if
it is recognized that in the four intervening years the conditions of that
offer and the responsibilities it entailed had been partially but funda-
mentally transformed.
A related claim can be made with regard to De Santis’s reworking of
Visconti. Interpreted meta-cinematically, that is to say, Caccia tragica can
be seen to evoke Ossessione in order polemically to establish post-war
Italian cinema’s nuanced relationship to the films of the recent past. It
was a relationship characterized neither by absolute continuity nor by
total rupture, but rather by a subtler combination of knowing debts and
selective departures. De Santis’s film thus symptomatically invokes not
a new path to be cleared, as had Visconti’s earlier effort, but instead a
damaged bridge to be rebuilt. In this way, the film gives lie to De Santis’s
own subsequent invocation of the post-war “Year Zero,” but it does more
than this. According to critical convention, as articulated, for instance,
by Callisto Cosulich, neorealism’s post-war transformation is invalidated
by the recognition that it was founded upon an alleged “convinzione sec-
ondo la quale il 1945 sarebbe stato l’‘anno zero’ del cinema italiano, cos-
tretto a ripartire per l’appunto da zero, tagliando i ponti con un passato
di cui nella maggior parte dei casi avrebbe dovuto tutt’al più vergognarsi
[conviction that 1945 was the ‘Year Zero’ of Italian cinema, which was
forced to start over from scratch, cutting the bridges to a past of which
most were ashamed].”113 Caccia tragica provides a substantial alternative
to this flawed narrative, demonstrating that hope for a new beginning
after the war was premised on the act of rebuilding bridges, not tear-
ing them down, of reclaiming the past, not rejecting it. Read alongside
the prevalent critiques of Italy’s post-war reforms and the longstanding
assumptions about its post-war continuities, the conclusion to De Santis’s

film can be understood to adhere to a radically different standard of
renewal, one in which cultural continuities – even continuities with
Fascist culture – could help to create not only a new Italian cinema but
also a new Italy.
This, rather than any “‘Year Zero’ fable,” was the vision of reconstruc-
tion that shaped Italian political and cultural discourse in the age of
neorealism – a vision that transcended the false opposition between con-
tinuity and renewal in favour of a shared emphasis on national recovery.
It was the vision articulated, most prominently, in the first issue of the
aptly named post-war cultural journal Il Ponte (The bridge). Prefiguring
the resolution of Caccia tragica, the journal’s editor, Piero Calamandrei,
here declared that
[i]l nostro programma è già tutto nel titolo e nell’emblema della coper-
tina: un ponte crollato, e tra i due tronconi delle pile rimaste in piedi una
trave lanciata attraverso, per permettere agli uomini che vanno al lavoro
di ricominciare a passare. In questo titolo e in questo emblema, non c’è
soltanto il proposito di contribuire a ristabilire nel campo dello spirito, al
disopra della voragine scavata dal fascismo, quella continuità tra il passato
e l’avvenire che porterà l’Italia a riprendere la sua collaborazione al pro-
gresso del mondo [...]. Ma c’è, sopra tutto, il proposito di contribuire a
ricostruire l’unità morale dopo un periodo di profonda crisi [...].114
our program is there in the title and the cover image: a collapsed bridge
and, between the bases of the two remaining pillars, a beam, which allows
men on their way to work to cross. This title and this image suggest not only
the goal of contributing to a spiritual renewal, bridging the chasm carved
by Fascism, but also the continuity between past and future that will allow
Italy to contribute again to the world’s progress [...]. Above all, they suggest
our intention to contribute to rebuilding moral unity after a period of pro-
found crisis [...].
Calamandrei’s was a vision predicated on crisis, stressing the literal and

metaphorical wreckage of war. It was an essentially conservative vision,
which sought to reclaim and to redeem Italian history in pursuit of a
solution to that crisis. Yet it was also a vision of radical renewal, imagin-
ing for Italy a brighter future to be achieved through creative reflection
and collective action. Suggestively staged in Caccia tragica, it was a vision
that drew the support of the National Association of Italian Partisans,
which endorsed and helped fund De Santis’s film, as well as of the
Italian Communist Party, who helped to promote the film in theatres in
the hopes that its narrative of redemption might inspire a swing to the
left in the pivotal 1948 election.115 It was a vision, finally, that encom-
passed and conveyed neorealism’s characteristic – and characteristically
far-reaching – post-war ambitions. In the chapters that follow, I will
examine those ambitions more closely, mapping out the clusters of inter-
related objectives set out in the neorealist conversation. The validity of
those objectives, I argue, should be judged not by the degree to which
they established a break with the Fascist past, but rather by the cogency
of their response to the challenges of the contemporary crisis and the
persuasiveness of their articulation of future alternatives.
3
“Chronicle and Tragedy”: The Neorealist
Representation of History
After a frantic but ultimately fruitless chase through Rome’s Traforo

Umberto, the desperate Antonio Ricci turns to the local police in
the hope that they might help him recover his stolen bicycle. Ricci
(Lamberto Maggiorani), the protagonist of Vittorio De Sica’s Ladri di
biciclette, has been told that he must have a bicycle to qualify for work,
and he and his wife Maria (Lianella Carell) have pawned their sheets
in order to procure one. Much is riding on that bicycle, therefore, and
much has been sacrificed to retrieve it from the pawnshop. So when,
affixing a poster advertising Rita Hayworth’s star turn in Charles Vidor’s
Gilda, Antonio turns to see a thief riding away on his bicycle, his face
betrays not only a sense of shock but also a hint of terror. He knows that
unless he recovers the bicycle he will lose his job, leaving him unable
to provide for Maria, his young son Bruno (Enzo Staiola), and his new-
born baby. Yet the attending officer to whom he reports the theft shows
little concern for Antonio’s plight. Indeed, when an impatient journalist,
on the lookout for an attention-grabbing story, asks whether anything
newsworthy has come across his desk, the officer carelessly answers, “No,
niente. Una bicicletta [No, nothing ... just a bicycle].”1 The rapacious
journalist will have to look elsewhere to find his sensational headline.
Antonio’s story, Ladri di biciclette’s story, is clearly too insignificant to
merit his consideration.
If the connotations of Antonio’s story escape the police officer and the
journalist, they are readily apparent to the film’s audience. Indeed, the
film effectively amplifies those connotations by implicitly contrasting
the policeman’s casual dismissal with the movie camera’s rapt attention,
the newspaper reporter’s jaded enquiry with the viewer’s increasingly
empathetic apprehension of Antonio’s predicament. In this way, Ladri
di biciclette foregrounds the ideologically significant opposition between
two conflicting modes of understanding: to one side that of the political
and cultural establishment, to the other that of the film itself. The con-
frontation in the police station thus conveys a substantive challenge to
accepted norms of value – those of the police, the journalists, and the
systems of power they represent – and offers a subtle but forceful expres-
sion of an alternative standard of social significance. Cesare Zavattini,
the film’s screenwriter and De Sica’s close collaborator, revealed as much
in a 1948 interview, asking,
che cos’è una bicicletta? Roma è piena di biciclette come di mosche. Ne

rubano decine e decine al giorno e i giornali non vi dedicano neanche
una riga in corpo sei. Forse i giornali non sono più in grado di stabilire la
vera gerarchia dei fatti. Se rubassero, per esempio, la biciclette a Antonio,
i giornali dovrebbero, secondo noi, occuparsi del furto con un titolo su
quattro colonne.2
what does a bicycle matter? Rome is as full of bicycles as it is flies. Dozens

and dozens of them are stolen every day and the newspapers don’t even de-
vote a single line to it in the back pages. Maybe the newspapers aren’t able
to ascertain the real hierarchy of facts. If someone were to steal Antonio’s
bicycle, for example, we believe the newspapers should report that fact with
a headline four columns wide.
True to Zavattini’s notion of “the real hierarchy of facts,” Ladri di bici-

clette prizes what the newspaper casts off, emphasizes what the newspaper
diminishes, reveals what the newspaper withholds, and it does so pur-
posefully, asserting a system of values that functions not only instead of
but against the flawed assessments of the popular press. De Sica made
largely the same point in a 1948 interview, insisting that Ladri di bici-
clette represented “una vicenda meno straordinaria, nell’apparenza,
una vicenda di quelle che accadono a tutti, e specialmente ai poveri, e
che nessun giornale si degna di ospitare [an event that was seemingly
unexceptional, one of those events that happens to everyone, and espe-
cially to the poor, and that no newspaper would deign to cover].”3 Like
Zavattini, De Sica positioned his film in relation to the newspapers’ omis-
sion, explaining that his goal was to explore the significant implications
of the kind of story the newspapers refused to cover.
Post-war Italian filmmakers and writers had a word for such minor
narratives, the ones that preoccupied desperate individuals but failed to
engage the complacent authorities, the ones that determined a family’s
fate but elicited little or no reaction from a preoccupied nation, the ones
that could provide the plot for the greatest neorealist films while appear-
ing too trivial to provide fodder for even the most provincial gazettes. The
The Neorealist Representation of History 87
word was cronaca, a word only partially captured in English by terms like
“chronicle” or “news item.” This was the term De Sica used to describe
Ladri di biciclette in his 1948 interview. “Il mio scopo è di rintracciare il
drammatico nelle situazioni quotidiane, il meraviglioso della piccola cro-
naca, anzi della piccolissima cronaca, considerata dai più come materia
consunta [My aim is to identify the dramatic in everyday situations, the
marvellous in the minor chronicle (cronaca), indeed in the most minor
chronicle, which most consider worn-out material],” he explained.4 It
was also the term Zavattini employed in a celebrated essay on neoreal-
ism’s development, where he expressed his “vecchio desiderio di adop-
erare il cinema per conoscere ciò che succede intorno a noi [...] in un
modo diretto e immediato [longstanding desire to use the cinema to
understand what happens around us (...) in a direct and immediate way,”
and defined Italian neorealism as the cinema that “riproduce un fatto di
cronaca nei luoghi dov’è realmente avvenuto e che interpretano coloro
stessi che ne sono stati i principali protagonisti [reproduces a news item
(cronaca) in the places it actually took place and with the actual partic-
ipants as actors].”5 For both director and screenwriter, post-war Italian
cinematic realism was defined by its foundations in the chronicle.
De Sica and Zavattini could hardly have chosen a more suggestive term
with which to explain the realist ambitions of their cinematic project.
From the novels of Vasco Pratolini, who published both Cronaca famil-
iare and Cronache di poveri amanti (1947), to the films of Michelangelo
Antonioni (Cronaca di un amore, 1950) and Luchino Visconti (Aspetti di
un fatto di cronaca, 1951), to the poetry of Luigi Compagnone (“Cronaca,”
1946), Attilio Bertolucci (“Cronaca 1946,” 1951), and Elio Pagliarani
(Cronache e altre poesie, 1954), to the plays of Leopoldo Trieste (Cronaca,
1946) and Marcello Sartarelli (“Teatro di cronaca”), the term recurred
with remarkable frequency in post-war Italy. Well aware of the term’s
apparent ubiquity in the first years after the Second World War, Carlo
Salinari once argued that “l’esigenza della cronaca è stata ed è fonda-
mentale del nuovo realismo italiano [the demand for chronicles was and
is fundamental to the new Italian realism].”6 If anything, Salinari under-
stated things. For many commentators, both during the age of neoreal-
ism and in recent years, the cronaca has appeared not just a fundamental
aspect of neorealism but the very definition of neorealism itself.
If the cronaca can be said to define neorealism, however, it must also be
said that the cronaca itself remains imperfectly defined. It has been called
the “aspetto contingente, momento subordinato o anche materiale
grezzo della storia [contingent aspect, the subordinate moment or even
the raw material of history], “il racconto indiscriminato di certi fatti [the
indiscriminate account of certain facts],” the “visione più immediatamente
sincera dell’oggetto [most immediate and sincere view of an object],” an

“asciutta registrazione di eventi [dry registering of events],” an “asso-
luta obbedienza alla realtà dei fatti [absolute obedience to the reality
of facts].”7 The cronaca, then, is understood in some way to pertain to
material reality, as well as to the form in which that reality is represented.
It denotes at once the routine, contingent, concrete facts of daily events
and the instrument for capturing those events, for recording those facts,
for registering their substantive particulars. Yet, in its focus on the actual,
the specific, the sensible, the authentic, the corporeal, the neorealist
cronaca was far more dynamic and far more intricate than the schol-
arly consensus would suggest. This chapter is an attempt to capture the
remarkable conceptual dynamism of the neorealist cronaca, a term that
designated both the realistic depiction of post-war Italy’s singular travails
and the critical articulation of those travails in their full historical and
even universal significance.
“The Chronicle That Gives Weight to Our Words”
The Second World War has been called a “people’s war,” one in which
the line between combatant and non-combatant was all but erased, in
which civilian deaths outpaced those of soldiers, in which the home
front became the battlefield.8 Local resistance, urban bombing, and mass
deportation brought the war to the civilian population on a scale that
was largely unprecedented. Below the international horizon at which it
was conducted, therefore, the war had a profound effect at a regional,
civic, familial, and individual level as well. One result, Italian cultural
commentators have sought to emphasize, was a communal compulsion to
recount one’s particular experience of history, to explain from an individ-
ual perspective how the global conflict had been deeply personal as well
as geopolitical, private as well as public, intimate as well as international.
In Italo Calvino’s memorable phrase, the war’s immediate aftermath gave
rise to a collective “smania di raccontare [craving to tell stories],” a neces-
sity to narrate, to proclaim, to disclose, such that stories became almost
unavoidable, omnipresent: “ci muovevamo in un multicolore universo di
storie [we existed in a multicoloured world of stories],” as Calvino put it.
“Chi cominciò a scrivere allora si trovò così a trattare la medesima materia
dell’anonimo narratore orale [The result was that those who began writ-
ing in that period found themselves dealing with the same subject mat-
ter as these anonymous storytellers],” he recalled.9 Calvino argued that
the end of the war had unearthed common ground between reader and
writer, between the public and the intellectuals, with shared experiences,
as well as a shared compulsion to recount those experiences, serving to
unite artists and their audience across social barriers. That, at least, was
how Calvino portrayed the post-war atmosphere nearly twenty years after
the fact, looking back fondly on the period in which he composed his first
novel, Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno, in the preface to its 1964 republication.
Yet Calvino’s account obscures as much as it reveals. Despite all the
talk of common ground, of a unity forged from a shared compulsion
to narrate personal experiences, questions regarding how stories of the
war were to be recounted and who was to recount them were among
the most divisive issues of the day. In truth, the post-war Italian cultural
marketplace perpetuated a categorical distinction between two classes of
writers, which can be thought of as “scrittori-letterati [author-writers]”
and “testimoni-scrittori [witness-writers],” in Bruno Falcetto’s terms, or,
in Andrea Battistini’s formulation, as “partigiani diventati narratori [par-
tisans who became writers]” and “narratori diventati partigiani [writers
who became partisans].”10 The distinction, in other words, was between
the class of professional writers and those who came to writing because
of the war-induced “craving to tell stories,” with which Calvino wished
retrospectively to associate his partisan novel. These “witness-writers,”
often new or non-professional authors, were (or were understood to be)
attempting to break into an established field, one with a rigorously
enforced hierarchy of literary value, and they were met with considerable
resistance. They countered that resistance, in turn, by attacking the lit-
erary establishment and insisting on an opposing form of authority, one
based on personal experience rather than professional credentialing.11
To cite a prominent and particularly resonant instance, the Resistance
leader Comandante Gracco (Angiolo Gracci) prefaced his Brigata
Sinigaglia, the first book on the partisan struggle published in Italy after
the war, with the assertion that, despite having never written before, and
despite his lack of literary training, he was uniquely qualified to tell the
story of the Resistance because he had lived it. Indeed, he explained, his
experiences had instilled in him all the skills necessary to recount them,
so that, “meglio di ogni altro, sia pur forbito ed esperto scrittore, ho
creduto di poter maneggiare ed esporre la presente materia nella forma
più vera, più schietta e più giusta [better than anyone else, however pol-
ished or expert a writer he may be, I thought I could handle and explain
the present material in the truest, most sincere, most just manner].”12 By
this standard, narrative authority was not a function of any innate talent
for writing, as the denizens of the traditional literary sphere would have
it, but rather of service to the cause of Italian liberation.
Comandante Gracco’s claims, and those of the “witness-writers” more
broadly, sought to undermine the competing claims of the “writer-
authors.” In so doing, they drew heavily on the belief, expressed, for
instance, by Roberto Battaglia in his first-hand account of the Resistance,

Un uomo un partigiano (1945), that the Italian literary tradition had stood
at a dangerous remove from Italian life. Battaglia argued that in Italy
there had always been two distinct forms of expression, “una lingua
scritta e una lingua parlata [a written and a spoken language],” and
“[a]nche a causa di questa dualità [...] il sorgere spontaneo di decine
di migliaia di uomini contro l’oppressione nazista corre rischio di non
essere sufficientemente documentato [because of this duality (...) the
spontaneous uprising of tens of thousands of men in opposition to Nazi
oppression runs the risk of being insufficiently documented].”13 Put
simply, Battaglia argued that the Italian literary language inhibited the
desire to capture the lived realities of the Second World War. To produce
works of valid testimony, therefore, and to keep the written record true
to personal experience, a witness to the war would need to leave behind
the rigid standards of Italian literature and to “narrare con semplicità la
propria vita [narrate his own life with simplicity],” as Battaglia put it, to
“chiarire a sé stesso e agli altri in qual modo le sofferenze della guerra
lo hanno trasformato o migliorato [clarify to himself and to the others
how the suffering of the war had transformed or improved them].”14
Established cultural norms would have to give way to a new set of values;
not belles lettres but unmediated testimony was the new order of the day.
It was so, in fact, even for intellectuals like Battaglia, a university grad-
uate and budding art historian, or for Emanuele Artom, a student of
history and philology who had enlisted in the Resistance, and who con-
cluded from his experience that “[i]n tempi normali, quando la vita è
comoda, saper accendere il fuoco, se c’è il termosifone, conta meno che
saper scrivere correntemente, oggi conta di più [in normal times, when
life is comfortable, when one has a radiator, knowing how to light a fire
counts less than knowing how to write fluently; today it counts more].”15
In the eyes of the “partisans who became narrators,” as Artom sought to
suggest, the extraordinary circumstances of the Resistance were seen to
have brought about an inversion of literary value, one that demanded
new forms in which new writers could depict their new experiences.
Yet much of the literary establishment rejected such claims, instead
reiterating and reinforcing the artistic merits of celebrated novelists
and poets and setting them against those of the new class of writers.
In countless reviews and critical essays, they explained that works of
eye-witness testimony and narratives of personal experience were and
would remain subliterary, worthy of journalistic interest but unworthy
of aesthetic admiration. Such works were, in the chosen terminology of
the period, mere chronicles. For instance, reviewing Arrigo Benedetti’s
1945 Paura all’alba, an autobiographical novel recounting the author’s
experiences as a partisan in the Apennine Mountains, critics stressed its

“modi arbitrari e disinvolti alle avare esigenze della cronaca [arbitrary
and casual manner of meeting the tawdry demands of the chronicle],”
insisting that its tone had “alcunché di cronachistico e di giornalistico
[something of the journalistic and the chronicle-like],” that with its
“modi della cronaca, del diario e del racconto [style of the diary, the
report, the chronicle]” it demonstrated “il gusto e la precisione di una
cronaca [the flavour and the rigour of the chronicle].”16 They used the
same term and its cognates whether examining works of pure testimony,
such as Giuseppe Zàggia’s account of his imprisonment in a Nazi con-
centration camp, 1945’s Filo spinato (a “nuda cronaca delle sofferenze
patite nella prigionia [nude chronicle of the suffering he endured in
prison]”); literary autobiographies like Ezio Taddei’s 1944 Il pino e la
rufola (“non abbiamo a che fare con un romanzo, ma unicamente con
una cronaca [we are presented not with a novel but only with a chron-
icle]”); or even works of popular fiction like Silvio Micheli’s 1946 Pane
duro (characterized by its “realismo cronachistico e brutale [brutal and
chronicle-like realism]”).17 Such texts, a critic at the newspaper Avanti!
explained, “[n]on sono opere letterarie, sono cronache, più o meno fed-
eli, più o meno infarcite di svolazzi pseudo-letterari che spesso sviliscono
la materia invece di arricchirla [are not literary works, they are chroni-
cles, more or less faithful, more or less padded out with pseudo-literary
flourishes that often cheapen the material instead of enriching it].”18
As such judgments make clear, when used in this context “chronicle”
was largely not a term of praise. Instead, it served to indicate either the
inability or the unwillingness of the author to produce real art. As the
critic Rosario Assunto put it in a 1947 essay, the critical establishment
believed a chronicle to be fundamentally different from a work of liter-
ature “[p]erché lo scrittore instaura la propria verità, mentre il cronista
si limita a riferire una verità data [because the writer establishes his own
truth, whereas the chronicler limits himself to reporting an established
truth].”19 A chronicle aspired to be entirely factual, Assunto was saying,
whereas literature, the product of a writer’s talent, sought to convey
something more significant than the unprocessed sense data of material
facts. The two forms, literature and chronicle, were thus understood to
be categorically distinct from one another.
Surprisingly, and at times polemically, the authors of testimonial
chronicles claimed for themselves the very same designation that liter-
ary critics would use to dismiss their work. It was thus true, for instance,
as critics noted of Luciano Bolis’s 1946 account of his experiences in
the Resistance, Il mio granello di sabbia, that “libri come questi sono
soltanto delle cronache e come tali vogliono essere considerati [books
like this one are just chronicles and wish to be considered as such].”20
After all, Bolis himself presented his work in those very terms, explain-
ing in the introduction that “[q]uesta cronaca [...] non ha pretese
letterarie [this chronicle (...) has no literary pretensions].” “L’unico
pregio di questa storia è dunque l’assoluta autenticità di quanto vi si
narra [The only merit of this story is thus the absolute authenticity
of what it recounts],” he wrote, “e tale autenticità ho osservato pro-
prio per l’urgenza di verità che mi ha indotto a documentare in parole
un’esperienza che poteva sembrare inenarrabile, a me che non faccio
di mestiere lo scrittore [and I have been faithful to that authenticity
because the urgency of truth has led me to document in words an expe-
rience that might have seemed impossible to narrate for someone like
me, who is not a writer].”21 In much the same way, Piero Carmagnola
introduced his Vecchi partigiani miei of 1945 by insisting that his text
“[n]on è un romanzo [is not a novel],” just as Luca Besani presented
his 1945 “Un autunno coi partigiani” as an “epica cronaca [epic chron-
icle]” told with “austera semplicità [austere simplicity],” and Marcello
Venturi began his 1949 “Io povero soldato” by stating that “[q]uesto
non è un racconto e neanche una poesia americana. È una semplice
esposizione dei fatti [this is not a short story and not an American
poem. It is a simple account of the facts].”22 Claiming not to seek liter-
ary validation, the “partisans who became writers” adopted the extant
critical vocabulary and inverted the hierarchy of values this vocabu-
lary had traditionally been used to enforce. In opposition, and in an
effort to distinguish themselves and their work from this nascent testi-
monial tradition, Italy’s leading novelists were compelled to reiterate,
when not in fact to vindicate, the standards of traditional literary merit.
Alberto Moravia, for instance, argued that “non si deve mai attribuire
ad un’opera d’arte l’importanza di un documento o di una inchiesta
giornalistica. L’opera d’arte è una testimonianza, tutt’al più, ossia una
conferma mediata, indiretta e poetica di verità testuali riscontrabili
altrove [one should never attribute to a work of art the significance
of a journalistic document or enquiry. At most a work of art can give
testimony – that is, a mediated, indirect, and poetic verification – of
textual truths found elsewhere].”23 Cesare Pavese railed against the
“confusione tra il giornalista e lo scrittore [confusion between the jour-
nalist and the author”] inherent in writers’ efforts to “tuffarsi [...] nella
cronaca [dive (...) into the chronicle].”24 In his words, authors of true
literary merit were “convinti che altro è far cronaca, altro fare romanzo
[convinced that it is one thing to write a chronicle, quite another to
write a novel].”25 One can imagine Luciano Bolis or Piero Carmagnola
making the same declaration but with a completely different intent.
Moravia and Pavese’s intent was to defend themselves against “chroni-

clers” such as these, against their incursion in the literary sphere, and
against the inversion of literary values that they represented.
The literary establishment was worried in particular about what was
perceived to be the growing pressure on novelists to generate or emu-
late chronicles. “Se ne potrebbe arguire che l’epoca dello stile è ormai
conchiusa [One could argue that the age of style is now over],” lamented
the critic Mario Bonfantini in a 1946 essay; “ci interessano soltanto poi
i documenti o i ragionamenti [we seem to be only interested in docu-
ments or enquiries].”26 Many at the time concurred with sentiments such
as this, dismayed that narrative literature appeared to be giving way to
testimony, that a text’s truth-value was beginning to matter more than its
artistic refinement. As the editor Giambattista Vicari put it, there were
signs of an emerging post-war “crisi del romanzo [crisis of the novel],”
brought on by the “facili ripercussioni della cronaca [easy repercussions
of the chronicle],” the “fedi scoperte nella cronaca [evident devotion
to the chronicle],” which had come to predominate in the Italian cul-
tural marketplace.27 For countless Italian literati, the preference for tes-
timony over art represented a crisis because it demanded new evaluative
criteria, implying that writers were to be judged on how well their work
reproduced reality rather than how elegantly they represented it or how
well they understood it. The literary establishment largely held to the
opposing view. “Se l’umanità chiede luce di coscienza su ciò che avvenne
e su ciò che resta quindi da fare [If the human race wishes for the light
of conscience to be shed on what has befallen us and on what remains
to be accomplished],” explained a critic in 1946 in La Fiera letteraria, a
leading organ of the literary traditionalists, “gli scrittori spetta in primis-
simo luogo il compito [the task falls first of all to authors].”28 The literary
establishment, those authors and critics who had made their reputations
before the war, continued to believe that literature could accomplish
what chroniclers could not, that truth alone was not enough to produce
something of lasting value, that writers had somehow to transmute the
facts of the chronicle into art, and that literary standards were falling as
this necessary artistic refinement gradually gave way to lesser forms of
expression. They argued, then, that the pressure to respond to current
events was leading authors to forgo the tools and techniques proper to
literature, and even to deny the tradition and the potential of literature
to advance the cause of human wisdom.
The “witness-writers” had their defenders, however, and they mounted
a strenuous challenge to the prevailing beliefs that continued to sup-
port the traditional literary hierarchies. In a 1949 essay, for instance,
the critic Giovanni Titta Rosa denounced what he saw as the “speciosa
argomentazione [specious arguments]” of those who denied the power

of testimonial writers to approach reality with genuine critical insight,
those who believed that such authors “non possano quindi far più arte
o poesia ma soltanto documento, cronaca [cannot therefore create a
work of art or poetry but only a document, a chronicle].”29 Instead,
as he saw things, the moral and ethical force of the writer’s reflection
on his or her experience was sufficient to make art from chronicle.
There was no need for sophisticated literary form, rhetorical style,
or linguistic embellishment; indeed, these adornments would only
impede the necessary task of chronicling the consequential events of
recent history. For this reason, more than a few leading contrarian crit-
ics sought to emphasize the superiority of chronicles to literature after
the war. Mino Caudana, for example, believed that the Italian literati
had proven themselves incapable of capturing not only the facts but
even the essence of Italian life: “I veri scrittori di oggi sono, forse, gli
umili cronisti dei quotidiani. In difetto di pregi maggiori, la loro prosa
disadorna ha, perlomeno, l’obbiettività onesta della Leica [perhaps
the true writers today are the humble chroniclers of the dailies. In the
absence of greater merits, their unadorned prose at least has the hon-
est objectivity of a Leica].”30 Advancing a related argument, Niccolò
Gallo, in a 1950 assessment of post-war Italian literature, condemned
the literary establishment for its “posizione di netto isolamento e sfidu-
cia nella realtà [stance of total isolation from and mistrust of reality]”
and argued that “il ‘documento’ [...] è stato il mezzo più facile tentato
dagli scrittori per esprimersi in una forma più diretta e più ‘popolare’
di rappresentazione [the ‘document’ (...) has been the most straight-
forward means for authors to express themselves in the most direct and
‘popular’ form of representation].”31 Titta Rosa, Caudana, Gallo, and
other like-minded critics were convinced that the traditional literary
genres had failed to capture the spirit of the age. Their formal and lin-
guistic conventions, their standards of taste and style, their preference
for sophisticated refinement over the candour of honest reporting,
had served to distract writers from the necessary task of memorializ-
ing recent history. Such critics argued that this vital task, having been
neglected by the literary establishment, had fallen instead to those who
aspired only to write chronicles.
The clash between these two critical camps, the defenders of art and
the defenders of the chronicle, played out in countless venues through-
out the post-war period. The issues at stake were framed with particular
lucidity in the 1946 debate between Giuseppe Antonelli, literary critic
for Avanti!, and Enrico Falqui, his counterpart at La Fiera letteraria. The
debate began with Antonelli’s call for authors to immerse themselves in
current events, to relinquish the reflective distance that had traditionally

characterized their approach to reality. In his words,
la funzione dello scrittore debba essere più immediata di quanto non possa
esserlo una pura attività di cultura, di commento culturale. La loro espe-
rienza, il loro senso di prospettiva storica, la loro morale gli scrittori devono
usarle nell’interpretare la cronaca, i fatti di tutti i giorni perché soprattutto
da questa interpretazione della cronaca, si possa mettere ordine nella cro-
naca stessa, si possa dare a tutti il modo di valutare questi fatti per quello
che sono, si possa cioè cominciare una società.32
the task of the writer must be more immediate than a purely cultural pur-
suit, a cultural commentary, could ever be. Writers must use their expe-
rience, their sense of historical perspective, their morals to interpret the
news, the events of the day, because it is above all through the act of inter-
pretation that we can give order to the chronicle, providing everyone with
the means to evaluate the facts for what they are and in this way helping to
establish a society.
In his reply, Falqui claimed to accept much of Antonelli’s argument.

Recent history was too important to be left out of even the most abstract
or contemplative works, he conceded, and authors needed to remain
abreast of what was happening outside their windows.33 Yet he never-
theless insisted that writers could not be mere stenographers, that their
approach should not be “immediate,” as Antonelli would have it, but
rather ruminative, and thus analytical. As Falqui put it,
[a]nche un fatto di cronaca, messo a fuoco con studio dallo scrittore, può
fornire materia d’arte, purché, nel passaggio attraverso la depurazione
dello stile, che è piuttosto un fissaggio (senza che ciò implichi un abbel-
limento), la cronaca perda quel che ha in sé di precario e acquisti un ac-
cento, una risonanza che in certo senso sappiano già di memoria.34
even a news item [fatto di cronaca], if a writer examines it carefully, can

provide the material for art, so long as, once it is purified by the process-
ing of style, which is more like a tightening (implying, that is, no sense of
embellishment), the news item loses its sense of contingency and gains an
inflection, a resonance that somehow already feels like a memory.
Literature should reflect the historical moment, granted Falqui, but it

should become more than a reflection of that moment, more than a rec-
itation of reality: it should elevate its time-bound subject to the timeless
status of art. In his reply, however, Antonelli questioned this claim, in

fact questioned the very notion of artistic elevation, of artistic superior-
ity, and thus articulated a profound challenge to traditional Italian liter-
ary culture. “La cronaca è il piano su cui si intrecciano i nostri rapporti
sociali [The chronicle constitutes the plane at which our social relations
intertwine],” Antonelli explained.
È perciò la cronaca che dà peso alle nostre parole offrendoci un linguaggio

che può essere dovunque compreso. Non solo, ma la cronaca è più difficile
e impegnativa. Non ci vuole molto a far suonare la parola “aurorale” per
esempio. Ci vuole molto di più per far suonare la parola “bicicletta.”35
It is therefore the chronicle that gives weight to our words by providing us

with a language that can be understood everywhere. The chronicle is also
more difficult and demanding. It does not take much to find music in the
word “aurora,” for instance. It takes a lot more to find music in the word
“bicycle.”
It was not art that uplifted the chronicle, Antonelli argued, but the chron-
icle that empowered true art. This was an inversion of the hierarchy of
literary value that Falqui – and indeed the Italian literary establishment
more generally – had always enforced. What is more, it was an inversion
that rested fortuitously on the artistic value of a bicycle, and that did so
months before the publication of Luigi Bartolini’s novel Ladri di biciclette
and two years before the release of the film that Vittorio De Sica and
Cesare Zavattini would base loosely on that text.
“An Implicit Judgment”
When De Sica’s Ladri di biciclette was released in theatres, its initial critical
reception echoed the same vocabulary as the Antonelli–Falqui debate
and the post-war critical context it exemplified. The film, one reviewer
put it, “è e rimane cronaca e non giunge mai a valore universale di poe-
sia [is and remains a chronicle and never reaches the universal quality
of poetry].”36 The same judgment had been levelled against many of
the other neorealist films. In the first reviews of Roma città aperta, for
instance, critics singled out Roberto Rossellini’s film as “una cronaca
giornalistica ben riuscita [a successful journalistic chronicle]” “nato da
un’esigenza [...] francamente cronistica [born from a need that is (...)
frankly chronicle-like],” offering “il documento di una cronaca viva [the
document of a living chronicle],” with “fatti [...] coordinati e raccontati
in maniera cronachistica [facts (...) that are coordinated and recounted
in a chronicle-like manner],” as well as a certain “cronistica crudezza

[chronicle-like crudeness],” perhaps as a result of its “brani di cronaca
ancora palpitante e sanguinate [chronicle sections that are still throb-
bing and bleeding].”37 The two subsequent films in Rossellini’s neorealist
trilogy were received similarly: of Paisà it was said that “[l]’asciutta fanta-
sia di Rossellini si inserisce nella cronaca e la sommuove profondamente
[Rossellini’s arid imagination enters into the chronicle and profoundly
stirs it up],” while Germania anno zero, with its “imparziale distacco croni
stico e obiettività documentaria [documentary objectivity and impartial
and chronicle-like detachment],” was said to demonstrate “un pavido
rifiuto di sortir dalla cronaca [a fearful refusal to abandon the chroni-
cle].”38 Critics likewise located the origins of Visconti’s La terra trema in
the “cronache giornalieri di Acitrezza [daily chronicles of Acitrezza],”
just as they noted that Giuseppe De Santis’s Caccia tragica was based on
“una notizia di cronaca [a chronicle].”39 De Santis himself made a simi-
lar point in a 1949 essay, explaining that
proprio in questi giorni m’è accaduto di pensare a come sono nati i miglio
ri film italiani del nostro dopoguerra. Da una nozione di cronaca, dalla
commozione suscitata nell’opinione pubblica attorno a urgenti problemi
nazionali. Dall’impulso, insomma, di scrivere sulla pellicola vere e proprie
“inchieste.” Già, inchieste: le più drammatiche, forse, che si siano compiute
in questi anni, in Italia.40
in recent days I began to think about how the best Italian films of the
post-war period originated from chronicles, from the commotion that ur-
gent national problems had aroused in public opinion. In short, they had
originated in the impulse to use film to conduct real “investigations.” Yes,
investigations: perhaps the most dramatic that have been conducted in Italy
in recent years.
De Santis, like many Italian film critics, thus sought to define neorealist
cinema by its origins in and promotion of chronicles.
Yet it was not always so clear where neorealist cinema was to be located
in the dichotomy between the chronicle and the work of art. For some,
neorealism had begun as a chronicle but had gradually transcended this
limited outlook, so that the best films,
mentre apparivano ancora concepite, se pur in diverso modo, nell’am

bito del realismo cronistico, del “fait divers,” denunciavano come tale re-
alismo avesse ormai compiuto il proprio cammino e dato i frutti che da
esso era lecito attendersi. Si compieva, cioè, la seconda fase del così detto
neo-realismo italiano: la prima, quella, per intendersi, di Rossellini, legata

ad una cronaca più immediata ed autentica, la seconda [...] volta a “rico
struire” una cronaca, che, come tale, non consente tuttavia alcun distacco.41
even as they appeared, in whatever way, still to have been conceived in

the context of chronicle-like realism, of the fait divers, exposed how that
realism had by now reached its conclusion and born whatever fruit could
be expected of it. In other words, the second phase of Italian neorealism
had reached its conclusion: the first, that of Rossellini, was tied to the most
immediate and authentic chronicle; the second [...] sought to “reconstruct”
a chronicle that, in and of itself, did not allow for any detached observation.
According to this account, having moved beyond dispassionate reporting

in order to incorporate an increasingly subjective viewpoint, neoreal-
ism could no longer be defined with reference to the chronicle. Other
accounts held, in contrast, that neorealist cinema was correctly charac-
terized as a chronicle but that the concept of the chronicle had itself
been poorly understood. This was the case put forward, for instance,
by Pio Baldelli, who argued that in neorealist films “la cronaca oscilla
tra questi due estremi: l’estremo del documento romanzato e l’estremo
opposto e pur contiguo della ‘vita vissuta,’ delle cose che lo scrittore, sot-
traendosi con discrezione alla vista del lettore, lascerebbe parlare [the
chronicle oscillates between two extremes: the extreme of a fictionalized
documentary and the opposite and yet related extreme of ‘lived life,’ of
those things that the writer, discreetly concealing himself from the gaze
of the reader, would leave to speak for themselves].”42 For Baldelli, that is
to say, the neorealist chronicle could be more or less dispassionate, more
or less subjective, while remaining a chronicle, and remaining neoreal-
ist. Gianni Puccini advanced a related argument in his 1948 essay “Per
una discussione sul film italiano” (For a discussion about Italian film).
“C’è chi dice, avanzando dubbi sull’avvenire riserbato al cinema italiano
‘neo-realista’, che probabilmente esso avrà vita effimera e breve, per
esser, come appare, legato a situazioni di cronaca contingente [There
are those who say, when expressing their doubts about the future that
attends Italian ‘neo-realist’ cinema, that its life will probably be fleeting
and brief, since it is, as it appears, tied to the situation of the contin-
gent chronicle],” he explained. Yet Puccini believed this position to be
entirely mistaken. “La cronaca [...] non è solo, evidentemente, quello
che i francesi chiamano ‘fait divers’ [...] ma tutto ciò [...] che a prima
vista cada sotto l’osservazione, che si svolga in mezzo alla gente ‘normale’
[The chronicle (...) is not only, evidently, what the French call fait divers
(...) but everything (...) that one can observe at first glance, everything
that happens to ‘normal’ people].”43 For Puccini, therefore, the neo-

realist focus on the chronicle was central to the cinematic search for
truth, which transcended the limited and limiting distinctions enforced
by the Italian critical establishment. “Il dopoguerra e la cronaca, o, se
volete, la cronaca del dopoguerra, hanno costretto gli artisti a indagare
su uomini, regioni, paesi conosciuti imperfettamente dalla geogra-
fia, erroneamente dalla storia, sommariamente o affatto dalla cultura
umanistica [The post-war period and the chronicle, or, if you prefer, the
chronicle of the post-war period, has forced artists to investigate the peo-
ple, the regions, the countries that have been understood imperfectly by
geography, mistakenly by history, superficially or not at all by humanis-
tic culture],” Puccini explained.44 The neorealist chronicle, in Puccini’s
account, was not a guarantor of objective or dispassionate analysis. It was
not base material reality to be transmuted into art. It was human truth in
its essential form, a truth ignored by traditional histories and traditional
art, and a truth which, in becoming the focus of cinematic investigation,
was leading towards new forms of knowledge.
Not only in cinema but across the Italian cultural landscape, the grow-
ing emphasis on the chronicle led to the term’s re-evaluation as well
as to repeated attempts at redefinition. The prominent journal Società
published a series of essays in the first years after the war which explored
what came to be understood as the “Necessità di una cronaca” (Need
for a chronicle). In an article by that title, in fact, the critic Gianfranco
Piazzesi expressed his worry that “gli storici e gli artisti [...] non possono
avere ancora quel distacco necessario [...] per vedere le cose [histori-
ans and artists (...) cannot yet achieve the detachment necessary (...)
to see things]” and called for all writers to pursue a direct and unfil-
tered account of reality, one freed from “ogni alterazione che possa aver
deformato l’avvenimento [any alteration that could have deformed the
event].”45 Piazzesi was convinced that the time for judgment, for inter-
pretation, had not yet arrived. The ambiguities of the post-war moment,
the trauma of global conflict, and the uncertainty of recovery precluded
any definitive conclusions. Authors might hope eventually to understand
what had happened and to transmit that understanding in writing. At
present, however, the moment of understanding remained a distant
hope, which meant that to strive prematurely for definitive truths would
only result in falsehood. Until such time as a comprehensive understand-
ing was available, Piazzesi called for writers to recount their experiences
“con la massima schiettezza [with the utmost candour].” This was not to
say, however, that they were merely to transcribe facts. Instead, Piazzesi
argued, they had to “rispettare i fatti e insieme [...] inquadrarli [...] in un
determinato spazio tempo che dia loro vita [respect the facts and at the
same time (...) frame them (...) in the specific space and time that brings
them to life].”46 Chronicles, in this sense, had to situate the facts, and to
structure them, in order to make them real for the reader; as Piazzesi put
it they had to “sistemare i fatti in modo duraturo dentro di noi [arrange
the facts in such a way that they remain within us].”47 Piazzesi believed
that facts held an inherent meaning, and he argued that chronicles had
to make that meaning clear, to disclose the historical significance of
the facts they sought to recount. Indeed, he maintained that “la nuda
elencazione dei fatti [...] contiene già un implicito giudizio contro i
responsabili [the bare list of facts (...) already contains an implicit judg-
ment against those who are responsible].”48 Proceeding from a respect
for unmediated facts, Piazzesi’s chronicle represented a tentative but
unmistakable step on the path to understanding, an attempt to develop
a critical comprehension of the historical order while remaining rigor-
ously tethered to historical detail.
A more thorough elaboration of this notion of the chronicle followed in
the November issue of Società, with Romano Bilenchi’s essay “Letteratura
d’occasione” (Occasional literature).49 Like Piazzesi, Bilenchi argued for
the pursuit of testimonial rather than creative writing after the war on
the grounds that
gli scrittori [...] hanno ricordi spesso troppo vivi, e scrivono, allora, sotto
la suggestione dei fatti, con un istintivo espressionismo. Sarebbe il peri-
colo più grave, per la nostra cultura, proprio questo immediato scambio
fra scrittore e lettore; l’uno che si eccita per scrivere, per eccitare, a sua
volta, l’altro. Allora, terminerebbe anche ogni missione della letteratura, in
funzione della società.50
writers [...] have memories that often remain too vivid, and their writing is
then too heavily influenced by the facts, making it instinctively expressionis-
tic. The resulting exchange between writer and reader would represent the
gravest danger for our culture; the former provoked to write, in order to
provoke, in turn, the latter. That would mark the termination of any social
mission for literature.
Put simply, Bilenchi’s argument was that the weight of current events
would inevitably overpower writers’ creative faculties, producing mis-
shapen or prejudiced accounts. Yet the real danger, Bilenchi insisted,
was that facts might be recounted accurately, even minutely, but in such a
way that they became misleading, conveying to the reader an impression
that differed from their true significance. “Falsare il senso delle cose,
mantenendo un’apparente, rigida, fedeltà ai fatti, è il peccato più grave
[Falsifying the meaning of events, while maintaining an apparent, rigid

fidelity to the facts, is the gravest sin],” Bilenchi argued.51 An account
could be factual, that is to say, but nonetheless false, meticulous in its
reporting of the details but mendacious in its approach to reality itself.
A faithful record of historical events could thus produce a fallacious
interpretation of historical truth, and this, for Bilenchi, represented a
profound threat to the emerging understanding of the war. Accurate
but mindless accounts, he explained, “finirebbero col non farci com-
prendere neppure quegli esterni avvenimenti dai quali furono motivati
[would end by making us fail to understand even the external events that
had motivated them].”52 True chronicles, in contrast, had to aim for an
informed comprehension of the truth even as they provided a precise
record of the facts. They were to avoid premature synthesis, but were
not to narrate events indiscriminately. This was undoubtedly a delicate
balance to maintain, but Bilenchi and Piazzesi insisted that it was a nec-
essary one, since an author’s erring to one side or the other would lead
readers to misunderstand history in a precarious historical moment.
Yet it was precisely this historical precariousness which led the intel-
lectuals affiliated with the Milanese journal Il Politecnico to reject Società’s
call for chronicles. From this opposing perspective, disinterested objec-
tivity, “the bare list of facts,” could never hope to produce real histori-
cal understanding, which could emerge only through subjective critical
reflection, authorial intervention, and skilful composition. As Franco
Calamandrei put it in a polemical 1945 essay in Il Politecnico,
raccontare, narrare, vuol dire rappresentare i fatti della vita nel loro determi-
narsi reciproci, nei loro rapporti scambievoli; vuol dire scoprire e mostrare
per mezzo di parole scritte come un fatto nasce da un altro fatto, come a sua
volta influisce sul fatto che l’ha originato, e a sua volta dà origine a un fatto
nuovo; vuol dire chiarire in quale maniera si trasformi di continuo la vita, e
per quali svolgimenti si formino in essa le vicende degli individui.53
to recount, to narrate, means to represent the facts of life in their recipro-

cal determination, in their relationships of exchange; it means discovering
and demonstrating through the written word how one fact is born from
another, and how in turn it influences the fact from which it originated, and
gives rise to a new fact; it means clarifying how life is continually transform-
ing, shaping individual experience.
For Calamandrei, who framed the issue in unmistakably Marxist terms,

the function of narrative was to instil a sense of historical causality.
The point was not only to recount facts but also to demonstrate how
individual facts share a causal relation, each one leading to the next,
each event containing within it the seeds of future change. By demon-
strating the underlying structures of history as it unfolds, by making
apparent how seemingly disparate facts are fundamentally and even
inextricably linked, by revealing the causes as well as the effects of histor-
ical change, narratives produce real knowledge, transmuting the trivia of
mere chronicles into a profound understanding of history.
Taking up Società’s arguments regarding the uncertainty of the present
moment – an uncertainty that for Piazzesi and Bilenchi had signalled the
need for chronicles – Calamandrei insisted in a polemical follow-up essay,
“Narrativa vince cronaca” (Narrative bests the chronicle), that only narra-
tive prose could alleviate the disorder and uncertainty which had inspired
the appeals for chronicles. For Calamandrei, “a questa confusione della
cronaca, in cui si impiglia e si dimentica la coscienza degli uomini, ripara
la narrativa, riparano i romanzi e i racconti [the response to the confu-
sion of the chronicle, in which human consciousness is ensnared and
abandoned, is to be found in narrative, it is to be found in novels and
short stories].”54 For Calamandrei, while the upheaval of the war and its
aftermath impeded understanding, it would not do patiently to wait for
greater understanding to arrive on its own. Writers should not merely
aggregate facts and anecdotes in anticipation of future comprehension.
Instead, they had to create that comprehension, to impart knowledge,
to foster understanding, and they had to do so through the act of writ-
ing. In Calamandrei’s words, it was the task of narrative to “cogliere nella
sotterranea logica delle azioni umane termini prima di loro ignorati, a
rendere maggiormente dialettica la nozione dell’uomo [grasp, in the
subterranean logic of human actions, those terms that have remained
ignored, and make our notion of humanity more dialectical].”55 It was up
to writers, that is to say, to overcome historical confusion, discovering the
causal links that gave meaning to disparate facts and then imparting this
newfound sense of order to their readers. By this measure, to write chron-
icles was to shirk one’s duty, to give up the search for logic, for causes, for
meaning in history, and to write as if history were itself meaningless.
While Il Politecnico, like Società, often published testimonial chroni-
cles, it maintained a strict and all but inviolable division between these
documentary texts and those deemed to have real literary or historical
value. Explaining Il Politecnico’s position in an open letter to the jour-
nal’s readers, who were not always convinced by this distinction, Franco
Fortini argued that
[l]’interesse appassionato e l’emozione che si provano alla lettura di un

immediato e magari sgrammaticato documento o diario o confessione o
cronaca, è molto diverso non come quantità, ma come qualità, dalla emozi-
one e dalla esperienza propriamente artistica che è data, a chi sa sentirla, da
un’opera di letteratura o di poesia. Il diario delle sofferenze di un operaio,
la lettera ultima di un partigiano condannato a morte, possono commuo-
verci fino all’ira o alle lacrime, ma ciò avviene perché risvegliano una zona
di pensieri, di sentimenti e di passioni assai diversi da quelli che ci possono
venire da una poesia di Petrarca o di Montale, da un racconto di Tolstoi o
da una musica di Mozart.56
the passionate interest and the emotion that one feels when reading a
first-hand and perhaps ungrammatical document or diary or confession or
chronicle is quite different, in character if not in intensity, from the truly
artistic emotion and experience provided, to those with the right sensibility,
by a work of art or literature or poetry. The diary of a workingman’s plight,
the last letter of a partisan condemned to death, can move us to rage or
to tears, but this occurs because they arouse an area of thought, feeling,
passion that is very different from those aroused by a poem by Petrarch or
Montale, a story by Tolstoy, or a piece of music by Mozart.
Art was one thing, Fortini explained, testimony another. From Il

Politecnico’s perspective, the problem was that, in the post-war period,
the distinction between these two realms appeared to be breaking down.
Thus, for instance, even as he praised Stefano Terra’s Rancore, a personal
account of the author’s coming of age between the world wars, Franco
Calamandrei expressed some reservations about what the work might
portend for the future direction of Italian literature. In Calamandrei’s
estimation, Rancore signalled the moment when the new generation of
Italian writers “comincia finalmente a narrare il motivo profondo della
propria esperienza [began finally to recount the profound material of
their experience].”57 At the same time, however, he worried that those
who would follow might take up the detailed personal exposition of
Terra’s text without sufficiently achieving the broader historical aware-
ness that distinguished his work. “Il pericolo è appunto che essi riman-
gano uno slancio sentimentale e istintivo, a poco a poco compiacendosi
della propria protesta, e noncuranti di disciplinarla con l’ascolto delle
ragioni continuamente elaborate dalla cronaca per la storia [The danger
is precisely that it remains a sentimental and instinctive impulse, and that
they are increasingly appeased by their own protest, failing to shape it in
terms of the materials that the chronicle lends to history],” Calamandrei
explained.58 Terra’s text had made vivid – and more to the point had
made comprehensible – his generation’s break with Fascism. He had
sought out root causes, marked the progressive stages of rejection, and
identified the historical significance of this generational shift. His fol-

lowers and imitators, however, might not possess Terra’s historical con-
sciousness, and Calamandrei thus feared that, despite the force of their
rejection of Fascism and the emotional weight of their anti-Fascist com-
mitment, their texts would remain mere chronicles.
Even as Calamandrei advanced Il Politecnico’s argument for a tradi-
tional and entirely orthodox distinction between testimony and litera-
ture, Piazzesi reiterated Società’s argument for a decidedly new model for
the chronicle. In an essay published in June 1946, the same month as
Il Politecnico had published Calamandrei’s piece, Piazzesi reviewed John
Reed’s Ten Days That Shook the World – a 1919 account of the author’s
first-hand experiences as a journalist in Moscow during the Russian
Revolution – in which Piazzesi argued that
le varie scene della rivoluzione ci sono presentate dallo scrittore John Reed
con abilità e precisione, ed inoltre l’evidentissima sua simpatia verso un
partito, nella lotta politica, non gli forza mai la mano, non lo costringe cioè
a una cosciente deformazione dei fatti, ma è soltanto particolare interpre-
tazione di questi fatti stessi.59
John Reed presents the various scenes of the revolution with skill and pre-
cision, and his evident sympathy for the party, in its political struggle, never
forces his hand, never compels him consciously to distort the facts, but
merely represents his particular interpretation of those very facts.
Reed’s text recommended itself to Piazzesi, then, because of its preci-

sion and factuality but also because of its evident historical and political
connotations. For Piazzesi, Ten Days That Shook the World was a chroni-
cle in the new and more compelling sense of that term, defined by its
ability to “cogliere di ogni avvenimento, l’aspetto decisivo ed essen-
ziale [grasp the decisive and essential aspect of every event].”60 Piazzesi
found in Reed’s text, as he wished to find in all chronicles, both the
record of the brute facts of a significant historical event and a revela-
tion of the historical forces that had led up to that event. Reed’s work
was rigorously, even minutely, factual, Piazzesi maintained, but it was
also profoundly suggestive, offering to the reader a sense of history and
of the justness of the cause.
More even than his insistence on the “need for a chronicle,” Piazzesi’s
review is the key text for understanding his and Società’s project for a
new mode of historical narration. Readers may have reason to doubt
whether Reed in any way lived up to this lofty standard, but they should
nevertheless recognize that Piazzesi was convinced that he did. According

to Piazzesi’s analysis, in fact, Reed demonstrated the potential inherent
in chronicles, which were to avoid overt editorializing and to adhere to
strict standards of documentation, but which were also to strive to shape
history even as they worked faithfully to record it. To accomplish this
feat – to present what Piazzesi had earlier called “the bare list of facts”
while nonetheless providing what he termed in his review the “interpre-
tation of those very facts” – required the writer to bridge modes of narra-
tion that had traditionally been divided by strict boundaries. As Piazzesi
wrote in his assessment of Ten Days That Shook the World,
[u]na cronaca [...] deve essere opera di un artista, se vuole dare esatta inter-
pretazione degli avvenimenti: se non esistesse tale compiuta realizzazione
formale libri come questi non verrebbero neppure presi in considerazione
e resterebbero solo imprecise testimonianze, senza poter sopravvivere a
lungo. Una cronaca però non può essere considerata solo da un punto di
vista letterario, proprio per la sua immediata efficacia, per la sua aderenza
ai fatti, e la sua non trascurabile funzione al servizio dei fatti stessi.61
a chronicle [...] must be the work of an artist, if it is to provide a precise

interpretation of events: unless they are fully realized, books like this one
would not even be considered, and they would remain nothing more than
imprecise testimonies, unable to survive for long. A chronicle cannot only
be evaluated from a literary vantage point, however, precisely because of its
immediate impact, its adherence to the facts, and its not insignificant role
in disseminating those facts.
In other words, Piazzesi placed chronicles between testimony and verdict,

between immediacy and timelessness, between literature and history.
Società’s claim to the “need for a chronicle” may have been countered
by Il Politecnico’s insistence that “narrative bests the chronicle,” but it is
clear that the chronicle which Il Politenico was attacking was not that which
Società was promoting.62 The two journals were using the same term, but
they were not contesting the same point. The intellectuals affiliated with
Il Politecnico wished to preserve a role for literature in the face of the
apparent demand for works of extra-literary (and even anti-literary) tes-
timony, which they called chronicles. Those affiliated with Società wished
to promote a new form of narrative, factual as well as interpretative, cir-
cumstantial as well as historical, which they called chronicles. They were
effectively talking at cross-purposes, debating chronicles, perhaps, but
not the same chronicles.
“Chronicle as Unrealized History”
The fluctuations in notions of the chronicle, evident in the debate

between Il Politecnico and Società, and evident, as well, in the critical
reception of Italian neorealism, can be attributed in large measure to
the complexities of the term’s semantic history. After all, cronaca was a
borrowed word, part of a critical vocabulary that post-war Italian artists
and intellectuals had inherited from their predecessors, in particular
from Benedetto Croce. It was Croce who had sought systematically to dif-
ferentiate between two models of writing history, as well as between two
modes of historical analysis, which he termed “[l]a storia [...], quella che
abbiamo chiamato storia viva, storia (idealmente) contemporanea [his-
tory (...), that which we have called living history, (ideally) contemporary
history]” and “la cronaca, la storia filologica, quella poetica e quella (chi-
amiamola pure storia) praticistica [chronicle, philological history, poetic
and practical history (if we can even call it history)].”63 It was Croce, in
other words, who had characterized histories written without sufficient
historical knowledge, without genuine historical wisdom, without a sense
of history’s development over time, as “chronicles.” Croce questioned the
assumptions of those who believed that the accumulation of eye-witness
testimony could serve to reconstruct a historical event. Such chronicles,
Croce insisted, would never yield real knowledge because, produced
without a proper understanding of the spirit of history, they were empty
facts, mere data. In Croce’s words, “cronaca e storia non sono distingui-
bili come due forme di storia [...] ma come due diversi atteggiamenti
spirituali. La storia è la storia viva, la cronaca la storia morta [chronicle
and history cannot be distinguished as two forms of history (...) but they
are two different spiritual modes. History is living history; chronicle is
dead history].”64 Testimonial or documentary chronicles were not living,
for Croce, because they lacked consciousness, uninformed as they were
by any overarching historical narrative.
In contrast to those who looked to chronicles for the “first draft of his-
tory,” Croce believed that the order of operations was reversed: “prima la
Storia, poi la Cronaca. Prima il vivente, poi il cadavere; e far nascere la
storia dalla cronaca tanto varrebbe quanto far nascere il vivente dal cada-
vere, che è invece il residuo della vita, come la cronaca è il residuo della
storia [first History and then Chronicle, first the living and then the dead.
To originate history from the chronicle would be like extracting life from
a corpse, which is the residue of life, as the chronicle is the residue of
history].”65 For Croce, one had always to understand the spirit of history
before attempting to understand any particular historical fact; one could
not proceed in the opposite order, accumulating facts in order to arrive
at a historical narrative. History might degenerate into chronicle, but

chronicle could never become history. As he put it, “le cronache ripulite,
tagliuzzate, ricombinate, riordinate, restano pur sempre cronache, cioè
narrazioni vuote: i documenti restaurati, riprodotti, descritti, allineati,
restano documenti, cioè cose mute [cleansed, cut up, spliced together,
and reordered, chronicles remain chronicles, that is, empty narratives.
Restored, reproduced, described, aligned, documents remain docu-
ments, that is, silent].”66 This is not to say, it must be emphasized, that
Croce disregarded historical sources, historical evidence, even historical
detail. Rather, it is to say that Croce believed one had always to begin from
an understanding of history itself, which could then reveal the histori-
cal truth in the document or in the narrative, in the particular or in the
universal. Croce thus inveighed against what he called “la volgare storia
universale, che vuole porre al luogo della mancante effettiva universalità
del pensiero un’universalità materiale, un’universalità-cosa, abbracciante
tutti i fatti che si trovano raccontati come accaduti nelle cinque parti
della Terra [that vulgar sort of universal history which would atone for
lack of an effective universality of thought by a universality of matter, of
things, embracing all the facts that have been related as occurring in all
the continents of the Earth],” and which he dismissed as “un aggregato o
coacervo di un certo numero di cronache, [...] una grossa Chronica mundi
[an aggregate or piling together of a certain number of chronicles, (...) a
bulky Chronica mundi].”67 For Croce, to proceed from the massive compi-
lation of data rather than from the recognition of the spirit of history was
an inversion of the proper course of historical study. “La storia va dall’alto
verso il basso, e non all’inverso [History goes from top to bottom, not the
other way round],” he insisted.68 One had always to start with historical
understanding in order to grasp the meaning of any historical detail; one
could not hope to make progress in the other direction.
The Crocean distinction between inert chronicle and living history,
between accumulated facts and articulated wisdom, continued to shape
Italian cultural discourse in the age of neorealism. This discourse was
articulated, to a substantial degree, with terms supplied by Croce, the
philosopher whose theories underpinned Italian art, politics, and social
thought in the first half of the twentieth century. As the painter and
novelist Carlo Levi succinctly put it in 1945, “Croce è stato per qua
rant’anni il massimo ispiratore della cultura italiana [Croce has been
the most influential figure in Italian culture for the last forty years],”
and he would continue to exert his influence on Italian intellectual life
for many more years to come.69 Between the wars, it had been all but
impossible to finish school, let alone to publish in prominent literary
periodicals, without demonstrating a thorough immersion in Crocean
aesthetics, Crocean historicism, and Crocean liberalism. A writer might

seek to emend Croce, or to contest one principle or another of Crocean
philosophy, but one could not ignore Croce or work entirely without
reference to his major ideas. “Non c’è quasi nessuno di noi, che non sia
passato attraverso Croce [There is not one of us who has not studied his
Croce],” explained Antonio La Penna in his 1946 essay “I giovanissimi
e la cultura negli ultimi anni del fascismo” (Youth and Italian culture in
the last years of Fascism).70
For La Penna’s generation of anti-Fascist intellectuals, who had risen
to prominence in the last years of Mussolini’s regime, and who were cen-
tral to the development of Italian culture after the Second World War,
Croce had been not only an intellectual guide but also a political inspi-
ration, thanks to his very public stand against Fascism.71 As we saw in
the previous chapter, however, the younger generation’s turn to militant
anti-Fascism led, in the end, to a political and intellectual break with
Croceanism. Croce had provided Italy’s cultural opposition with the crit-
ical remove from which Fascism could be called into question, sustaining
an ideal plane from which the debased reality of Fascist ideology could
be found wanting. After the war, however, that intellectual remove, that
ideal plane, began to seem sterile.72 Croce, we have seen, had dismissed
Fascism as little more than an aberration, a “parenthesis” in Italian his-
tory, and this dismissal had helped many young intellectuals to resist the
siren call of Mussolini’s regime. Yet after Fascism’s defeat most no longer
wished to resist politicization, instead seeking to engage directly with
the political demands of the post-war reconstruction, a task for which
Croceanism was generally felt to be inadequate.
There was, then, a sharp turn away from Croce after the war. Many of
those whose notions of anti-Fascism had begun with Croce sought explic-
itly to break with him in their pursuit of new models for post-Fascism.73
Thus, as Luigi Russo put it in his 1949 Memorie di un vecchio crociano
(Memoirs of an old Crocean), “quelli che passavano per i migliori e più
devoti scolari del Croce nel ventennio nero, [...] con la caduta del fas-
cismo presero strade diverse e non poterono fare altrimenti [those who
were considered the best and most devoted of Croce’s pupils during the
Fascist period, (...) followed different paths after the fall of Fascism, and
they could not have done otherwise].”74 The case was put more polem-
ically by Natalino Sapegno in his intellectual autobiography “Croce e la
mia generazione” (Croce and my generation), in which he expressed
both a sense of gratitude to Croce for his stance against the regime and
a growing “sentimento di ribellione [sense of rebellion]” against Croce’s
“dittatura intellettuale [intellectual dictatorship],” which he shared with
many if not most young Italian intellectuals after the war.75 Elio Vittorini,
editor of Il Politecnico, was one of those who led the charge against what
he similarly called Croce’s “dittatura dell’idealismo [dictatorship of ide-
alism],” declaring that
la cultura italiana si è salvata dal fascismo perché si era già perduta nell’ide-
alismo. E se oggi vogliamo che essa ritrovi la possibilità di non essere una
cultura conservatrice, di essere una cultura progressista, di aderire alla vita
e diventare la coscienza stessa della vita, occorrerà, per prima cosa, sottrarla
all’influenza di ogni residuo della dittatura idealista.76
Italian culture had saved itself from Fascism because it had already lost itself
in idealism. And if today we do not wish for it to be a conservative culture,
if we wish for it to be a progressive culture, to cling to what is alive and to
become life’s very conscience, it will be necessary, first of all, to abolish from
it every remnant of the idealist dictatorship.
Rejecting what they saw as Croce’s “disinteresse umano [disregard for

the human],” his “orgoglio storicistico [historicist pride],” his “reto
rica dell’uomo olimpico [rhetoric of Olympian man],” many Italian
intellectuals, often former Crocean devotees, were intent on pursuing
greater engagement with post-war politics than Crocean theory would
countenance.77 They wanted to remake Italian society, not to stand above
it, to shape Italy’s political future, not to appraise it. In place of Crocean
liberalism, many of those who came of age in the 1930s found themselves,
in the 1940s, turning to Marxism, just as, in place of Crocean neo-idealism,
they found themselves turning to materialism. Distancing themselves
from Croce, indeed opposing themselves to Croce, they sought to direct
Italian culture away from the Croceanism that had shaped their own
education and their own intellectual beginnings.
Despite their polemical rhetoric, however, with its denunciations of
“assolutismo crociano [Crocean absolutism]” and its calls to “Bruciare
il veleno crociano [Burn the Crocean poison],” theirs was a distinctly
Crocean turn away from Croce, and their Marxism and materialism con-
tinued to bear the unmistakable signs of Croce’s influence.78 They may
have rejected Croce, that is to say, but they could not abandon Crocean
modes of thought or the Crocean critical vocabulary. In fact, to the extent
that they rejected Croce, they did so largely in Crocean terms. They tried
to move beyond Croce by means of Croce, to “uscire dal Croce per le
strade da lui tracciate [depart from Croce following the paths that he had
himself traced],” in the memorable phrase of Giacomo Debenedetti.79 As
Mario Sansone described, after the war “quasi tutti quelli che si sono
dichiarati contrari o nemici di Croce quando poi passano all’esame
critico, generalmente o partono da Croce o ripetono Croce senza saperlo

[nearly all of those who have declared themselves opposed to or enemies
of Croce, when they pass to the stage of critical examination, either begin
from Croce or repeat Croce without knowing it].”80 For many Italian
intellectuals, no system of thought apart from Croce’s seemed capable
of supplying the intellectual coordinates to replace Crocean neo-ideal-
ism and absolute historicism. Croce’s ideas were too powerful, and his
influence too ingrained, to be discarded haphazardly. Dissatisfied with
Croce, post-war Italian writers and thinkers were nonetheless Croce’s
intellectual heirs, faced with the task of remaking Crocean thought from
the inside in order eventually to liberate themselves from Croce’s camp.
The post-war debate over the chronicle, which shaped the formulation
and critical reception of Italian neorealism, reflected both the continu-
ing prominence of Croce’s intellectual categories and the emerging push
for a Crocean turn away from Croceanism.81 The persistence of Croce’s
influence was evident across Italian culture, and not only in the work of
the philosopher’s closest followers, such as Francesco Flora, who sought,
in his response to Carlo Bo’s 1951 Inchiesta sul neorealismo, to distinguish
between two branches of post-war realism, one characterized by what
he termed “un neoverismo di cronaca [a neoverismo of the chronicle]”
the other elevated to become “un neoverismo di poesia [a neoverismo of
poetry],” a distinction that echoed Croce’s influential division between
“poesia e non-poesia [poetry and non-poetry].”82 On the same occasion,
Carlo Emilio Gadda, hardly an orthodox Crocean, offered an even more
forceful judgment, in unmistakably Crocean terms, when he dismissed
the “catena crudamente obiettivante della cronaca neorealista [crudely
objective chain of the neorealist chronicle]” and argued that this “residuo
fecale della storia [faecal residue of history]” was in need of a “dimen-
sione noumenica [noumenal dimension]” in order to achieve the status
of art.83 Carlo Dionisotti made a related point, with a similarly Crocean
orientation, in his 1946 analysis of Resistance literature, a literature
he found to be largely inadequate, since in the work of most partisan
writers “la cronaca pesa e trabocca sul piano della storia [the chronicle
weighs upon and floods the plane of history].”84 Many of the judgments
levelled against post-war Italian films likewise rested on Crocean founda-
tions. Thus, for instance, when Marcello Pagliero’s Roma città libera was
dismissed as “un fatto di cronaca senza commenti e senza un interesse
eccezionale [a chronicle without commentary and without much inter-
est],” when Alberto Lattuada’s Senza pieta was branded a “tentativo di cro-
naca cruda dei nostri tempi [attempted crude chronicle of our times],”
when Pietro Germi’s Gioventù perduta was deemed a “cronaca di tutti i
giorni, arida, nella schematicità dei fatti [dry, everyday chronicle, with a
schematic approach to the facts],” or when it was said of the depiction of

childhood poverty in Sciuscià that “De Sica ha proprio superato la cronaca
del fenomeno per ridarcene intera, attraverso il dramma, la storia [De
Sica has surpassed the chronicle of this phenomenon in order to provide
us, by means of drama, with its history],” these were Crocean judgments
delivered in Crocean terms.85 In film circles, those terms would remain
hegemonic for decades to come, thanks in no small part to their adop-
tion by the influential critic Guido Aristarco, whose account of neoreal-
ism held that “la civiltà del nostro cinema è arrivata, nel dopoguerra [...] a
una fase oggettiva del realismo: alla cronaca, al documento, alla denuncia
[our cinematic culture arrived, in the post-war period (...) at an objec-
tive phase of realism: at the chronicle, at the document, at the exposé],”
and who continually called for a new, post-neorealist cinema, defined
by the passage “dalla cronaca alla storia [from chronicle to history].”86
Aristarco’s, it is apparent, was to a significant degree a Crocean interpre-
tation of neorealism.87 What he consistently failed to recognize, however,
was that the notion of the chronicle underwriting neorealist representa-
tion was not (or was not entirely) Crocean, and neorealism was thus far
more original, and far less conventional, than he was willing to grant.
In truth, prominent theorists in the age of neorealism, including
Gianfranco Piazzesi, Romano Bilenchi, and the other intellectuals at
Società, may have adopted Croce’s vocabulary, but they did so in order
to advance a distinctly post-Crocean program. As Claudio Milanini put
it, with the rise of neorealism, leading Italian artists and intellectuals
increasingly found themselves “crocianamente polemizzando con Croce
[polemicizing with Croce in a Crocean manner].”88 Bilenchi cogently
explained the modes of understanding that contributed to this project
when he said of Società’s founding editorial board, “sappiamo benissimo
quali siano i limiti della scuola che fa capo a Croce e ai suoi discepoli. Ma
sappiamo anche che nessun altro movimento di idee e di studi potrebbe
oggi contrapporsi a quello idealista [we are well aware of the limits of the
school of Croce and his disciplines. But we are also aware that no other
philosophical and intellectual movement could today oppose that of ide-
alism].”89 Società’s notion of the chronicle clearly reflected the journal’s
post-Crocean conundrum, as Piazzesi was forced to distinguish his case
for the “need for a chronicle” from previous (read: Crocean) uses of the
term. In particular, he was led to insist that the generally established sense
of “cronaca in quanto storia mancata, non è per niente paragonabile
alle costruzioni di questa moderna intelligenza e l’antichissima parola
ci sembra nuova in un significato impensato [chronicle as unrealized
history is in no way related to the constructions of modern intelligence
so that, in its previously unimagined meaning, this quite old-fashioned
word now appears new to us].”90 Whereas Croce had drawn firm dis-
tinctions between the genres, Piazzesi sought to bridge the gap between
modes of narration, even as he recognized the difficulty inherent in this
task. Italian readers were, he admitted, “abituati [...] a distinguere netta-
mente tra opera d’arte e di pensiero, tra poesia da una parte e filosofia e
storia dall’altra [accustomed (...) to distinguishing clearly between works
of art, thought, and poetry to one side and those of philosophy and his-
tory to the other],” but this was because they had encountered relatively
few texts like John Reed’s, “libri che sfuggano a questa ingenua, somma-
ria, ma utile distinzione [books that managed to get away from naïve,
abstract, but useful distinction].”91 Reducing Croce’s thought in this way,
until it appeared little more than an outmoded heuristic, Piazzesi man-
aged to concede Italian culture’s Croceanism while also justifying his
own efforts to move beyond Croce and to renew historical narrative by
redefining the chronicle, a category Croce had disdained.
This may help to explain the hostility with which Piazzesi’s ideas were
received by the intellectuals affiliated with Il Politecnico, who, despite
Vittorini’s expressed opposition to “the dictatorship of idealism,”
remained wedded to a far more orthodox Crocean notion of the chroni-
cle. The apparent contradictions in this position have often confounded
scholars, who argue both that Vittorini and Il Politecnico engaged in “an
unyielding polemic with the Crocean cultural hegemony” and that it is
“abbastanza evidente che Vittorini è molto più vicino a Benedetto Croce
che a Marx [rather evident that Vittorini is much closer to Benedetto
Croce than to Marx].”92 The truth is that Il Politecnico, like Società, adopted
a Crocean vocabulary and many Crocean categories even as its contrib-
utors reacted negatively to some aspects of Croce’s thought. The contra-
dictions in this position, which were by no means unique to Il Politecnico,
complicated the debates over post-war chronicles. Asserting varying
degrees of opposition to the term’s Crocean origins, and doing so incon-
sistently and perhaps haphazardly, was bound to cause confusion.
In truth, despite their apparent opposition, and despite their evident
linguistic confusion, the writers at Società and those at Il Politecnico shared
at least one significant common goal. Whether they emphasized chron-
icle or narrative, what they were after was historical understanding.
Piazzesi, as we have seen, called for chronicles because he believed that
“historians and artists [...] cannot yet achieve the detachment necessary
[...] to see things.” We have seen, too, that Calamandrei preferred what
he called narrative to chronicle because he insisted that the shaping
force of the artist would begin “clarifying how life is continually trans-
forming, shaping individual experience.” We have seen that Piazzesi and
his colleagues at Società believed that a recent history could be reached

through the steady accretion of first-hand factual testimony, while
Calamandrei believed that testimony was not enough, that the processes
of history had to be identified, analysed, and elucidated in self-conscious
and ambitious narrative prose. They disagreed about means, that is to
say, but not about ends, proposing contrasting solutions to a common
problem: that of the proper historical mode in which to narrate the
“people’s war,” with its interpenetration of collective and singular expe-
rience, of public and private history, of global decisions and personal
consequences.
“The Passage ‘from the Particular to the Universal’”
Whether they called it chronicle or history, post-war Italian artists and

intellectuals emphasized the effect of world historical forces on the lives
of private citizens, taking up the challenge of connecting the intimate
dynamics of individual lives to the geopolitical processes that had served,
directly or indirectly, to transform them. Yet this challenge was exacer-
bated by a Crocean cultural inheritance which insisted that “History goes
from top to bottom, not the other way around,” that one could never
proceed from a factual account of private events to a total perception
of world history. Some sought to overcome this apparent impasse by
redefining the chronicle; others sought to overcome it by privileging the
perceptive powers of art over the chronicle. The methods differed; the
goal was the same. That goal, Italo Calvino outlined in his essay “Saremo
come Omero!,” which we discussed in the previous chapter, was to dis-
cover “il nostro modo dialettico di realizzare quel passaggio ‘dal partico-
lare all’universale’ che l’estetica classica considera come fondamentale
della poesia [our dialectical manner of achieving the passage ‘from the
particular to the universal’ that classical aesthetics considers fundamen-
tal to poetry].”93 The point, in other words, was to discover how each per-
son’s experience reflected, on an intimate scale, the shared experience
of global war, how it was both determined by and determinative of world
history, how it was at once unique and typical, personal and political. It
was to do so, moreover, from the bottom up, starting from individual
experience in order to arrive at universal understanding.94
The problem with this approach – and this is where the challenge of
Croce’s condemnation of the chronicle is most salient – was that the
scale of the war so thoroughly surpassed the individual frame of refer-
ence that personal testimony, even the mass accumulation of each indi-
vidual’s testimony, seemed incapable of ever comprehending it. The
novelist Massimo Bontempelli identified the problem in the following

terms: “La guerra ammassa gli uomini per disindividuarli, rifonderli in
un loro magma originario. Di fronte a questo la nostra pietà si attutisce.
Sentiamo la pena di una persona, non la pena di centomila confusi in
una artificiosa unità [War amasses men in order to de-individuate them,
melting them down again into their originary magma. When we face this
our mercy is diminished. We feel the pain of one person, not the pain
of one hundred thousand muddled in an artificial unity].”95 The death
and destruction caused by the war surpassed human comprehension; it
was impossible to cultivate an emotional response consonant with such
devastation. Cesare Zavattini was among those to grapple with the impli-
cations of the resulting disparity between event and sentiment:
Pensate ai morti, diranno autorevoli persone. Non possiamo. Se piango

per un morto, quanto dobbiamo piangere per tre morti? Un anno senza
un minuto di tregua. E per trecentomila morti tutta la vita strappandomi i
capelli; e per tre milioni di morti? non si può essere curvi e afflitti propor-
zionatamente alle sciagure che ci sono toccate.96
Think of the dead, eminent people will say. We cannot. If I cry for one
dead man, how much do I need to cry for three deaths? One year without
a moment’s pause. And for three hundred thousand deaths an entire life
spent tearing out my hair. And for three million deaths? One cannot be
bowed and tormented in any way proportionate to the disasters that have
befallen us.
Events that were heart-wrenching on an individual scale became numb-

ing on a mass scale. “The death of one is a tragedy, the death of millions
is a statistic,” as Stalin is supposed (mistakenly) to have said. In a sense,
Zavattini was giving voice to the need to make the statistic a tragedy, to
give meaning to events whose magnitude beggared understanding, to
convey with adequate proportion not only the suffering of an individual
but also that of the masses.
Neorealism, to which Zavattini was a key contributor, can be understood
as an attempt to meet that need. With what artists and critics identified at
the time as its search for a “sintesi tra l’io e il mondo [synthesis between
the I and the world],” its emphasis on “il rapporto individuo-società [the
relationship between individual and society],” its desire to “assumere la
lezione della guerra come esperienza individuale e collettiva insieme
[take up the lesson of the war as an individual and collective experience
together],” its portrayal of an “individuo che riflette in sé il tutto, dell’io
che, facendosi cosmo, in sé riassorbe e invera la brutalità della massa
[individual who reflects the whole in himself, the I who, making him-
self the cosmos, reabsorbs and redeems the brutishness of the masses],”
neorealism was an attempt to represent concurrently the struggles of
the one and the many, portraying both the unique dynamics and the
universal significance of individual experience.97 As Antonio Pietrangeli
explained in a 1944 essay, one of the ambitious goals of the new cinema
was to “cercare di scoprire la realtà dell’individuo nel suo mondo e la
realtà del mondo attuale nell’individuo [try to discover the reality of the
individual in his world and the reality of the contemporary world in the
individual].”98 Cesare Zavattini himself made largely the same point in
a 1951 essay. “Se il neorealismo fu davvero e prima di tutto una scoperta
della coscienza, l’individuazione di quello che ciascuno di noi può con-
tare nella vita collettiva [If neorealism was in fact and above all a discov-
ery of consciousness, the identification of each individual’s contribution
to communal life],” he wrote, then for neorealism to have a future
basta che si continui il discorso sino alle estreme conseguenze per trovare
gli elementi del nuovo spettacolo, se di spettacolo vogliamo continuare a
parlare. Ci sembra che il film italiano del dopoguerra abbia contribuito
come nessun altro a rendere esplicita e definitiva la funzione sociale di
quest’arte.99
it will suffice for us to carry this discourse to its most extreme conclusions
in order to discover the elements of the new performance, if it is of perfor-
mance that we wish to speak. It seems to me that post-war Italian cinema
has done more than any other to make explicit and definitive the social
function of this art.
Emphasizing the role of the individual in a collective drama, Zavattini’s

vision for neorealism can be read as a response to his earlier analysis of
the war’s challenge to narrative. Neorealist films, he was saying, were
uniquely equipped to portray the intimate struggles of their protagonists
while also conveying the social and historical causes and consequences
that gave those struggles their broader and more representative signifi-
cance.100 They were so made as to speak at once of the one and the many.
Zavattini’s analysis finds its echo in Marsha Kinder’s adoption of the
Genettian distinction between “singulative narrative,” entirely specific to
the event it recounts, and “iterative narrative,” which indicates a pattern,
if not in fact a way of being, in order to grasp neorealism’s characteris-
tic use of unique individual stories to narrate a collective experience.101
According to Kinder’s theory, Hollywood cinema stresses the singulative,
the irreducible uniqueness of its protagonists, whereas “the neorealist
intoxication with the iterative immerses the spectator [...] in the ideologi-
cal relations between individual and collective experience.”102 As Kinder
details, one of the ways neorealist films stress their iterative signification
is through introductory texts or voiceovers, announcements that locate
the specific events the film will recount within the general condition of
humanity.103 The most famous example is one we have already seen, the
rolling text at the outset of Visconti’s La terra trema, which explains that
“the story the film tells is the same all over the world and is repeated every
year everywhere that men exploit other men.” Alberto Lattuada’s Senza
pietà similarly begins with a written declaration announcing, in part, that
“Questo film vuol essere una testimonianza di verità. La storia si svolge
in Italia, ma potrebbe svolgersi in qualunque parte del mondo dove la
guerra ha fatto dimenticare agli uomini la pietà [This film wishes to tes-
tify to the truth. The story takes place in Italy, but it could take place in
any part of in the world where war has caused men to forget mercy].”
In Giuseppe De Santis’s Non c’è pace tra gli ulivi, an introductory voice-
over recounts the history of Ciociaria, the region in which the film is
set, and then situates that history in a broader human narrative, insisting
that “anche qui, come in tanta parte del mondo, c’è chi ha e chi non
ha, chi possiede qualcosa, e chi niente [here, too, as in much of the rest
of the world, there are those who have and those who don’t, those who
own something and those who own nothing].” In each of these cases,
the announcement declares that the film’s universality is predicated on
its specificity, that its general truth is a function of the particular truths
of the individual case it represents. The films are iterative, that is to say,
because they are grounded in what Calvino called “the passage ‘from
the particular to the universal.’” While Kinder refers to this “passage” as
neorealism’s “intoxication with the iterative,” in the post-war Italian critical
vocabulary it went by another name: cronaca.
“New Laws of Performance”
After the war, artists and critics alike began to extend and even to invert
Croce’s definition of the term and to use it in order to discuss the uni-
versal significance of discrete, particular experiences. That is, while many
continued to refer to the chronicle in a traditional sense, as we have seen,
others conceived of it in new ways in order to confront new issues. This
is how the term was used, for instance, in the presentation of Gott mit
uns, Renato Guttuso’s 1945 collection of Resistance paintings, wherein
Antonello Trombadori sought to draw attention both to the historical
specificity and to the universal applicability of Guttuso’s project: “Questi
disegni sono nati, innanzi tutto, per ricordare le lotte che il popolo ha
sostenuto e vinto contro il fascismo [These drawings were born, in the first
instance, to commemorate the struggle waged and won against Fascism],”
he wrote. “E per consentire con esse. Essi invitano, attraverso la cronaca,
all’universalità del simbolo [And to take a side in that struggle. They invite
us, through the chronicle, to the universality of the symbol].”104 In a 1947
interview on the subject of Resistance literature in Italy, Arnaldo Bocelli
made a similar case, stressing the
prevalenza, di diari, memorie, confessioni, riferentisi agli ultimi tempi

del fascismo, all’occupazione tedesca e alla guerra partigiana, cose viste e
soprattutto vissute; esperienze individuali rievocate o rimediate nel quadro
generale della sofferenza umana. Una letteratura nella quale documento,
narrazione e autobiografia entrano in misura diversa a seconda del diverso
temperamento dell’autore. Ma nella quale è tuttavia osservabile, anche dove
le cose ritratte siano più fosche o dolenti, un certo studio, da parte d egli
scrittori, di dare non già sfogo ma prospettiva ai propri ricordi e passioni,
di affrancarli dalla cronaca più massiccia. Come dire una ricerca o piuttosto
una esigenza, nella provvisorietà e parzialità dell’ora, di universali.105
prevalence of diaries, memoirs, confessions, recounting the last days of

Fascism, the German occupation, and the partisan war, events witnessed
first-hand and above all events that have been lived; individual experiences
recalled or reconsidered in the general framework of human suffering. A lit-
erature in which document, narration, and autobiography are employed to
varying degrees depending on the author’s disposition. But a literature in
which, even where the things depicted are quite dark and painful, we can
yet see a certain desire, on the part of the writers, not to give vent but to give
perspective to their memories and passions, to free them from the mass of
the chronicle. This is to say that we can see the desire, or rather the need,
for universals, despite the contingency and the partiality of the moment.
Bocelli, like Trombadori, was saying that particular and often deeply
personal representations of the partisan struggle were not forsaking his-
tory for the chronicle, as Croce would have it, but were instead seeking
Crocean history, in the sense of a historical imperative, in the very speci-
ficity and materiality of the chronicle.
Articulated in similar terms, neorealist cinema was said to be defined
by its “diretta ispirazione alla realtà, alla cronaca, se si vuole, [...] ma por-
tata su un piano di più vasta significazione, rivissuta drammaticamente
e trasformata in espressione di esigenze e di sentimenti collettivi [direct
inspiration from reality, from the chronicle, if you like, (...) but raised
to a broader significance, re-experienced dramatically and transformed
into an expression of collective desires and emotions],” as Lorenzo
Quaglietti wrote in a 1948 review of De Santis’s Caccia tragica.106 Pasquale
Prunas, the young critic and editor of the journal Sud, made largely the
same point in his 1946 review of De Sica’s Sciuscià: “Finalmente una sto-
ria, che nasce dalla cronaca [Finally, a history born from the chronicle],”
he wrote, directly contradicting the central premise of Croce’s theory.107
Pace Croce, that is to say, the neorealist chronicle was promoted as a form
of history. Paraphrasing Pietro Germi, a journalist had the following to
say after an interview with the director in 1949:
A quel che il critico francese voleva intendere col suo “neo-realismo,”

Germi obbietta che i più consapevoli registi italiani tendono oramai tutti
alla costruzione, al racconto elaborato e finito: la cronaca non è più per
essi – o non lo è mai stata – un’occasione brutale e lampeggiante, ma sem-
mai una base d’ispirazione, da cui elevarsi alla “storia” (almeno in un senso
compattamente narrativo).108
Against what a French critic wished to imply with his “neo-realism,” Germi
objects that the most conscientious Italian directors all tend by now to focus
on construction, on the developed and finalized narrative: for them the
chronicle is no longer – or never was – a raw or immediate circumstance,
but rather a source of inspiration, from which to raise oneself to the level of
“history” (at least in a heavily narrative sense).
In Germi’s view – and the same is true of Prunas’s and Quaglietti’s as

well – the individual experience of any singular cinematic chroni-
cle seems to encapsulate, to embody, and to convey a collective, even
a universal experience. In its singularity it is understood to reveal the
processes of a shared history. In place of the rigid distinctions between
chronicle and history, or chronicle and narrative, that is to say, the artists
and critics of the age of neorealism worked to achieve true universality
through the chronicle’s rigorous particularity.
In many respects, the intricate representational dynamics at the heart
of this project can be identified most clearly in the post-war work of the
playwright Leopoldo Trieste. Today, Trieste’s fame, such as it is, results
primarily from his performances as an actor in some of the celebrated
films of Federico Fellini. In the immediate post-war period, however,
Trieste was one of Italy’s most accomplished young dramaturges and one
of the few authors under the age of thirty to have his works performed in
the country’s major theatres. He was also closely tied to the intellectual
environments in which neorealism took shape, having studied under

Umberto Barbaro and Luigi Chiarini at Rome’s Centro sperimentale di
cinematografia, and having collaborated on the screenplays for several
films even as he wrote and produced three innovative plays in quick suc-
cession in the first years after the war.109 It was in his second production,
the aptly named Cronaca, first performed in Milan in 1946, that Trieste
offered something like a solution to the problem posed by Zavattini: how
to convey the enormities of the Second World War through the particu-
larities of one individual’s experience.
Trieste’s play, believed to be the first theatrical production to ground
its narrative in the Holocaust, tells the story of Daniele, a Jewish sur-
vivor of an unnamed Nazi extermination camp, who returns to Rome
in order to reunite with two childhood friends, Lucia, who had been
almost like a sister to him, and Massimo, who had been his closest
friend, but who, we learn, had divulged his identity to the Nazis in
exchange for money.110 Shocked to see his former friend return, and
clearly frightened that Daniele will seek revenge, Massimo asks him
nervously where he has been. “Uno dei tanti campi. Ne avrai appreso
qualcosa dai giornali [One of the many camps. I’m sure you’ve read of
it in the newspapers],” Daniele responds, making one of many refer-
ences in the play to journalism, to the news of the day, to chronicles.111
Everyone on stage seems both transfixed and oppressed by the shock-
ing details continually discussed in post-war newspaper headlines:
“La tua maledetta cronaca [Your damned chronicles],” one character
says in reproach to another as she sits near the fire with newspaper in
hand; another laments, “comunque ti giri [...] non spremi che miseri
titoli di giornale.... Confusi, rimediati, stampati con materiale cattivo
che poi ti sporca le dita. Cronaca. Niente più che cronaca [wher-
ever your turn (...) all you see are miserable newspaper headlines ...
Confused, patched together, printed with cheap ink that smudges on
your fingers. Chronicles. Nothing more than chronicles].”112 Daniele
seems to be the only character in the play who can see such chronicles
for what they might become: keys to a new understanding and even to
a new society.
In this way, Daniele can be said to advance the case that Trieste him-
self had made in a polemical essay, “Cronaca e tragedia” (Chronicle and
tragedy), written contemporaneously with his play Cronaca and pub-
lished in the theatre journal Quarta parete. As Trieste would later recall of
the essay’s publication,
la stesura era provocatoria secondo la mia scalpitante natura di allora, anche

se i concetti erano addirittura ovvi (erano quelli in fondo del neorealismo
che andava nascendo specialmente nel cinema, ma anche nelle altre voci
di tutti gli artisti aperti al vento dei tempi) ne sprizzò una furiosa polemica
dei lettori.113
the piece was provocative, thanks to my restless nature at the time, even if
the concepts it expressed were actually quite obvious (in essence they were
those of neorealism, which was then emerging, especially in the cinema,
but also those of all the many artists who were open to the spirit of the
times), so it inspired a furious polemic among the readers.
“Cronaca e tragedia” announced Trieste’s vision for a new theatre,

“[u]n teatro onesto che scaraventi sui nervi del pubblico la impressio-
nante nudità dei fatti [a theatre without pretence, one which assaults
the public’s nerves with the astonishing nudity of the facts].”114 The
essay’s primary contention was that the narratives of the past had
been made obsolete by the war. They were no longer necessary in
order to create dramatic tension; indeed, the dramatic tensions they
could inspire fell far short of those that one experienced every day
just by reading the headlines in the newspaper. “La cronaca ha un
linguaggio violento che, tradotto in forme teatrali, diventa spon-
taneamente tragedia o farsa [The chronicle has a violent language
that, when translated into the forms of theatre, immediately becomes
tragedy or farce],” Trieste argued. “La cronaca [...] ha creato nuove
leggi di spettacolo [The chronicle (...) has created new laws for per-
formance].”115 Current events were thus the new drama; chronicles
were the new theatre. From Trieste’s perspective, domestic dramas,
comedies of mistaken identity, melodramas, farces, even tragedies, all
seemed hackneyed, clichéd, and irrelevant after the war. New modes
of representation were required, and new plays that were equal to
and drawn from daily chronicles. “Al lavoro, gente di teatro [Get to
work, people of the theatre],” Trieste concluded. “Quest’epoca fe
roce ci dà in pasto le sue viscere calde, e non è ammessa anemia [This
ferocious age has served up for us its hot entrails, and anaemia is not
allowed].”116
Trieste’s was far from a straightforward project, however, and one key
reason is that Crocean notions of the chronicle continued to shape the
Italian critical landscape. As a result, rather than ratifying Trieste’s “new
laws for performance,” many of Italy’s leading artists and dramatists openly
expressed their opposition to any “theatre of the chronicle,” and Quarta
parete, the journal that had hosted Trieste’s “Cronaca e tragedia,” received
and published a series of ripostes, many of them unfavourable, from some
of Italy’s leading intellectuals.117 The argument of Trieste’s first respond-

ent, the theatre director Leonardo De Mitri, is indicative of the general
tenor of the debate. “La Cronaca [...] è un fatto, una eccezione della vita
normale e non può e non deve dare al teatro nulla [The Chronicle (...)
is a fact, an exception to everyday life, and it neither can nor should offer
anything to the theatre],” De Mitri insisted. “I fatti di cronaca non sono
una novità della vita del dopoguerra. C’erano anche prima [Chronicles
did not begin with the post-war period. We had them before].”118 For
De Mitri, “un fatto di cronaca resta un fatto di cronaca e un seguito di
scene episodiche non è una commedia. La cronaca è nuda e non può
essere vestita che di panni sporchi [a chronicle remains a chronicle, and
a sequence of episodes is not a comedy. The chronicle is nude and cannot
be dressed up except with dirty linens].” Indeed, De Mitri went so far as to
deny “alcuna relazione tra Cronaca e Teatro [any relationship whatsoever
between Chronicle and Theatre].”119 De Mitri’s argument, with its strict
divisions between art and non-art, between the spiritual and the material
planes, was distinctly Crocean. Even its phrasing was Crocean. After all,
just as De Mitri asserted that “a chronicle remains a chronicle,” so too
had Croce argued that “chronicles [...] remain chronicles, that is, empty
narratives.”120 De Mitri might therefore be said to have opposed Trieste
because Trieste opposed Croce. By calling for a “theatre of the chroni-
cle,” Trieste was breaking down the categorical barriers that Croce had
erected, and many of Trieste’s critics, including De Mitri, were attempting
to reassert the legitimacy of Croce’s categories. They were fighting, that is,
against Trieste’s efforts to redefine the chronicle after the war.
Trieste’s critics were by no means mistaken: he was indeed attempting
to redefine the chronicle. “Intorno a noi, tutti celebrano con ebbrezza
la riconquista, o diciamo la scoperta della propria personalità. [...]
Ognuno si sente soggetto di cronaca, cioè di storia [Everyone every-
where is celebrating with exhilaration the remastery, or let us say the
discovery, of one’s own personality. (...) Everyone feels himself to be the
subject of the chronicle, that is, of history],” Trieste declared, collaps-
ing Croce’s binary division and granting to the chronicle the status of
history.121 Chronicles were no longer to be understood as the accumu-
lation of empty data, mere records of the contingent facts of individual
existence. Instead, Trieste explained, “bisogna vedere la cronaca ‘sub
specie aeternitatis,’ come fossimo figli di un’altra epoca che mietono
fra le leggende di un tempo antico [we have to see the chronicle sub
specie aeternitatis, as if we were the children of another age harvesting
the legends of an ancient time].”122 In other words, since the trauma
of war was now a collective memory, shared by all but also particular
to each individual, the task for chronicles was to represent truths that
were simultaneously specific and universal, timely and timeless. The old
narratives had collapsed under the weight of experience and new nar-
ratives would need to emerge. Yet these new narratives could not simply
generalize, synopsize, or totalize the stories of the present and of the
immediate past; they had also to retain the unique, localized stories
of each individual. That is, they had to remain chronicles even as they
sought to encompass and to explain history.
In effect, this is what Cronaca’s Daniele recognizes, and what drives
his actions upon his return from the Nazi camp. Seeking an expla-
nation for his own internment and for the massacre of six million
Jews, Daniele interrogates the particular in pursuit of the universal,
examining contingent, personal motivations so that they might reveal
the general movements of history. As he explains to Lucia and to
Massimo,
Devo capire il perché dei camion appostati sull’orlo dei ghetti. Passano i
secoli, e questo fatto ritorna: all’alba, risuonano passi pesanti, e il ghetto
è accerchiato. I camion, i mitra: gente buttata giù dal letto con gli occhi
ancora appiccicati dal sonno. E questo da sempre, capisci? Devo arrivare al
meccanismo che mette in moto quei camion.123
I have to understand the reason for the trucks lurking on the edge of the
ghettos. Centuries pass, and this event recurs: at dawn, one hears heavy
steps, and the ghetto is surrounded. The trucks, the machine guns; people
are thrown out of bed with their eyes still heavy with sleep. And this has
always happened, you know? I have to understand the mechanism that sets
those trucks in motion.
Daniele, then, is searching for both chronicle and history. Identifying

his individual experience with a millennial history of persecution, he
is pursuing a causal mechanism that can explain both a multigen-
erational cycle of violence (history) and a singular, violent betrayal
(chronicle). More significantly still, inverting the Crocean para-

digm, Daniele is attempting to conduct his search at the level of the
chronicle with the goal of arriving at history. He looks to Massimo’s
motives – to the twisted machinations that led his friend to forsake
him – in order to understand the Holocaust. To borrow Leopoldo
Trieste’s suggestive phrase, Daniele seeks “to see the chronicle sub
specie aeternitatis.” That phrase may well provide the most apt descrip-
tion not only of Trieste’s Cronaca but also of Italian neorealism
broadly defined.
“Ricci Is Not a Program, a Symbol, an Idea”
The first shots of Vittorio De Sica’s Ladri di biciclette show a throng of

unemployed labourers gathering outside the Val Melaina Employment
Office, where they await the announcement of available work for the
day. Although the film’s protagonist, Antonio Ricci, is among those in
need of employment, he is not a part of the group, instead sitting some
distance away, on his own, so that he must be gathered by an acquaint-
ance in order to receive his commission. Literally and figuratively, that
is to say, Antonio stands apart from the crowd; he shares their plight but
is not one of the masses. Yet throughout the film Antonio is repeatedly
treated not as an individual but as a mere face in the crowd, a nonen-
tity. At the Monte della Pietà, the pawnbroker’s warehouse, the workers
throw his sheets – which came from Maria’s dowry, and which she and
Antonio have been forced to pawn – upon shelves stacked so high that
they must be reached by a ladder. Their linens are no different from
the thousands of others pawned by similarly desperate families. Nor is
Antonio’s prized Fides different from the thousands of other bicycles
with which it has been stored at the pawnbrokers. These possessions –
their only set of sheets, his only bicycle – are precious to Antonio and
Maria, but in the context of the Monte della Pietà they become part
of an indiscriminate mass. For the police, too, Antonio’s stolen bicy-
cle is one of many – “Capirai, ci vorrebbe tutta la Squadra Mobile solo
pe’ sta’ a cerca’ le biciclette [Look ... We’d need an entire mobile
brigade to find your bicycle],” the police officer tells him – and thus
he is refused the help he needs to recover his property and to retain
his job.124 Antonio is similarly rebuffed by the crowd gathered at the
workers’ association, where the onlookers are more concerned with a
lecture on unemployment than in the struggles of this one desperate
and soon-to-be-unemployed man. The pattern repeats when Antonio
tracks down a possible witness to the crime at a local church, where
the indigent are fed soup, but where Antonio is silenced, then forced
to pray, in a parody of Christian charity that ignores the source of the
suffering it ostensibly seeks to alleviate. Like the police, like the pawn-
brokers, like the workmen, like the rest of post-war Roman society, the
volunteers in the church extend their care impersonally, feeding the
crowds but ignoring individual needs or desires. Throughout the film,
Antonio’s struggles are repeatedly subsumed in and dwarfed by the
struggles of those around him: by the huddled masses of unemployed
workers, by the other victims of theft, by the men queuing for soup. Yet
the moral implication of the film is clear: Antonio is an individual and
deserves to be treated as such. His need for work, his stolen bicycle, his
impoverished family, must be understood on their own terms, as a per-

sonal tragedy on an intimate scale.
At the same time, however, they must also be understood within a
post-war context in which they were entirely unexceptional. As the film
makes clear, countless others shared the same desperate need for work,
the same difficult decision to pawn prized possessions for a chance at
a better life, the same reliance on indifferent charity, the same desper-
ate scramble for survival. Antonio was struggling to feed his family in a
time of massive post-war inflation (prices in 1945 were twenty-four times
higher than they had been in 1938) and stagnating pay (real wages after
the war were half of their pre-war level), as well as post-war malnutrition
(Italians spent on average around 95 per cent of their income on food
and took in 1000 fewer calories daily than they had before the war).125
To see Antonio’s problems as entirely his own, to feel compassion for
him, for Maria, for Bruno, while disregarding the systemic social prob-
lems that had exacerbated, if not in fact instigated, their misfortunes,
is a failure of understanding, just as it is a failure of understanding to
disregard the family’s personal tragedies in order to focus exclusively
on the broader societal failures that hindered Italy’s post-war recovery.
In practice, the two contrasting points of emphasis reinforce each other
through what Robert Gordon refers to as Ladri di biciclette’s “dialectical
interplay between the one and the many, between singularity and the
undifferentiated mass.”126 In other words, Antonio functions both as rep-
resentative of the victims of Italy’s post-war economic plight and as an
individual whose plight is specific to his personal and familial situation.
Indeed – and this is the crucial point – Antonio can be seen as broadly
representative only to the extent that he is understood as a unique indi-
vidual. Vittorio De Sica explained this point succinctly in a 1950 interview:
I had no intention of presenting Antonio as a kind of “Everyman” or a

personification of “the underprivileged.” To me he was an individual, with
his individual joys and worries, with his individual story. In presenting the
one tragic Sunday of his long and varied life, I attempted to transpose
reality onto the poetical plane. This indeed seems to me one of the most
important features of my work, because without such an attempt a film of
this kind would simply become a newsreel.127
De Sica thus sought to make clear that Ladri di biciclette was not a story
about unemployment in post-war Italy, for which a certain Antonio Ricci
had been invented to serve as a typical or representative protagonist.
Rather, Ladri di biciclette narrates the story of a specific individual: Antonio
Ricci, a man struggling to support his family in a moment when work was
scarce. Precisely because of Ricci’s irreducible individuality, however, he
embodies the struggles of post-war Italian society, of which his particu-
lar case is symptomatically representative. This is what De Sica sought
to convey in his discussion of the film’s foundations in the chronicle,
declaring, as we have seen, that his ambition with Ladri di biciclette “is to
identify the dramatic in everyday situations, the marvellous in the minor
chronicle, indeed in the most minor chronicle, which most consider
worn-out material.”128 According to this account, articulated by means
of a vocabulary with significant post-war resonances, the film’s dramatic,
artistic value both shaped and was shaped by its treatment of a minor
story, a story insignificant according to traditional measures, but with dis-
astrous implications for the lives of the protagonists as well as for Italian
society. The film’s depiction of post-war Italy, whose cruel indifference
shows through every time Antonio is thwarted in his efforts to retrieve his
bicycle, thus offers a kind of commentary on recent Italian history, but a
commentary that emerges from the specificity, materiality, and singular-
ity of a chronicle.
Several of the first critics to review De Sica’s film appreciated the signif-
icance of the director and screenwriter’s efforts to instil a general histor-
ical understanding by conveying the specificity of historical experience.
“In questo film la cronaca è trascesa, i motivi attuali non rimangono
contingenti, ma si trasferiscono, per virtù poetica, su un piano universale
[This film transcends the chronicle; in it current events do not remain
contingent but are transferred, through poetic virtue, onto a universal
plane],” wrote one reviewer.129 “De Sica ha colto questa universalità del
particolare nei suoi film [De Sica has captured the universality of the
particular in his film],” wrote another.130 “La disavventura del poveraccio
assume, nel film, valore universale [The misfortunate of the poor man
assumes, in this film, a universal value],” argued a third critic; “Ricci [...]
è l’uomo in mezzo ad altri uomini, incapaci ancor oggi di comprendersi
e di amarsi abbastanza, e pertanto indifeso contro la sventura e la catti-
veria [Ricci (...) is a man amid other men, who even today are unable
to love each other, and who are therefore defenceless against misfor-
tune and malice].”131 With what is perhaps the most insightful judgment
offered in any of the early reviews, the critic Gino Visentini drew the view-
er’s attention to how, “sempre, in questo film, il particolare è in rapporto
diretto col generale [in this film the particular is always in direct rapport
with the general].” “Tanto per cominciare Ricci non è un programma,
un simbolo, un’idea [To begin with, Ricci is not a program, a symbol, an
idea],” Visentini cogently argued; “è un personaggio, un uomo [he is a
character, a man].”132 Visentini thus recognized what most of the charac-

ters in Ladri di biciclette do not: that Antonio Ricci must be understood on
his own terms, that he is a unique individual. Yet he also understood the
universal significance of Antonio’s singular struggles, which are indica-
tive of broader problems in post-war society. He understood, therefore,
the dialectical relationship between the film’s vision of particularity and
universality, grasping in this way the historical ramifications of what De
Sica compellingly described as Ladri di biciclette’s “most minor chronicle.”
That dialectical relationship lends additional pathos to the film’s
apparently ambiguous conclusion.133 In a moment of desperation to
which the film’s narrative has been ominously building, Antonio is com-
pelled finally to steal in order to replace his own stolen bicycle, a crime
for which he is quickly apprehended. A vengeful crowd quickly gathers
around him and calls for justice, insisting that Antonio be brought to
the police station – that he be arraigned, in other words, by the same
police who earlier ignored his own victimization – but their mood soon
shifts. Once it becomes apparent that Antonio has been shamed before
his son, and once it is recognized that this shaming is a punishment far
worse than the police or the courts could impose, the victim of Antonio’s
attempted theft determines not to press charges. Freed from the crowd’s
clutches, Antonio grasps Bruno and the two slowly make their way
towards the camera, then past it, until from behind we see them reab-
sorbed into the passing crowd. The act of individuation with which the
film began is thus seemingly undone in its final images: the protagonists
are subsumed by the masses.
Some emphasize in this conclusion an indictment of the crowd’s hos-
tility; others, more optimistically, identify a glimmer of hope in the rec-
onciliation of father and son; still others, with what must be the most
pessimistic reading, locate in the final images the tragic annihilation of
Antonio’s individuality.134 These three glosses, seemingly divergent, are
in fact mutually reinforcing, taking on the full weight of their implica-
tions only when they are understood to work in concert. Antonio’s com-
plex humanity, revealed through his final tear-filled glance at Bruno,
goes unrecognized by the crowd, which disregards both father and son
in the film’s closing moments, compelling their acquiescence instead
of identifying the moral urgency of their predicament. One final time,
then, the film’s viewers are led to recognize what the crowd does not:
that Antonio and Bruno’s ultimate reabsorption in the crowd is tragic.
In fact, the significance of the conclusion can be said to turn upon this
distinction between the crowd’s and the viewers’ comprehension. The
scene’s true valence, then, can be seen to emerge only to the extent
that the film has succeeded in establishing what Zavattini calls “the real
hierarchy of facts” – only to the extent, in other words, that it has com-
municated the singular importance of the stolen bicycle and the human
particularity of the members of the Ricci family. The conclusion’s moral
suasion, however, appears in full relief only when we recognize the iter-
ativity of the protagonists’ singular suffering, when we see them in rela-
tion to the countless other Italian families who have had to pawn their
prized possessions in order to survive, when we extend our empathy to
the masses of unemployed workers equally desperate for steady employ-
ment in the post-war economy, when we recognize the plight of the
Roman crowd as well as the plight of the Ricci family. The connotations
of Ladri di biciclette’s conclusion emerge, that is to say, only to the extent
we have learned to appreciate the historical significance of what De
Sica called the film’s “most minor chronicle,” rejecting the distinction
between chronicle and history and recognizing the tragedy of Antonio
Ricci as both unique and universal.
4
“From I to We ”: Neorealism’s Choral Politics
The central political dilemma facing Cesare (Vittorio Duse), the pro-
tagonist of Aldo Vergano’s 1946 film Il sole sorge ancora, is an ideological
decision posing as a sexual competition. Unfulfilled after an abortive
stop at a brothel, which was raided by the Germans before he was able
to complete his transaction, Cesare soon finds himself the centre of
a love triangle, caught between Laura (Lea Padovani), daughter of
the workman who has taken his job at the factory, and Matilde (Elli
Parvo), daughter of the factory owner. After four years of military ser-
vice, which ended with the dissolution of the Italian army following the
armistice with the Allies, Cesare has returned home intent on leaving
the fighting behind him, he says, in order to pursue “una vita tran-
quilla [a peaceful life].” Working-class Laura offers nothing of the sort,
instead goading Cesare to join the Resistance: “Molti soldati come lei
se ne vanno sulle montagne [Many soldiers like you are heading up
into the mountains],” she tells him. “Dopo, semmai, si potrà pensare
all’avvenire [Afterwards, perhaps, you can think about the future].”
Affluent Matilde, in contrast, attempts to seduce Cesare into aban-
doning the fight against Fascism and joining her in a life of comfort.
“Qui si dimentica perfino la guerra [Here you can even forget about
the war],” she says, posing enticingly in her hothouse. “E tu pensi di
andartene in montagna con il freddo che farà? [And you’re thinking
of going to the mountains, as cold as it is?]” Despite the appeal of
Matilde’s offer, which momentarily waylays him, Cesare eventually
chooses Laura, the workers, and the Resistance, rejecting a life of bour-
geois luxury purchased with Nazi collaboration. This is a turning-point
in the sexual rivalry, sealed for Laura with a slap from spurned Matilde.
It is also a turning-point in Cesare’s political education, which sees him
abandon myopic self-interest and accept his patriotic duty to fight for
Italy’s liberation.
Neorealism’s Choral Politics 129
In the critical imagination, neorealism has traditionally been defined

by its inclination to portray such political awakenings, and at times even
by its ability to produce them. Neorealism, it is often said, was born from
the desire to “rivelare l’Italia agli italiani [reveal Italy to the Italians],”
to raise awareness of the depredations of Fascism and the difficulties of
the post-war reconstruction, to hold up a “specchio della vita [mirror to
life],” depicting and thereby denouncing the ills of Italian society.1 Rather
than delivering programmatic political messages, neorealism is generally
thought to have borne witness to the struggle for survival, for liberation,
for justice, privileging emotional insights and empathic involvement over
dispassionate historical analysis.2 It is widely held, then, that the object of
neorealist politics was not revolution or even ideological instruction, but
rather the promotion of social solidarity.3 That such solidarity remained
almost entirely aspirational, as neorealism’s appeals to the people largely
failed to attract a popular audience, and were instead both produced and
consumed by the cultural élite, has generated a certain scepticism in crit-
ical quarters.4 Indeed, many regard neorealism’s politics with suspicion,
diagnosing what they see as the movement’s naïve humanitarianism, its
conciliatory populism, its preference for symbolic gestures over concrete,
material analysis.5 Some go further, arguing that neorealism irresponsibly
encouraged in its audience a kind of passive nonparticipation, ostensibly
evoking high-minded political ideals while surreptitiously modelling inef-
fectual and perhaps insensible political abstention.6 Others, more critical
still, have accused neorealism of outright political evasion, of conceal-
ing the flaws in the foundation of post-war society, of refusing to hold
Italians accountable for their own complicity in Fascism.7 Where some
find poignant political symbolism, inspiration for reform, even redemp-
tion, others see political acquiescence.
The consolidation of a virtual consensus definition of neorealism’s
shared ethics, therefore, is somewhat surprising. Even many who ques-
tion aspects of its apparent political program appear ready to concur
that neorealism was characterized by a collective ethical ambition, by
a common desire to promote social justice through creative interme-
diation.8 Emerging in the 1950s, this interpretation began to achieve
a kind of critical hegemony in the 1970s, when Lino Miccichè offered
what would become its standard formulation.9 Drawing a contextual link
between neorealism’s cultural politics and Elio Vittorini’s post-war call
for “una nuova cultura [a new culture],” Miccichè declared that
il neorealismo fu [...] un’“etica dell’estetica”: la risposta, implicita, di una

nuova generazione di cineasti alla domanda vittorniniana “Potremo mai
avere una cultura che sappia proteggere l’uomo dalle sofferenze invece di
limitarsi a consolarlo?” In questo, solo in questo, i Visconti e i De Sica,

i Rossellini e i De Santis, per quanto “esteticamente” lontani, furono “eti-
camente” vicini.10
neorealism was [...] an “ethics of aesthetics”: the implicit answer of a new

generation of filmmakers to Vittorini’s question “Can we ever have a culture
that knows how to protect man from suffering instead of merely consoling
him?” In this, and only in this, Visconti and De Sica and Rossellini and De
Santis, however “aesthetically” distant, were “ethically” adjacent.
Miccichè thus proceeded from an acknowledgment of neorealism’s

stylistic heterogeneity to an argument for its ethical unanimity, argu-
ing, in effect, that works can be defined as neorealist insofar – indeed,
only insofar – as they can be shown to participate in the fervent desire
for social and cultural reform after Fascism. Articulating this desire in
ethical terms, Miccichè subsumed neorealism’s social function under
the notion of an “ethics of aesthetics” – ethics expressed aesthetically,
ethics governing aesthetic practice – and insisted that this generalized
program incorporated the many disparate artistic and political objec-
tives pursued by individual neorealist artists.
One can see the appeal of this proposition, which manages to define
neorealism by its altruistic ambition while providing a plausible common
ground between those who extol and those who doubt its ability to pro-
duce real change. Yet the theory’s apparent inclusivity and widespread
acceptability may well signal a limitation as well as a source of strength.
The discourse of post-war Italian cultural politics was not always amena-
ble to consensus building. Prominent figures frequently advanced ambi-
tious, immoderate programs. Competing factions repeatedly denounced
their opponents’ positions. Radically different conceptions of the good
society inspired vital, and at times bitter, disputes about the path for cul-
ture to follow. There is real risk of minimizing, even erasing, these points
of difference in the search for a fundamental, or essential, unanimity.
Below the banner of an “ethics of aesthetics” there remain substantive
disputes, ethical disputes, concerning the politics of Italian neorealism.
This chapter is an attempt to explore those disputes in order to trace
the contours of this contested cultural territory. More to the point, it
is an attempt to map some of the cracks and fissures in the allegedly
solid structure of neorealism’s ethics and to place renewed emphasis on
post-war cultural conflict, which retains more explanatory power than
does the retrospectively adduced consensus. At least in part, conflict
arose because artists and intellectuals developed contrasting and often
opposing models of post-war reform, which they articulated polemically,
in dialectics and debate. Reconsidering neorealist practice against and

alongside those cultural debates shows it to be both more artistically con-
tentious and more politically ambitious than it may at first appear.
“The Search for Justice, for Liberty, for Equality”
Inaugurating Il Politecnico, the “settimanale di cultura contemporanea

[weekly review of contemporary culture]” launched in Milan mere
months after the city’s liberation, Elio Vittorini advanced a provocative
brief on behalf of the “new culture” he hoped would arise in response to
the enormities of the Second World War. Vittorini’s essay is often remem-
bered as a kind of rallying cry for post-war Italian cultural politics, but
in truth it was rather more like a jeremiad, announcing that the victory
over totalitarianism had coincided with a devastating defeat whose
effects would haunt the post-war reconstruction. “Di chi è la sconfitta
più grave in tutto questo che è accaduto? [Who has suffered the most
serious defeat in all that has taken place?]” Vittorini asked his readers.
Vi era bene qualcosa che, attraverso i secoli, ci aveva insegnato a c onsiderare

sacra l’esistenza dei bambini. Anche di ogni conquista civile dell’uomo ci
aveva insegnato ch’era sacra; lo stesso del pane; lo stesso del lavoro. E se ora
milioni di bambini sono stati uccisi, se tanto che era sacro è stato lo stesso
colpito e distrutto, la sconfitta è anzitutto di questa “cosa” che c’insegnava
la inviolabilità loro. Non è anzitutto di questa “cosa” che c’insegnava l’invio-
labilità loro? Questa “cosa,” voglio subito dirlo, non è altro che la cultura.11
There was something that, for centuries, had taught us to consider sacred
the lives of children. It had taught us, too, that every triumph of civilization
was also sacred: the same was true of bread; the same was true of work. And
now, if millions of children have been killed, if much that was sacred has
been damaged and destroyed, the defeat is above all of this “thing” that had
taught us they were inviolable. Is it not the defeat, above all, of this “thing”
that had taught us they were inviolable? This “thing,” I want to say straight
away, is none other than culture.
In Vittorini’s account, any relief at Fascism and Nazism’s defeat, any joy
for Italy’s liberation, was tempered by the knowledge that the cultural
inheritance of millennia had not survived the struggle, undone by a
habitual failure to realize the high-minded ideals it espoused. Giving way
to forces that were antithetical to its very essence, culture had neglected
entirely to ensure that the social order conformed to its moral impera-
tives. Despite its lofty pronouncements and exemplary standards, culture
“non ha potuto impedire gli orrori del fascismo [could not prevent the
horrors of Fascism],” as Vittorini put it, and after the war such an inef-
fectual culture could no longer endure. Something more, something dif-
ferent, would have to take shape if a truly humane society were to grow
again from the rubble. What was needed, in the shadow of the Second
World War, was “a new culture,” one that would remedy the failures of
traditional culture by claiming dominion not only over the ideal but also
over the real social order. It would need to adopt new forms, take on new
powers, “partecipare attivamente e direttamente alla rigenerazione della
società [participate actively and directly in the regeneration of society],”
exert an “influenza trasformatrice sugli uomini [transformative influ-
ence on mankind].”12 This would require radical change, compelling
culture to assume the responsibilities that throughout its history it had
consistently failed to uphold.
The terms on which such change would be pursued became the sub-
ject of a wide-ranging cultural conversation, to which Vittorini’s essay
was one prominent contribution. Indeed, from the fall of Fascism
through the early years of the republic, Italian commentators engaged
in a seemingly unending series of essays, debates, and symposia on the
question “Dove va la cultura? [Where is culture headed?]”13 The cor-
ollaries to that question were themselves the subject of solemn discus-
sion: “dove va l’arte, dove va il romanzo? [where is art headed, where is
the novel headed?]” asked Libero Bigiaretti in December 1944.14 “Dove
va la narrativa italiana? [Where is Italian narrative headed?]” asked
Arturo Tofanelli in August 1945.15 “Dove va il cinema? [Where is cin-
ema headed?]” asked Luigi Comencini in October of the same year.16
In countless publications, and for many years to follow, leading figures
would continue to ask “Dove va la cultura oggi? [Where is culture headed
today?]”17 These questions, and the earnest responses they garnered, sig-
nalled the widespread sense of cultural crisis that persisted well into the
post-war period. At the same time, however, they also signalled a very
real belief in the power of culture to combat that crisis – the belief that
“[d]i fronte alla crisi [...] l’unico atteggiamento autenticamente risolu-
tivo sia quello di avere una franca fiducia nella cultura [in the face of the
crisis (...) the only authentically determined attitude that one can have
is a forthright faith in culture],” as one Italian writer put it at the time.18
More than seventy years removed from these debates and discus-
sions, this can all seem rather nebulous. After all, as Stephen Greenblatt
has argued, “culture” is “a term that is repeatedly used without mean-
ing much of anything at all, a vague gesture toward a dimly perceived
ethos.”19 The theorists who have attempted to capture the term’s signif-
icance have thus repeatedly and almost unanimously declared culture
to be an unalterably ambiguous concept, all but indefinable.20 In the

specific context of post-war Italy, however, it is possible to arrive at some
semblance of a definition, and this is possible in large measure because
Italian thinkers were themselves concerned not only to establish where
culture was going but also to redefine culture – to achieve what Alberto
Moravia described at the time as “una precisazione sul termine di cultura
[a clarification of the term ‘culture’]” – in light of what was perceived to
be its crushing defeat.21 There were those who continued to employ the
term quite traditionally, of course, invoking culture’s “autentico signi
ficato di ricerca disinteressata di verità e di bellezza [authentic signi
ficance of disinterested search for truth and beauty]” and envisioning
culture as a canon of high art, a kind of Arnoldian “best which has been
thought and said.”22 More common, however, was the desire radically to
reconceive of culture in an active sense, to posit “una cultura come tec-
nica [culture as technics],” in the influential formulation of Felice Balbo,
who argued for the need to “porre il problema di qualsiasi branca della
cultura cosiddetta umanistica nel modo di un qualsiasi problema tecnico
o scientifico [pose the problem of any branch of so-called humanistic
culture in the manner of any technical or scientific problem].”23 Culture
thus came to connote not only a form of knowledge but also of praxis, a
way of being, or rather of intervening, in the world.
Culture was understood to be much more than an assemblage of art,
ideas, and social practices; it was the means for reshaping society by mak-
ing it conform to ideas (and ideals) developed through artistic exploration
and creative intervention. As the philosopher Antonio Banfi described
it at the time, the culture being debated in post-war Italy was or would
soon need to become a “cultura integrale in quanto si riferisce a tutto
l’uomo e a tutte le sue attività, dalla tecnica professionale all’artistica, dalla
politica alla scientifica, in quanto è o vuole creare la coscienza unitaria ed
armonica della sua vita [integral culture, encompassing the entire man
and all his activities, all his technics, from the professional to the artistic,
from the political to the scientific, constituting or aspiring to create the
unified and harmonized conscience of man’s life].”24 In this sense, then,
culture was understood to offer a totalizing perspective on lived reality,
omnicompetent in its apprehension and syncretic in its realization. It was
also understood to compel a direct intervention in social affairs. Franco
Fortini, writing in Il Politecnico and articulating a position shared by the
journal’s editor, explained culture’s proper social role in the following way:
Potenza della cultura non vuol dire né la poesia ai congressi (benché

sia, anche, quello) né la lotta contro l’analfabetismo (benché sia, anche,
quello): vuol dire che i mezzi di fare dell’uomo una persona invece che uno
schiavo o un tiranno siano nelle mani e nel cervello di coloro che non sono
né schiavi né tiranni, ma persone; vuol dire dare a questi gli strumenti per
riconoscersi e a tutti gli strumenti per riconoscerli.25
The power of culture indicates neither poetry at congresses (although it is

that, too) nor the fight against illiteracy (although it is that, too). It indi-
cates that the means to make of man a person instead of a slave or a tyrant
lie in the hands and the minds of those who are themselves neither slaves
nor tyrants, but people; it indicates giving to these people the tools to recog-
nize themselves and to everyone else the tools to recognize them.
Culture, in other words, meant using one’s knowledge and experience

to create a more just society. “Questo esattamente è cultura [This is pre-
cisely what culture is],” Vittorini explained in an April 1946 open let-
ter to Italian voters: “la linea più avanzata raggiunta nella ricerca della
verità ai fini della liberazione umana. È ricerca dunque di coscienza che
diventa ricerca di giustizia, di libertà e di eguaglianza [the most advanced
line reached in search for truth in the service of human liberation. It is
therefore a search for consciousness that becomes a search for justice, for
liberty, for equality].”26 In this definition, culture was nothing less than
the actualization of human wisdom in the service of human liberation.
This was no “vague gesture,” no “dimly perceived ethos,” but rather an
expansive, assertive redefinition of a foundational concept, an attempt to
claim for culture powers that had traditionally belonged to other realms.
Vittorini’s “new culture” in particular represented an ambitious bid
for power, an effort to annex for culture the right to govern society. “Se
quasi mai [...] la cultura ha potuto influire sui fatti degli uomini dipende
solo dal modo in cui la cultura si è manifestata [If culture (...) has almost
never been able to influence human affairs, that is due only to the form
in which culture has manifested itself],” Vittorini argued. “Essa ha predi-
cato, ha insegnato, ha elaborato princìpi e valori, ha scoperto continenti
e costruito macchine, ma non si è identificata con la società, non ha governato
con la società, non ha condotto eserciti per la società [It has preached, taught,
and elaborated principles and values, it has discovered continents and
built machines, but it has not identified itself with society, it has not governed
society, it has not mobilized armies for society].”27 Culture had consistently
failed to achieve its aims, in Vittorini’s account, because it lacked the
technical means to enforce its moral precepts. The “new culture” would
need not only to furnish the principles by which society was to be judged,
then, but also to conduct the battles by which society was to be defended.
Vittorini advocated an active, interventionist culture, making a defini-
tive break with traditional cultural criticism of the sort that, in his essay,
he associated with Thomas Mann, Benedetto Croce, Julien Benda, Johan

Huizinga, John Dewey, Jacques Maritain, Georges Bernanos and Miguel
de Unamuno, Lin Yutang and George Santayana, Paul Valéry, André Gide,
and Nikolai Berdyaev.28 These thinkers had all developed impassioned
philosophical critiques of the twentieth century’s autocratic regimes, but
Vittorini judged their proposed cultural solutions to the global crisis of
authoritarianism and total war to be tragically ineffectual. In fact, he sug-
gested that their anti-Fascist programs, whether “militant humanism” or
“humanism of the Incarnation,” “the religion of liberty” or “spiritual revo-
lution,” exemplified the characteristic weaknesses of traditional culture.29
Casting doubt over culture’s supposed virtues, Vittorini thus asked,
[d]a che cosa la cultura trae motivo per elaborare i suoi principi e i suoi
valori? Dallo spettacolo di ciò che l’uomo soffre nella società. L’uomo ha
sofferto nella società, l’uomo soffre. E che cosa fa la cultura per l’uomo
che soffre? Cerca di consolarlo. Per questo suo modo di consolatrice in cui
si è manifestata fino ad oggi, la cultura non ha potuto impedire gli orrori
del fascismo. Nessuna forza sociale era “sua” in Italia o in Germania per
impedire l’avvento al potere del fascismo, né erano “suoi” i cannoni, gli
aeroplani, i carri armati che avrebbero potuto impedire l’avventuro d’Etio-
pia, l’intervento fascista in Spagna, l’“Anschluss” il patto di Monaco. Ma di
chi se non di lei stessa è la colpa che le forze sociali non siano forze della
cultura, e i cannoni, gli aeroplani, i carri armati non siano “suoi”?30
what is the source from which culture develops its principles and values?
From the spectacle of man’s suffering in society. Man has suffered in so-
ciety, man suffers. And what does culture do for the man who suffers? It
tries to console him. Because of the consoling role that it has played until
the present day, culture was unable to prevent the horrors of Fascism. In
Italy and Germany culture “possessed” no social force with which to prevent
Fascism’s rise to power: culture “possessed” no cannons, no airplanes, no
tanks that could prevent the Ethiopian adventure, the Fascist intervention
in Spain, the “Anschluss,” the Munich pact. But whose fault is it, if not cul-
ture’s own, if those social forces did not belong to culture, if the cannons,
the airplanes, the tanks did not “belong” to culture?
In a very real sense, then, Vittorini was calling into question the under-
lying assumption of culture’s ethics, “its principles and values,” which
he believed to be inextricable from the perpetual human suffering
culture presumed to condemn. He asserted that the Western cultural
inheritance, which offered moral preachments but no material rein-
forcement, was to blame for its own defeat, and thus to blame for the
rise of Fascism. His own program, he insisted, would not suffer from the
same shortcomings. He wanted tanks as well as ethics, airplanes as well
as aesthetics. Vittorini wanted culture to govern over – and to produce
fundamental, material, revolutionary changes within – society.
In context, therefore, “Vittorini’s question,” which Miccichè quoted in
order to locate neorealism’s “ethics of aesthetics,” takes on a profoundly
different meaning:
Potremo mai avere una cultura che sappia proteggere l’uomo dalle soffer-
enze invece di limitarsi a consolarlo? Una cultura che le impedisca, che le
scongiuri, che aiuti a eliminare lo sfruttamento e la schiavitù, e a vincere il
bisogno, questa è la cultura in cui occorre che si trasformi tutta la vecchia
cultura.31
Can we ever have a culture that knows how to protect man from suffering
instead of just consoling him? A culture that prevents, that wards off, that
helps to eliminate exploitation and slavery, that frees men from want – we
must transform the old culture into that kind of culture.
This was not a call for culture to reiterate its moral entreaties, to remind
imperfect individuals of the ideals and values to which they should aspire.
It was not a call for culture to convey progressive political messages, to
make sentimentally humanitarian appeals, to denounce social injustices
in ever more impassioned terms. It was not a call for compassion, for
charity, for solidarity. This was a call for culture to take power.
As Vittorini saw the situation, the problem with cultural ethics, the
problem with cultural criticism of any kind, was that, despite the heartfelt
calls for a principled stand against social degradation, there had remained
an unbridgeable gulf between the high-minded ideals advanced by intel-
lectuals and the real injustices of contemporary society. In his words,
[l]a società non è cultura perché la cultura non è società. E la cultura non
è società perché ha in sé l’eterna rinuncia del “dare a Cesare” e perché i
suoi princìpi sono soltanto consolatori, perché non sono tempestivamente
rinnovatori ed efficacemente attuali, viventi con la società stessa come la
società stessa vive.32
society is not culture because culture is not society. And culture is not society
because it has within itself the eternal renunciation “render to C aesar,” and
because its principles are only consolatory, because they are not immedi-
ately renovative and effectively current, living with society itself as society
itself lives.
Culture had consistently given expression to the ethical principles that

made clear it was wrong to kill children, as Vittorini reminded his read-
ers, but it had done nothing to wrest society from the hands of those
who repeatedly failed to honour those principles. Even as they harshly
condemned society in the name of culture, the intellectuals criticized
in his essay were themselves guilty, by Vittorini’s standards, of enabling
the very condition they condemned. Indeed, many of these thinkers had
invoked the very same verse from Matthew 20:21 – “Render to Caesar the
things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” – on which
Vittorini based his criticism, but they had done so in order to insist that
culture should strive to remain untainted by the iniquities of contempo-
rary society.33 They wanted culture to uphold its ideals in a fallen world
and thus to stand in judgment of the calamities of the war; Vittorini coun-
tered by arguing that culture had to intervene in the world, to combat
those calamities. They located in the citation from the Synoptic Gospels
a safeguard against political coercion; Vittorini maintained that this cita-
tion expressed the very reason for culture’s subjugation.
In mounting an attack on what he called “the old culture,” therefore,
Vittorini was attempting knowingly, provocatively, militantly to call into
question the very foundations of European civilization, starting with its
avowed inheritance from Athens and Jerusalem. This was the unmistak-
able significance of his accusation against “pensiero greco, ellenismo,
romanesimo, cristianesimo latino, cristianesimo medioevale, riforma,
illuminismo, liberalismo, ecc. [Greek thought, the Hellenic and Roman
eras, Latin Christianity, Medieval Christianity, the Reformation, the
Enlightenment, Liberalism, etc.].”34 Vittorini’s point was clear, and
clearly contentious. As he saw it, culture’s disastrous incapacity to com-
bat human suffering was congenital. A tradition with roots in Christianity
and the Graeco-Roman classics had symptomatically shirked its respon-
sibilities and forsaken its duties, not only continually but compulsively
failing to ensure the realization of its cherished ideals.
To underline this point, Vittorini made what would prove to be his
essay’s most antagonistic claim, insisting that within the ineffectual and
outmoded culture “c’è Cristo. Dico: c’è Cristo. Non ha avuto che scarsa
influenza Gesù Cristo? Tutt’altro. Egli molta ne ha avuta. Ma è stata influ-
enza, la sua, e di tutta la cultura fino ad oggi, che ha generato mutamenti
quasi solo nell’intelletto degli uomini [Christ is to be found. I say Christ
is to be found. Has Jesus Christ had only a scant influence? Of course
not. He has had a tremendous influence. But His influence over culture,
until the present day, has managed to produce change almost exclusively
in men’s intellect].”35 Put differently, the principles that governed the
social order were not those expounded by culture and religion – and for
Vittorini, it is clear, the two were one – because of their self-imposed dis-
tinction between spirit and matter, between faith and works. As Vittorini
saw it, culture and religion had pursued transcendent fulfilment without
ensuring immanent well-being, and as a result had achieved neither. The
traditional culture, like the Christian tradition on which it rested, had
failed to uphold both its temporal and spiritual responsibilities, and it
would thus need to be replaced by something altogether more powerful,
more ecumenical, more evangelical. “A new culture” would have to take
over where religion had fallen short.
“A Religious Preoccupation”
“L’aria intorno a noi si fa sempre più teologica [The air around us is

becoming ever more theological],” perceptively noted the polymath
Alberto Savinio in 1947, drawing attention to the religious inflection,
or rather the religious ambition, of Italy’s post-war discourse of cul-
tural renewal.36 This theological turn permeated the culture, exerting
a profound influence well beyond the traditional spheres of official
Catholicism. To find reference to the burgeoning “interesse verso il
problema religioso [interest in the religious problem]” in Il Popolo, the
daily paper of the Christian Democrats, or to find in a Catholic journal
like L’Ultima the affirmation that “la vita di oggi, senza dubbio, è più
religiosa di quanto non sembri [life today is undoubtedly more religious
than it seems],” is perhaps unsurprising.37 Less expected, however, is the
stress placed on the post-war period’s “senso religioso della vita [reli-
gious sense of life],” its “fervore quasi religioso [near-religious fervour],”
in Avanti!, a Socialist daily.38 That a PCI-affiliated journal like Società was
led to affirm Italian intellectuals’ newfound “religioso entusiasmo [reli-
gious enthusiasm],” expressed in “l’invocazione lanciata con tono quasi
evangelico, di una cultura nuova [the invocation, launched in an almost
evangelical tone, of a new culture],” or that an anarcho-socialist like
Giuseppe Raimondi, in a 1947 speech at a cultural organization named
for the Marxist theorist Antonio Labriola, could describe the campaign
for a new culture and a new literature as having “qualcosa di una pre-
occupazione religiosa [something of a religious preoccupation],” as
demonstrating “un ideale che ha qualcosa [...] della carità cristiana
[an ideal that recalls (...) Christian charity],” is more surprising still.39
Such rhetoric betrays the unmistakable missionary zeal with which artists
and intellectuals, regardless of their religious and political affiliation,
approached Italian literature, cinema, and the arts after the war.
That missionary zeal was to a significant extent envisioned as a con-
tinuation of the anti-Fascist Resistance, which countless commentators
at the time, building on the example set by Benedetto Croce in his 1925
“Manifesto degli intellettuali antifascisti” (Manifesto of anti-Fascist intel-
lectuals), described as a “guerra di religione [war of religion].”40 It was
not just leading Catholics like Cardinal Schuster who stressed “la natura
essenzialmente religiosa della guerra che fin d’ora scuote il mondo [the
essentially religious nature of the war that has convulsed the world],” but
also the leaders of the Liberal Socialist Action Party, who described the
war against Fascism as “essenzialmente religiosa, [perché] essa si pro-
pone un rinnovamento totale dell’uomo con la potenza propria delle
fedi religiose [essentially religious, (because) it promises a total renewal
of mankind with the power of religious faiths],” and even the leadership
of the National Association of Italian Partisans (ANPI), who similarly
insisted that “la guerra partigiana ebbe un duplice carattere di guerra
popolare e religiosa [the partisan war had the double nature of a popular
and a religious war].”41 Cultural commentators from across the ideologi-
cal spectrum seized on and promoted this interpretation. “La Resistenza
[...] è stata soprattutto impulso religioso [The Resistance (...) was above
all a religious impulse],” opined the literary critic Gianfranco Contini,
whose insight inspired his colleague Oreste Macrì similarly to stress “la
religiosità della Resistenza [the religiosity of the Resistance].”42 In a
speech delivered in May 1946, Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, then presi-
dent of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, told the gathered Constituent
Assembly that Italy’s post-war “rivincita consisterà nella nostra risurrezi-
one, nella quale abbiamo una fede fermissima [retribution will consist
in our resurrection, in which we have an unbending faith].”43 In a 1947
panegyric, the partisans of the province of Parma pushed these paral-
lels to Christ still further: “Abbiano i nostri martiri dall’infamia della
croce [Let our martyrs have the infamy of the Cross],” they announced,
“poiché anch’essi morirono per una redenzione, il premio d’una pas-
qua [because they too died for a resurrection, an Easter reward].”44
The rhetoric of martyrdom pervaded representations of the Resistance,
from Aligi Sassu’s 1944 painting I martiri di piazzale Loreto (The martyrs of
Piazza Loreto) to Visconti, De Santis, and Pagliero’s 1945 documentary
Giorni di gloria, whose narrative voice-over described the Fosse Ardeatine
massacre as “un martirio pari a quello dei primi martiri cristiani [a mar-
tyrdom equal to that of the first Christian martyrs],” to Julian Bogi’s 1946
epic poem celebrating the partisans’ “epifania del martirio [epiphany of
martyrdom].”45 Even more consequentially, this rhetoric pervaded the
discourse of the partisans themselves. Facing execution, many drew on
their religious faith, describing the Resistance as a spiritual vocation and
framing death, in explicitly Christian terms, as a sacrifice to “la Grande e
Santa Causa della liberazione dell’Umanità oppressa [the Great and Holy
Cause of the liberation of oppressed Humanity],” as Eusebio Giambone,

one of the organizers of the National Liberation Committee in Turin,
described his mission in the last letter he wrote to his wife before his
sentence was carried out by the Fascists.46
That Giambone would sanctify the partisan struggle in this way, turn-
ing to the language of faith to convey his anti-Fascist conviction, demon-
strates the widespread dissemination of what scholarship has come to
consider the civil religion of the Resistance: a set of hallowed symbols,
beliefs, and invented traditions on which a new national identity was to
be founded.47 For partisans like Giambone – “guerrieri per missione
divina [warriors on a divine mission],” as a 1945 essay described them –
this nascent civil religion shaped their understanding of the fight against
Fascism, which became a kind of crusade, an expression of devout faith
consecrated in shared sacrifice.48 The Resistance, that is to say, was
experienced as “un atto religioso: quasi un sacramento di penitenza,
il miserere di un popolo nell’atto della resurrezione [a religious act:
almost a sacrament of penitence, the misericord of a people in the act
of resurrection],” in the words of a 1945 editorial.49 This was certainly
true for Catholic partisans, those who took part in the struggle moti-
vated by their interpretation of Christian doctrine and dogma.50 It was
similarly true, however, for those who fought in the “Giustizia e libertà”
(Justice and liberty) brigades of the Action Party, as well as for many
Socialists and Communists, for whom their movements represented “la
vera riforma religiosa di massa della società contemporanea [the true
mass religious reform of contemporary society].”51 Even when they were
divided by confessional faith or ideology, then, Italian anti-Fascist fight-
ers were largely united in their belief in the sanctified struggle to liberate
Italy. They were united, too, in expressing that belief in largely Christian
terms, a reflection of Catholicism’s millennial role as diffused religion
in Italian culture, to which it furnished a storehouse of images for the
expression of secular as well as spiritual convictions.52 In the crucible of
the Second World War, Italy’s omnipresent religiosity served symbolically
to forge the Resistance coalition, with Christian rhetoric and iconogra-
phy fashioning the historical, ideological, and potential bonds between
the traditionally inimical blocks of Catholics and Communists.
After the war, that same rhetoric and iconography came to consti-
tute the liturgy of Italy’s civil religion of the Resistance. When artists
and intellectuals assumed the responsibility of leading recitations of the
Resistance credo, that is to say, they did so by adopting Christian symbol-
ism in order to accentuate the Communists’ and the Catholics’ common
“senso religioso [religious feeling],” their shared traditions, and their
collaborative role in the sanctified struggle for human liberation.53 It was
often suggested that the hope for social and cultural renewal entailed the
potential to “Attuare il cristianesimo” (Actualize Christianity), as Antonio
Greppi, the Socialist mayor of Milan, put it in December 1945: the effort
to put into practice “quei valori e quei principi universali che hanno
trovato nel Vangelo la loro sorgente più genuina e la più potente forza
di irradiazione [those values and those universal principles that have
found in the Gospel their truest wellspring and the most powerful force
of illumination].”54 Prominent Catholics, too, insisted on the Socialist
and even Marxist connotations of the Church’s pastoral mission, a point
underlined, for instance, by the anti-Fascist priest Ernesto Buonaiuti,
who expressed his conviction that “il Cristianesimo è nato comunista,
e il comunismo è nato cristiano [Christianity was born Communist, and
Communism was born Christian].”55 From all sides, then, there arose
calls for continued cooperation, for a lasting communion sanctified by
the spirit of the Resistance. In the long run this project failed to material-
ize, undone by a series of divisive post-war elections.56 With the rapid dis-
solution of the Resistance coalition, any hopes for a lasting, unifying civil
religion founded on the sacralization of the fight against Fascism were
dashed. In the immediate post-war period, however, even as it began
to dissipate, the religious rhetoric of a sanctified struggle, of Christian
Communism and Communist Christianity, of redemption and rebirth,
would play a key role in the consecration of Italian cultural discourse.
Indeed, one way to understand the major cultural tendencies of the
immediate post-war period is to see them as attempts to capture the
self-described religious enthusiasm of the partisans and to convert it for
use in Italy’s social and political reconstruction.57 This is certainly true
of Italian neorealism, which appears clearly to extend and to redeploy
the Catholicism and Communism of the Resistance coalition, and to do
so in largely Christian terms. In their representations of Italian poverty,
for instance, many neorealist films blend a “coscienza di tipo socialista o
marxista [Socialist or Marxist consciousness],” as Carlo Lizzani argued,
with a “coscienza profonda di una certa parte del mondo cattolico. O
meglio, se vogliamo essere ancora più generali, del mondo cristiano
[profound consciousness of a certain portion of the Catholic world.
Or rather, if we wish to be more general, the Christian world].”58 The
Catholic critic Gian Luigi Rondi could thus identify an “angosciato
credo cristiano [anguished Christian creed]” and an “incitamento alla
solidarietà cristiana [exhortation to Christian solidarity]” in Luchino
Visconti’s unmistakably Marxist La terra trema, while the marxisant poet
and critic Franco Fortini perceptively analysed the apparent “pathos cat-
tolico [Catholic pathos]” in De Sica’s Ladri di biciclette, emphasizing how
it coexists in that film with “una analisi marxista [a Marxist analysis],”
achieving in the protagonist Ricci a kind of synthesis whereby “uomini

con la stampa di Cristo in viso e in cuore [...] vogliono giustizia sulla
terra e violenza contro i mercanti del tempio [men with Christ stamped
on their faces and on their hearts (...) want justice on earth and violence
against the moneylenders in the temple].”59
Nowhere is this combination and interpenetration of Catholicism
and Communism more apparent than in Roberto Rossellini’s Roma
città aperta, whose three protagonists, the Catholic priest Don Pietro,
the Communist partisan leader Manfredi (who fights under a decid-
edly Christian pseudonym, Giovanni Episcopo), and Pina, pregnant
fiancée of the partisan Francesco, are all martyred in Christ-like fash-
ion, with Manfredi’s death reflecting the iconography of the Crucifixion
and Pina’s that of the Pietà.60 Some have seen in such imagery “una
cristiana esigenza [a Christian exigency],” declaring neorealism to be
“rigorosamente cristiano [rigorously Christian.]”61 Others have ascribed
the film’s appropriation of Christological themes to a vaguely concilia-
tory Christian humanism, an effort to avoid the divisive politics of an
anti-Fascist Resistance that had been nothing less than an Italian civil
war.62 Yet Rossellini’s film was neither as conventionally Catholic nor
as evasively conciliatory as such explanations would suggest. Instead, it
offered a formidable challenge to the status quo.
Appropriating the Catholic sacraments to consecrate the Resistance,
and appropriating the “sacrificial memory” of the Resistance martyrs to
consecrate a new post-war order, Roma città aperta claimed, in a very real
sense, to speak for the dead in order to authorize its own projection of a
new faith for a new Italy.63 Indeed, although the film narrates events of
the recent past – its working title was Storie di ieri (Stories of y esterday) –
it is decidedly focused on the future, on the emerging post-war order.64
When Francesco reassures Pina of the impending victory of the
Resistance, it seems clear he is speaking with a foresight shaped by the
filmmakers’ experience of the war’s conclusion. “Noi lottiamo per una
cosa che deve venire, che non può non venire [We’re fighting for some-
thing that has to be, that can’t help coming],” he hopefully declares.
“Forse la strada sarà un po’ lunga e difficile, ma arriveremo e lo vedremo
un mondo migliore, e lo vedranno soprattutto i nostri figli [Maybe the
way is hard, it may take a long time, but we’ll get there, and we’ll see
a better world! And our kids’ll see it!]”65 Such pronouncements not
only endorsed Italy’s post-Fascist reconstruction as the fulfilment of the
anti-Fascist Resistance, reminding viewers that their present freedom
had been guaranteed by past sacrifice, but also revealed the political
eschatology of the film’s images of Christian martyrdom, whose redemp-
tion was emphatically immanent rather than transcendent.66 Roma città
aperta, in other words, offered a kind of prophecy of the civil religion of

the Resistance, channelling its “religious impulse” towards the film’s sym-
bolic vision of Italy’s impending resurrection.67 Pina’s Pietà, Manfredi’s
Crucifixion, and Don Pietro’s execution thus served to endorse Roma
città aperta’s own spiritual and temporal authority, its prerogative not
only to portray but also to define fundamental aspects of Italy’s post-war
reformation. This was something more than an expression of Catholic
faith or Christian humanism. It was a self-benediction, claiming for a
film – or, better still, claiming for cinema, and indeed for culture – the
symbolic authority to direct society.
“The Path outside Ourselves”
Vittorini’s “new culture” sought similarly to channel Resistance religi-

osity in order to authorize its ambitious plan for culture to overcome
“the eternal renunciation ‘render to Caesar’” and to become a “trans-
formative influence on mankind.” The essay was accompanied on the
front page of Il Politecnico by the striking image of a man scribbling in
a notebook while standing over a dead partisan. Below the image, a
caption read: “I caduti per la libertà di tutto il mondo ci hanno dettato
quello che scriviamo [Those who have fallen in the worldwide struggle
for freedom have dictated the words we write],” a controversial claim
that made literal the kinds of figurative transference that would be
employed by Roma città aperta and other neorealist films. This claim,
which explicitly framed the arguments for an interventionist culture
as the legacy of the anti-Fascist struggle, was seized upon by some of
Vittorini’s opponents as a sign of intellectual overreach and was con-
tested in the dozens of replies to his essay penned in the months and
years that followed its publication.68 Vittorini was accused of instru-
mentalizing culture in an attempt to “conquistare un paradiso in terra
[conquer a paradise on earth],” of overestimating culture’s capacity to
produce material change, and of encroaching on the role of religion in
trying to “trasformare la cultura attuale [...] in una nuova cultura a tipo
messianico e predicatorio [transform contemporary culture (...) into a
new culture that is messianic and proselytic].”69 In short, what Miccichè
called “Vittorini’s question” was contested on all sides, instigating a cul-
tural debate that was conducted with what can only be described as a
religious fervour.
At least implicitly, and perhaps inevitably, neorealism reflected the
terms of this debate. In turn, the responses to Vittorini’s essay could be
seen explicitly to illustrate the characteristics of the transition reshaping
the arts in Italy after the war – a transition that many of the contestants
believed to be integral to Italian neorealism. This is perhaps most obvi-

ously the case with regard to the issues raised in the debate between
Vittorini and Carlo Bo, future host of the Inchiesta sul neorealismo. Bo
identified the ethical implications of Vittorini’s essay and pointed to what
he saw as its ethical shortcomings in a polemical broadside whose mes-
sage has all too often been reduced to its epigrammatic title: “Cristo non
è cultura” (Christ is not culture).70 As that title makes evident, Bo was
one of the many Catholic critics to object to what was seen as Vittorini’s
religious apostasy, his denial of Christ’s divinity.71 For Bo, however, this
objection served as prelude to a significantly subtler critique of Vittorini’s
notion of cultural intercession. Correctly identifying in “Una nuova cul-
tura” the expression of what he termed Vittorini’s “natura ‘religiosa’
[‘religious’ nature],” Bo insisted that the distinction between Vittorini’s
ambitions and his own Catholic proposals for post-Fascist social, cultural,
and religious reform lay not in their goals but in their methods.72 For Bo,
real change had to begin from within, effecting a fundamental conver-
sion of the individual conscience, and thus, he argued,
[i] rimedi in cui spera Vittorini non ci possono dare nessun aiuto vero; siamo
pronti a combattere con lui contro l’ingiustizia ma qualcosa dentro di noi
ci avverte che questa ingiustizia comincia da noi, che il male che v ediamo
in spaventose forme esteriori ha una esatta rispondenza nel nostro cuore.73
the remedies in which Vittorini has placed his hopes cannot offer us any
real help. We are ready to combat injustice alongside him, but something
within warns us that this injustice has its origins within ourselves, that the
evil we see in terrifying external manifestations has its precise correspond-
ence within our own hearts.
In other words, Bo alleged that, even if Vittorini and his allies were to
succeed in radically reforming the social order, they would not achieve
their goal of reorganizing society around the highest cultural principles,
because they would not have addressed human frailty; they would not
even have contravened their own human failings. As Bo put it, “il male è
dentro di noi e la strada più breve per combatterlo – non per annullarlo –
comincia proprio dalla nostra anima [evil lies within us, and the most
direct path to combat it – not to say abolish it – begins within our own
soul].”74 To inspire real reforms, Bo thus argued, culture would have to
provide the tools for introspection, allowing each individual to explore
her own limitations as well as her own capacity for improvement.
Postponing such introspection by privileging direct political interven-
tion, Vittorini’s essay appeared to Bo to work against its own goals.
Revealingly, Vittorini accepted Bo’s framing of the debate, responding

to the assertions of his Catholic antagonist and justifying his decision to
subordinate individual critical introspection to universal political trans-
formation. “Il male è certo anche in me, [...] ma è proprio combatten-
dolo fuori di me che io potrò veramente combatterlo anche dentro di
me [It is certain that there is also evil within me, (...) but it is precisely by
combatting it outside of myself that I can truly combat it within myself as
well],” Vittorini insisted in his reply.
Ogni colpo che io potrò dare agli sfruttatori e oppressori che sono fuori di
me lo avrò dato anche allo sfruttatore che è in me e all’oppressore che è in
me. Ed ogni ostacolo che potrò innalzare contro gli sfruttatori e oppressori
che sono fuori di me lo avrò innalzato anche contro lo sfruttatore che è in
me e l’oppressore che è in me. Tu parli di due vie, Carlo Bo, una che [è] den-
tro a noi e una che è fuori di noi. Io non voglio neanche dire che la via è
una sola. Ma tu dici che la più lunga è la via fuori di noi, e la più breve quella
dentro di noi. Io invece dico che è il contrario: che più breve è la via di fuori.
È la via più umile, Carlo Bo, la più umana e terrena; per questo più breve.75
Every blow that I manage to strike against the exploiters and the oppressors
who are outside of me will strike as well against the exploiter who is within
me and the oppressor who is within me. And every obstacle that I manage
to put in the way of the exploiters and oppressors who are outside of me I
will also have put in the way of the exploiter who is within me and the op-
pressor who is within me. You speak of two paths, Carlo Bo, the one within
and the one outside ourselves. I do not wish to say that there is only one
path. But you say that the longer path is the one outside ourselves, and the
shorter path is the one within. I say instead that it is the reverse: the shorter
path is the one outside ourselves. It is the humbler path, Carlo Bo, the more
human and earthly path, and that’s why it is shorter.
Momentarily shifting the ethical argument onto utilitarian grounds,

Vittorini insisted that social transformation, “the path outside ourselves,”
was demonstrably more effective than self-examination, “within our-
selves.” At the same time, he sought to make clear that his differences
with Bo were not only practical but also ethical and ideological, that they
regarded both means and ends. Vittorini maintained that he and his
antagonist offered contrasting models of cultural change and opposing
visions for the ends to which culture should aim.
It is not enough, therefore, to assert that Vittorini advanced an ethics
of culture; so, too, did Bo. Nor can it be said that thinkers such as these
were united by their faith in culture’s ethical mission; in fact, they were
divided by their competing ethical visions. Nevertheless, the complex

constellation of neorealism’s cultural politics can be traced across the
divisive terms of this ethical debate. In truth, Carlo Bo said as much at
the time, although he did not yet employ the term “neorealism” to des-
ignate the position with which he disagreed. Instead, he advanced the
perceptive but tendentious insight that Vittorini’s program echoed the
one he himself had put forward in his own 1938 essay “Letteratura come
vita” (Literature as life):
Quando io parlavo di letteratura come vita dicevo già molte cose che ora
dice Vittorini, seppure le dicevo in un altro senso e con altre speranze:
ingenuamente ma con il cuore sincero come non mai anch’io allora ho
creduto di potere conquistare una riva eterna da cui dimenticare e risol-
vere per sempre la mia frazione di terra, l’orgasmo della mia “residencia
en tierra” [...]. La questione sta tutta qua dentro: io dico, dentro di noi e
tu, Vittorini, dici fuori di noi. Io vorrei salvarmi nella mia “stanza interiore”
con l’aiuto indispensabile di Dio e tu invece vuoi trovare lo stesso Dio nel
volto di chi ti sta vicino, di chi incontri sulla tua strada, dell’uomo che non
conosci e che vedi soltanto. È dunque una questione molto vecchia, tu parli
di una nuova cultura e io mi permetto di ricordarti che ti dibatti ancora
nella trama di un problema eterno, e lascia che lo chiami cattolico.76
When I spoke of literature as life I was already saying many of the things
that Vittorini now says, although I said them in a different way and with
other hopes in mind: naïvely, but with a heart sincere as never before, I too
believed then that I could seize an eternal shore from which I could re-
solve and forget forever my piece of earth, the orgasm of my “residencia
en tierra” [...]. This is the entirety of the question: I say within ourselves
and you, Vittorini, say outside ourselves. I wish to save myself in my “inner
room” with the indispensable help of God and you instead wish to find that
same God on the faces of those who stand near you, those you meet on
the road, the man you don’t know and only see. It is therefore a very old
question. You speak of a new culture and I permit myself to remind you that
you are still debating in the terms of an eternal problem, one which you’ll
permit me to call Catholic.
In making this comparison, Bo not only reiterated and clarified his earlier
points; he also drew attention to the transformation that had reshaped
Italian cultural politics in the seven years that separated his essay from
Vittorini’s. After all, “Letteratura come vita” was and is commonly invoked
as the manifesto or even Magna Carta of Hermeticism, the inter-war
Italian poetic movement defined by its lyrical introversion, its political

abstention, and its deliberate rejection of political engagement.77 “Una
nuova cultura,” a harbinger of the post-war turn towards cultural commit-
ment, seemed to Bo to draw on the same Christian foundations, and to
offer a similarly utopian vision, while redirecting the vector of interven-
tion from individual consciousness to social construction.78
Far from a minor difference, this was in fact the defining change
that marked the political and ethical turn of Italian culture in the age of
neorealism.79 The Hermetic poets – Alfonso Gatto, Mario Luzi, Salvatore
Quasimodo, and Vittorio Sereni foremost among them – had sought ref-
uge from the evils of Fascist Italy by withdrawing into themselves, each
introspectively exploring his conscience while refusing to pollute his
poetry with direct references to the fallen world in which he lived and
wrote.80 Privileging what Bo termed “assenza [absence],” the individu-
al’s deliberate dissociation from history in pursuit of a “pulizia interiore
[internal cleansing],” the Hermeticists had sought to turn away from their
corrupted cultural context in the belief, as Bo phrased it, that “un reale
immediato per il suo valore di storia non potrà mai interessarci [a reality
made immediate by its value as history can never be of interest to us],”
and that the proper course of action was to “rifarci a noi stessi [take inspi-
ration from ourselves].”81 Hermetic poetry thus became a kind of private
activity, an act of self-isolation, employing an often inscrutable literary
language, a virtually closed system of reference, which all but rejected
direct communication, let alone intercession. After the war, this inward
turn was dismissed by many as “una fuga [an escape],” an evasion of
responsibility, even a surrender to Fascism, and Hermeticism was branded
a “sinonimo di falsità, di equivoco [synonym of falsehood, of error].”82
Displacing the compromised and ineffectual Hermetic movement, it was
said, was a new literature, “un movimento di liberazione da questa poesia
[ermetica] per un modo più aperto e più ‘sociale’ di poetare [a move-
ment of liberation from this (Hermetic) poetry in pursuit of a more open
and more ‘social’ mode of writing poetry],” a “neo-realismo antierme
tico e antiborghese [anti-Hermetic and anti-bourgeois neorealism].”83
Carlo Bo, however, framed the relationship between Hermeticism and
neorealism in a rather different way, stressing the gradual externaliza-
tion of Hermeticism’s inward-looking ethics. Comparing “Una nuova
cultura” to “Letteratura come vita” on these terms, he not only identified
the significant political distinction between his position and Vittorini’s,
he also pinpointed the characteristic ethical and aesthetic innovations
which followed from this distinction, and which signalled the unfolding
development of a poetics and politics of Italian neorealism.
“A Choral Unity of Diverse but Blended Voices”
Concluding his 1956 essay “Le vicende del romanzo negli ultimi
cinquant’anni” (The story of the novel in the last fifty years), Goffredo
Bellonci suggested that the Italian literary history he had recounted
served ultimately to demonstrate
come si rinnovi nelle nuove condizioni di cultura la nostra narrativa, ed

innanzi tutto il romanzo, che non sarà più romanzo di una persona o di
un personaggio nel mondo esteriore o nel mondo interiore, ma della con-
vivenza delle persone e dei personaggi in questa nuova società che l’arte
vuol decantare. Si è passati insomma dall’Io al Noi.84
the renewal of our narrative in new cultural conditions, and above all the
renewal of the novel, which will no longer be the novel of a person or a
character in the outer world or the inner world, but the novel of the coex-
istence of people and characters in the new society that art seeks to extol.
In short, we have passed from I to We.
Five years after describing neorealism as a modernist hyper-realism, the

insight from which I began the first chapter of this investigation, Bellonci
had once again hit upon an incisive but far from customary definition.
Neorealism, he argued, characteristically performed the transition from
an individual to a social consciousness, from a personal to a collective
experience, from the singular I to the plural we.
Bellonci was referring specifically to the Italian novel, but the cogency
of his claim can unproblematically be extended across the arts. Indeed,
in the same year Bellonci offered his judgment, Brunello Rondi identi-
fied a similar tendency in Italian neorealist cinema, and Angelo Paoluzzi
did the same for Italian poetry.85 Many prominent Italian poets had par-
ticipated directly in the struggle against Fascism, Paoluzzi explained, and
when they began once more to compose, they could not help but reflect
their newfound experiences. “Si trascorre [...] dall’io al noi, dalla poesia
come fatto individuale e privato, come dolore intimo e personale, alla
lirica aperta, corale, popolare non in senso classista, ma come richiesta
di una più vasta partecipazione umana alla realtà [We pass (...) from I to
we, from poetry as individual and private event, as intimate and personal
pain, to a lyric that is open, choral, and popular, not in the sense of
class but in the sense of a demand for a broader human participation
in reality].”86 As Paoluzzi saw it, the lyric poetry of the pre-war period,
of Hermeticism, had become the choral poetry, the neorealist poetry, of
the post-war period.
Paoluzzi’s preferred term for the poetic turn towards a plural sub-
ject, “choral,” recurred throughout the post-war critical conversation.
Salvatore Quasimodo, formerly regarded as one of the leaders of the
Hermeticist school, had earlier adopted the same term in order to
describe the post-war transformation in Italian poetry, his own as well
as that of his contemporaries, explaining that “La poesia italiana dopo
il ’45, è di natura corale [Italian poetry after ’45 has a choral nature].”87
Mario De Micheli, in his 1946 call for “Realismo e poesia” (Realism and
poetry), similarly argued that after Hermeticism writers would need to
cease their “solitaria protesta contro il mondo [solitary protest against
the world]” and begin to engage with the wider society in which they
worked. “Al monologo, o tutt’al più al dialogo, sostituisce la coralità
[The monologue, or at most the dialogue, gives way to chorality].”88 The
novelist Francesco Jovine made a related argument in broader cultural
terms. As he put it in a 1944 essay, he believed that, from the “disperata
miseria [desperate misery]” of the Second World War,
un comune fondo di dolente poesia sia nato inconsapevolmente e [...]

tutti portino nell’anima un tono dominante, un sentimento multiforme
ma di identiche radici. Sta nascendo una unità corale di voci diverse ma
fuse; il processo di formazione di un linguaggio comune scritto, seguirà
fatalmente questa unità di tono intimo; la letteratura trascriverà in corrette
misure quest’agitarsi ancora confuso ma potente e ci darà finalmente il
volto dell’Italia; quello vero che nessuno forse mai ha visto.89
a common fund of painful poetry was born unknowingly, and [...] we all
carry within our soul a common tone, a feeling that is multiform but springs
from common roots. We are witnessing the birth of a choral unity of diverse
but blended voices. The formation of a common written language will in-
evitably follow from this unity of intimate tone; literature will transcribe, in
proper measures, this confused but powerful agitation and will finally give
us the face of Italy, the true one that no one has ever seen.
In this vision, the task of literature, like the task of film, art, music, philos-
ophy, and history, was to capture the popular voice. “Occorre [...] che la
cultura abbia carattere corale, che gli scrittori gli storici i filosofi lavorino
tenendo presenti nel loro lavoro tutti quelli che essi presumono siano chia-
mati ad ascoltarli [Culture must (...) have a choral character, produced by
writers, historians, and philosophers, who will keep in mind, as they work,
all those they believe are called to listen to them],” Jovine would argue in
a subsequent essay. “Solo così la cultura diventa fatto determinante nella
vita di un popolo [This is the only way for culture to become a determining
factor in the life of a people].”90 As several of Jovine’s contemporary critics

would similarly put it, the new literature, an expression of the “new cul-
ture,” would need to transcend what was seen at the time as Hermeticism’s
“dramma della solitudine [drama of solitude],” its “solitudine dell’io [sol-
itude of the ‘I’],” and repudiate “l’estremo individualismo degli ermetici
[the Hermeticists’ extreme individualism]” in order to convey a collective
response to a collective drama.91 “[O]ggi nessuno più può parlare in prima
persona, nessuno può dire ‘io’ e quindi dobbiamo metterci alla ricerca
delle nostre ragioni insieme con tutto il genere umano, vedere le cose e
gli uomini, in compagnia degli altri, con i nostri pensieri ed i pensieri di
tutti [Today no one can speak in the first person, no one can say ‘I,’ and we
must therefore set out together in search of the motivations we share with
the entire human race, we must look at both things and men, in the com-
pany of others, with our own thoughts and with the thoughts of all],” wrote
the critic Tommaso Giglio in a 1946 essay.92 The task now, Giglio, Jovine,
and their contemporaries insisted, was to speak to a broad audience and
to relate a shared experience in order to make possible the active cultural
intervention that commentators were calling for after the war.
Chorality thus came to signify nothing less than the transforma-
tion articulated in the Vittorini–Bo debate: from “Literature as life” to
“A new culture,” from the “path within us” to the “path outside our-
selves,” from Hermeticism to neorealism, “from I to We.” It served to
indicate the performative conversion – in context, the use of that term
is eminently justifiable – from personal introspection to social action,
from spiritual reflection to political intervention, from solitary oppo-
sition to collective confrontation. In this last respect, the claim to cho-
rality was decidedly aspirational, portraying – or rather projecting – a
community that did not yet exist, one that was symbolically brought into
being through the choral expression itself. Artists and intellectuals were
trying to transform a culture of opposition into a culture of consent,
minority beliefs into a majority viewpoint, private devotion into pub-
lic virtue, critical judgment into communal ideology. They were trying
to represent a community that did not yet cohere, and to establish its
coherence through the act of representation. Within this project, cho-
rality referred both to their political objective and to the artistic form
with which they pursued its realization.
This point must be emphasized, and unpacked, because chorality
was and is widely invoked as one of the defining features of Italian neo-
realism.93 After the war, critics immediately identified a choral turn in
Italian literature, theatre, the visual arts, even architecture.94 Above all,
they stressed the chorality of neorealist cinema. In a 1948 investigation
of what he termed “L’apparenza del coro nel cinema italiano” (The
appearance of the choir in Italian cinema), to cite one prominent, rep-

resentative example, Carlo Lizzani underlined the importance of film-
makers’ turn towards “storie non di individui ma di complessi sociali
[stories not of individuals but of social complexes],” as a result of which,
he insisted, “il coro, cioè il dramma di un paese o di una città, di una
famiglia o di una regione, son tornati ad essere, attraverso il cinema, l’al-
imento della nostra produzione artistica [the choral, that is, the drama
of a town or a city, a family or a region, has returned, through cinema, to
be the nourishment of our artistic production].”95 Identifying the same
phenomenon, Mario Verdone made the case that neorealism could be
defined by “l’elemento corale, in quanto [...] non guarda alla storia indi-
viduale, ma alla storia collettiva [the choral element, in that [...] it looks
not to the individual but to the collective story].”96 Just as Bo located in
Vittorini’s “new culture” a shift from personal to collective salvation, so
too did Lizzani, Verdone, and countless others identify in neorealism a
move from the individual to the collective subject.
In certain key respects, therefore, chorality can be understood to rep-
resent within the structure of the individual work of art the kind of social
transformation Vittorini and other cultural critics sought to promote
after the war.97 To invoke what is almost certainly the most significant
point of intersection between the fictional and the political, by which
I mean the turn to a collective subject in artistic representation and in
social intervention, both Vittorini’s essay and neorealism’s characteristic
transition “from I to We” were widely assumed to embody the “religious
enthusiasm” that characterized the cultural conversation in post-war Italy.
In an incisive and remarkably detailed 1948 essay entitled “Il cinema ita
liano realistico” (Italian realist cinema), for instance, Gian Luigi Rondi
drew attention to neorealism’s move away from the standard cinematic
narrative structure, centred upon an individual protagonist, and towards
a collective viewpoint, a process Rondi called an “approda alla coralità
[attainment of chorality].”98 Rondi saw this as a transformative artistic
development, a fundamental reconceptualization of the basis upon
which film plots would be constructed. Yet he saw it as something more
than this as well, and argued that by shifting from a singular to a multipo-
lar cinematic perspective, “si forma una nuova coscienza, approda a un
nuovo ‘tempo,’ e io credo sia quello della coscienza cristiana; perché è il
ritmo di una fratellanza e d’un amore [a new consciousness is formed,
a new ‘time’ is brought into existence, and I believe it is the time of
Christian consciousness, because it has the rhythm of brotherhood and
love].”99 Emblematically rejecting selfishness and self-interest in favour
of fellowship in Christ, Rondi argued, neorealist chorality symbolically
transformed disparate individuals into a community of the faithful.
In other words, chorality was a characteristically religious expression of

a decidedly political topos, rehearsing at the level of narrative the forma-
tion of a new society founded on the civil religion of the Resistance. It was
the name given to the attempt to create an imagined community, a new
Italian populace, after the tragedies of the war.100 Put another way, it was
a kind of aesthetic corollary of the political project laid out by Vittorini
in “Una nuova cultura.” The “old culture,” Vittorini had said, “has
preached, has taught, has elaborated principles and values.”101 Chorality
symbolized another approach, not preaching, not teaching, not speaking
to the people, but instead speaking as the people and capturing – or,
more accurately, creating – a communal spirit. Treating their subjects
chorally, artists and intellectuals sought to project and then to speak for
a collective conscience in order to convey the cultural foundations of a
new Italian society.
“The Humility of an Impure Poetry”
From this point of view, chorality can be seen to constitute the most sig-
nificant artistic expression of neorealism’s politics. Consider what I have
called Roma città aperta’s appropriation of the “sacrificial memory” of the
Resistance, which authorizes the film’s vision of post-war reconstruction.
In the course of the narrative, three successive deaths – the murder of a
popolana, the torture of a partisan, and the execution of a priest – come
to constitute a kind of “collective martyrdom,” a shared sacrifice borne
by the Roman community, which presages the collective redemption
of the Italian people.102 With each casualty the film’s subjective centre
effectively shifts, from Pina to Manfredi, from Manfredi to Don Pietro,
before it achieves true chorality, a collective voice, in the whistles of the
children who witness the priest’s execution, and who are tasked meta-
phorically with rebuilding the country in the image of resistance that this
tragic event has imparted.103 Chorality in Roma città aperta, authorized
by the film’s Resistance martyrs to re-envision the country after Fascism,
thus serves symbolically to create a collective conscience, a metonymic
figuration of the post-war Italian body politic. This cinematic expression
of a powerful vision of national unity was decidedly aspirational, a cre-
ative invention of Rossellini’s film itself. This is not to say, however, that
the aspiration was expressed only in that film. Well beyond Roma città
aperta, in fact, neorealist chorality can be understood performatively to
have enacted a new democratic polity, one not yet present in the theatre
of political action but already mobilized symbolically in the realm of art.
The foundational move that facilitated chorality, therefore, was the
representational claim to a kind of proxy from below, the right to speak
for the people, including those partisans martyred to the cause of Italian
liberation, and to dictate in their name the terms of the post-war order.
This was a profound claim, and an audacious one. To justify it, artists and
intellectuals sought to take on a new role and a new social status, publicly
rejecting their traditional prestige and forgoing their participation in what
Franco Fortini described as the “cosiddetto mondo della cultura, col suo
orgoglio di scriba, il suo sprezzante servilismo di oggetto di lusso [so-called
world of culture, with its scribe’s pride, its contemptuous and servile status
as a luxury good].”104 “Noi non tolleriamo più gli studi che sieno sem-
plicemente ‘ornamenti’ [We no longer tolerate studies that simply serve as
‘ornaments’],” announced the art historian Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli.
E non li tolleriamo, perché [...] tali ornamenti costano un correspettivo

troppo grande di sudore, di umiliazione e di miseria ad altri uomini. La cul-
tura è cosa costosa. Essa non fiorisce nell’indigenza; essa presuppone una
massa di lavoro materiale e direttamente redditizio, fatto da altri uomini
per i quali i benefici della cultura restano intangibili, anche se indiretta-
mente ne sieno anch’essi partecipi. [...] Noi abbiamo, è vero, il dovere e la
responsabilità di essere guida a quelle masse nel progresso civile e in quello
intellettuale, ma possiamo farlo solo in quanto quelle masse riconoscono
l’utilità della nostra guida e della nostra esistenza e sono disposte a fornirci
i mezzi per eseguire la nostra parte.105
And we no longer tolerate them because [...] those ornaments are pur-
chased with too much of the sweat, humiliation, and misery of other men.
Culture is a costly thing. It does not flourish amid poverty; it presupposes
a mass of material and immediately profitable labour, performed by other
men for whom culture’s benefits remain intangible, even if they too partic-
ipate indirectly. [...] It is true that we have the duty and the responsibility
to guide those masses in their civic and intellectual progress, but we can do
that only to the extent that those masses recognize the utility of our guid-
ance and of our existence, and are willing to provide us with the means to
perform our part.
Culture had to become less exalted, Bandinelli was saying, in order for
it to become more important, and intellectuals had to become more
democratic in order to take on greater authority. They had a crucial
role to play in Italy’s post-war recovery, a 1945 editorial in Società argued,
provided they abandoned their “privilegio [privilege]” and accepted
their identity as “il sale della terra [the salt of the earth],” not “una
classe a sé [a separate class].”106 Such pronouncements echo a famous
phrase from the last letter of Giaime Pintor, written to his brother in
1943 before setting off on the partisan mission that would prove to
be his demise: “Musicisti e scrittori dobbiamo rinunciare ai nostri pri
vilegi per contribuire alla liberazione di tutti [Musicians and writers,
we must renounce our privileges in order to contribute to everyone’s
liberation].”107 Artists and intellectuals, it was believed, could no longer
remain loyal to an elite culture, divorced from the life of the people; they
had to remake culture itself in the image of the people, advocating on
behalf of those oppressed by the traditional hierarchies and speaking for
those excluded from the conventional conversations. They had to “occu-
parsi del pane e del lavoro [attend to bread and work],” as Vittorini put
it in “Una nuova cultura,” taking up the practical, material concerns that
culture had affected to disdain.108
Borrowing a concept from Christian apologetics, several commenta-
tors have referred to neorealism’s attempt to capture in artistic practice
this simultaneous acceptance of social responsibility and rejection of
cultural privilege as an instance of sermo humilis.109 As Erich Auerbach
detailed, the tradition of Christian exegesis inverted the hierarchies of
classical rhetoric, forgoing the high style in the belief that “the high-
est mysteries of the faith may be set forth in the simple words of the
lowly style which everyone can understand.” Beginning with the Church
Fathers, then, Christian thinkers employed sermo humilis, the low style, in
order to make Christ’s message “accessible to all, descending to all men
in loving-kindness, secretly sublime, at one with the whole Christian con-
gregation.”110 Neorealism may be understood to have attempted some-
thing similar both stylistically and thematically. Among the first to draw
this connection was Pier Paolo Pasolini:
Il neorealismo è il prodotto di una reazione culturale democratica alla stasi

dello spirito del periodo fascista; letterariamente essa è consistita in una
sostituzione del classicismo decadentistico, ipotattico, ordinante dall’alto e
implicante una netta “distinzione stilistica” verso uno stile sublimis (in cui
se c’era del realismo, si trattava di realismo prezioso e di genere) con un
gusto della realtà, paratattico, operante documentaristicamente al livello
della realtà rappresentata, attraverso un processo di mimesis da cui nasceva
la riscoperta del monologo interiore, del discorso vissuto e di una mesco
lanza stilistica, con prevalenza dello stile humilis (o dialettale).111
Neorealism is the product of a cultural-democratic reaction to the Fascist

period’s stasis of the spirit. In literature it has meant abandoning decadent
classicism, hypotactic, arranged from above, and entailing a clear “stylistic
distinction” that favoured the sublimis style (in which, if there was any real-
ism, it was a precious and generic realism) and replacing it with a taste of
reality, paratactic, operating in a documentary fashion and representing

reality through a process of mimesis, from which emerged the rediscovery of
interior monologue, of lived discourse, and of the mixture of styles, with a
preference for the humilis (or dialect) style.
Describing neorealism in both political and poetic terms, Pasolini sought

to underline the social significance of the efforts to forgo accepted lit-
erary models, genres, and hierarchies in an attempt to describe reality
more faithfully. Neorealism, Pasolini explained, manifested a demo-
cratic passion – popular, egalitarian, communal – for overturning tradi-
tional standards of style and describing ordinary reality in humble terms.
Adopting Auerbach’s schema, itself imported into literary historiogra-
phy from patristic discourses, Pasolini thus identified in neorealism a
predilection for sermo humilis.112
The schema fit, largely because the neorealist rejection of Hermeticism
in favour of chorality was indeed justified with a rhetoric that recog-
nizably echoed the sermo humilis. For instance, in its 1946 call “Per una
poesia nuova” (For a new poetry), the journal La Strada insisted that,
“di fronte all’ambizione della poesia pura, dalla forma elaboratissima,
noi preferiamo l’umiltà di una poesia impura, in cui la forma aderisca
soprattutto alla sincerità e alla verità dello stato d’animo [faced with the
desire for pure poetry, with its elaborate form, we prefer the humility of
an impure poetry, in which form reflects the sincerity and the truth of
our state of mind].”113 Austere, unadorned language was thus to be pre-
ferred to the aulic tradition, the lexical grandeur of Italy’s poetic inher-
itance. Arnaldo Bocelli, in the Inchiesta sul neorealismo, referred to this
inverted hierarchy of literary value as neorealism’s “retorica alla rove
scia [reverse rhetoric],” the adoption of which came to be known as “le
poetiche dello scriver male [the poetics of bad writing].”114 Put simply,
neorealism preferred the humility of the low style over the grandiosity
of Hermeticism’s high style. In the same way, it preferred “low” subjects,
pursuing what the narrator of Vasco Pratolini’s 1947 novel Cronache di
poveri amanti called the “umile epicità [humble epic]” of the poor and
the working classes.115 Critics at the time thus stressed how “il neorea
lismo senza dubbio ha saputo riaccostarsi umilmente alla perduta realtà
della vita [neorealism has without doubt managed humbly to reconnect
itself to the lost reality of life],” drawing attention to its “umiltà di cuore
e di mente [humility of heart and mind],” its depictions of a “mondo di
gente viva ed umile, uomini che ci assomiglino [world of living and hum-
ble people, men who resemble us].”116 Not only did critics demand that
artists be “umilmente spoglio da superbie creatrici [humbly stripped of
creative arrogance],” but artists, too, stressed humility as their guiding
objective.117 Vittorio De Sica concisely encapsulated the objective in a

1948 interview on the subject of Ladri di biciclette: “Alla sofferenza degli
umili il mio film è dedicato [My film is dedicated to the suffering of the
humble].”118 If the sermo humilis can thus be said to characterize neoreal-
ism’s address, however, this is not at all to say that neorealism’s ambitions
were somehow humble. Indeed, behind the humility of tone and subject
matter was a far-reaching cultural program whose goals were anything
but modest. Neorealism’s dedication to Christian humility was never an
end in itself; it was, instead, a cultural strategy with political import.
This helps to explain, at least in part, why a cultural conversation
that was often carried out in recognizably Christian terms frequently
received a hostile reception in Catholic forums. While neorealism’s
humble address suggested to some the seeds of a renewed Christian cul-
ture, many others, including prominent figures in the Italian govern-
ment, perceived in neorealism’s claim to speak for the people a potential
threat to Catholicism’s cultural and political hegemony.119 It was with
this danger in mind that Christian Democrat Giulio Andreotti, upon
taking up his position as Under-Secretary for Entertainment in 1947,
set about restructuring state funding of the film industry in order to
intervene directly at the level of production and dissemination. This
effort culminated with the 1949 bill dubbed, in recognition of its strong-
est proponent, the “Legge Andreotti” (Andreotti Law), which stipulated
that films receive financing based on their box-office success, a situation
that tended – as was intended – to encourage a certain conservatism in
filmmakers and producers, who worried that taking risks, aesthetically or
politically, could alienate the mass audience on which commercial viabil-
ity increasingly depended. Put into effect in 1950, the Andreotti Law also
offered additional financial support for films judged to have particular
“artistic quality,” a judgment to be issued from the minister’s own office,
which had already been entrusted with all decisions regarding censor-
ship.120 With his power effectively redoubled, therefore, Andreotti had
final approval on all filmmaking in Italy. Such approval, he explained at
the time, would be made in such a way as to promote
una produzione sana, moralissima e nello stesso tempo attraente, che può
degnamente inserirsi nella corrente [...] della nuova scuola [neorealista] ital-
iana, che fa onore alla nostra cinematografia e che all’estero ci viene invidiata,
sicché a noi spetta valorizzarla, tendendo a che questa formula rappresenti
un qualcosa che abbia anche – e può averlo – un significato spirituale.121
a sound production, of the highest morals and at the same time appealing,
one that fits within [...] the new Italian [neorealist] school, which is a credit
to our film industry and much envied abroad, and which we too must value,
ensuring that this formula can and does have a spiritual significance.
While Andreotti thus suggested a desire to promote neorealism, in prac-

tice his aim was to control it. He wanted films to carry an unmistakably
Christian – or more accurately Christian Democrat – message, and he
was prepared to exert significant financial and political pressure to make
sure his goals were realized. This was already apparent in 1948, with his
insistence on cinema’s “spiritual significance,” and would become all the
more apparent a few years later in a confrontation occasioned by his
public opposition to Vittorio De Sica’s 1952 film Umberto D. Andreotti
chastised the director, and by implication his neorealist contemporaries,
for what he saw as the failure to uphold “un qualunque principio se non
di religione almeno di solidarietà umana [any standard, if not of reli-
gion, at least of human solidarity].”122 In public statements such as these,
Andreotti may perhaps be said to have articulated an ethics of cinema.
Yet his material interventions, as well as his private correspondence,
make evident that this was all in the service of a factional and confes-
sional politics of cinema. Indeed, in a 1949 letter to then pro-secretary of
state Giovanni Battista Montini, later to become Pope Paul VI, Andreotti
revealed his ambition to give confessing Catholics “un peso effettivo,
nell’arte e nell’industria dello spettacolo [an effective weight in art and
in the entertainment industry],” stipulating the need to “conquistare al
cristianesimo le attività dello spettacolo in Italia [... e] formare e lanciare
uomini ed iniziative chiaramente nostri o almeno indubbiamente vicini
[take over the film industry in Italy (... and) shape and promote men and
initiatives on – or at least unquestionably close to – our side].”123 These
were far from empty boasts; Andreotti had the power not just to regulate
but also effectively to reshape the Italian film industry. Recognizing in
the humble rhetoric of some of Italy’s most celebrated neorealist film-
makers a bid for an alternative and potentially opposing authority, he
intervened to attenuate their influence.
From the opposing side of the political spectrum, Palmiro Togliatti,
the leader of the Italian Communist Party, acted similarly in response to
the evident bid for power articulated by Elio Vittorini in the pages of Il
Politecnico. Insisting that political authority be accorded to cultural inno-
vation, and more to the point that it be accorded to cultural innovators,
Vittorini was repeatedly reproved by Italy’s post-war political leadership,
whose power, unlike Vittorini’s, was effectively unmediated, and who
believed that intellectual investigation and artistic exploration should
respond to political direction. Beginning in 1946, Vittorini was accused,
in the pages of Rinascita, the official organ of the Italian Communist Party,
of “intellettualismo [intellectualism]” – intellectual arrogance, obscurant-

ism, fecklessness – for a series of editorial decisions that failed to conform
to the party’s increasingly stringent demands.124 When Vittorini refused
to back down, a second rebuke followed, this time from Togliatti him-
self.125 Again, Vittorini defended his position, publishing an open letter
that has sometimes been construed as a call for cultural independence,
but which in fact offered not so much a defence of the artist’s freedom
from political pressure as a declaration of the artist’s entitlement to polit-
ical authority.126 Culture, Vittorini argued in his letter to Togliatti,
è la forza umana che scopre nel mondo le esigenze di mutamento e ne dà

coscienza al mondo. Essa, dunque, vuole le trasformazioni del mondo. Ma
aspira, volendole, ad ordinare il mondo in un modo per cui il mondo non
ricada più sotto il dominio di un interesse economico, o comunque di una
necessità, di un automatismo, e possa, al contrario, identificare il proprio
movimento con quello della ricerca della verità, della filosofia, dell’arte,
insomma della cultura stessa. Così la cultura aspira alla rivoluzione come a
una possibilità di prendere il potere attraverso una politica che sia cultura tradot
ta in politica, e non più interesse economico tradotto in politica, privilegio
di casta tradotto in politica, necessità tradotta in politica.127
is the human force that discovers and makes us conscious of how the world
needs to change. Culture, therefore, desires the world’s transformation.
But with this desire culture wants to arrange the world in such a way that
it is no longer governed by economic interests, or in any event by need, by
automatism, and so that its development tends, instead, towards the search
for truth, philosophy, art; so that it tends, in other words, towards culture
itself. Thus culture seeks revolution as a chance to seize power through a pol-
itics that is culture translated into policy, and no longer economic interest
translated into policy, caste privilege translated into policy, necessity trans-
lated into policy.
Describing the issue in this way, Vittorini unapologetically identified his

clash with the Communist Party as a struggle for power. His was not,
then, an attempt to free culture from political interference, but rather to
invest culture with political influence. Put simply, if Togliatti wanted pol-
itics to govern culture, Vittorini wanted culture to govern politics. That
Togliatti’s authority substantially eclipsed Vittorini’s, leading eventually
to the author’s exit from the party as well as to the demise of Il Politecnico,
need not diminish the sincerity – or the audacity – of the demand for
culture to take power.
This demand, made explicit in Vittorini’s letter, was implicit in every

instance of neorealism’s sermo humilis. With its humble register, neore-
alism may have signalled the concession modestly to relinquish the sta-
tus of a cultural elite, but, as its opponents correctly recognized, it also
disclosed the ambition immodestly to establish the direction of a cul-
tural vanguard for a new mass politics. Indicative in this regard is Cesare
Pavese’s pronouncement, variously expressed, that, after Fascism, “il
problema è uscire dal privilegio – servile – che godemmo e non ‘andare
verso il popolo’ ma ‘essere popolo’ [the challenge is to leave behind the –
servile – privilege we enjoyed, no longer ‘going towards the people’ but
instead ‘being the people’].”128 Overturning the same Fascist injunction
mocked in Visconti’s La terra trema, as we saw in the first chapter, Pavese
expressed a desire, or better still a need, to speak as rather than to the
masses, a statement ostensibly self-effacing but in practice unmistakably
presumptuous. What was being claimed, after all, was nothing less than
the artist’s right to speak on behalf of the audience. Little wonder that
Pavese described the assumption of this right as an escape from servility.
If artists were refusing any longer to propagandize, they were now vol-
unteering to sermonize, and perhaps in some sense to ventriloquize.129
Giving up one privilege, they were assuming another: the privilege
to interpret, and even to invent, the collective voice of the masses. As
Antonio Banfi explained in a 1947 essay, “[l]a cultura per noi non è cul-
tura che il popolo riceve da una specie di grandi opere benefiche, dagli
uomini di cultura, ma è cultura che il popolo crea dal suo profondo, dai
suoi nuovi bisogni e dalla sua nuova responsabilità [By ‘culture’ we do
not mean a culture that the people receive like a charitable gift, from
men of letters, but a culture created from within the people, from their
own new needs and new responsibilities].”130 In this manner, a manner
typical of all those who adopted neorealism’s humble rhetoric, Banfi,
like Pavese, dedicated himself to the democratization of culture. Yet he,
and they, inevitably did so by assuming, extrapolating, or indeed arrogat-
ing a popular endorsement. Theirs was thus a popular culture created by
fiat, which is to say that post-war Italian culture was “popular” because –
and indeed in some cases only because – its creators claimed it to be an
expression of the popular will.
The aspiration to make popular art, in this context, did not neces-
sarily mean making art people liked, or even making people like art,
but instead making a people: creating a new audience, a new public, a
new nation. This was the assignment, and the authority, that neoreal-
ism ambitiously appropriated for itself. As Cesare Zavattini put it at the
1944 inauguration of the Associazione culturale cinematografica italiana
(ACCI), an organization that brought together many of the fledgling

auteurs of the neorealist movement,
[n]oi consideriamo il cinema, anziché una zona socialmente privilegiata,

come l’arte più carica di doveri per la sua costante funzione popolare.
Questa coscienza dovrà costituire l’unità del cinema italiano anche rispetto
al cinema straniero dove il professionalismo, talvolta, spesso la maniera,
pur attingendo risultati di eccellente gradevolezza, prosperano senza l’ur-
genza dell’umile racconto che noi italiani dobbiamo cominciare, facendolo
echeggiare di valori non soltanto spettacolari.131
rather than socially privileged, we consider cinema to be the field most bur-
dened with responsibilities because of its constant popular function. This
awareness will have to constitute Italian cinema’s unity in comparison with
foreign cinemas, which, despite achieving at times excellent results, thanks
to an often determined professionalism, can thrive without the urgency of
the humble narrative that we Italians must begin to recount, making it re-
verberate with qualities that go beyond entertainment.
In this exhortation, post-war Italian cinema was defined by its aspiration

to speak of and for the people, an aspiration not so much to popular
appeal as to popular sovereignty, manifest in the refusal of traditional
standards of artistic or commercial success and in the adoption, with
humble tone but ambitious intent, of the voice of the downtrodden in
order to assert their right to rule.
“The Chorus of the War”
Neorealism’s structure and style, then, can be understood as an attempt

to translate the social role that culture sought to assume in post-war
Italy. In a sense, this is what Miccichè meant when he invoked neore-
alism’s “ethics of aesthetics,” a notion he related to Vittorini’s call for
“a new culture.” Yet the social role outlined in Vittorini’s essay, with its
criticism of a cultural heritage, including traditional Christianity, that
“has managed to produce change almost exclusively in men’s intellect,”
entailed something far more audacious than renewed or reformed cul-
tural ethics. So, too, did Italian neorealism, which symbolically enacted
a declaration of political solidarity, a new unity of intellectual and
society, a new popular art, and a new religious enthusiasm, by chan-
nelling the collective popular voice of the community of believers that
neorealism itself sought to create, to empower, and to conscript in its
cultural program.
Despite its rhetorical humility, therefore, that program was undeni-

ably radical, promising material reforms by attempting to intervene in
reality, not just to provide the moral or ethical standards by which reality
was to be judged. As the poet Alfonso Gatto put it in a 1947 essay,
gli intellettuali oggi sono chiamati a rispondere dei propri sentimenti alla
vita del Paese e porre mano a quest’opera di educazione morale che ha in
ognuno di noi il suo esempio umile, ma preciso, incorruttibile. La vera re-
sistenza comincia oggi: oggi più di ieri gli scrittori, i giornalisti e gli uomini
di cultura che abbandonassero i propri ideali di vita e i propri sentimenti
per interessi già creati e in via di provocazione, si chiamerebbero collabo-
razionisti e traditori. Questi sentimenti e questi ideali debbono rompere, se
veri e perseguiti sino in fondo, la scorza delle ambigue morali private che
socialmente lasciano ancora sussistere, per mancanza di chiarezza storica,
morali di osservanza o morali di protesta e non quell’aperta morale di lotta
che s’identifica con la vita stessa e con le condizioni della nostra vita. Un
uomo buono non può essere privatamente buono, deve essere socialmente
buono, lavorare per il bene suo e di tutti, con gli strumenti che la lotta
apertamente gli dà.132
intellectuals today are called upon to respond with their own sentiments
to the life of the country and to lend their hand in this task of moral ed-
ucation that has in each of us its humble but precise, incorruptible exam-
ple. The real resistance begins today: today even more than yesterday the
writers, journalists, and men of letters who abandoned their ideals of life
and their sentiments for the temptation of preconceived interests would be
considered collaborators and traitors. If they are true and are followed to
their conclusion, these sentiments and these ideals must crack the shell of
the equivocal private morals that, because of their lack of historical clarity,
allow for the persistence of moral conformity or moral protest, rather than
facilitating an overt moral struggle linked to life itself and to the conditions
of our own lives. A good man cannot be privately good, he must be socially
good, working for the good of himself and of all, with the tools that the
struggle overtly provides him.
Like Vittorini, Gatto was attempting to articulate the defining elements

of post-war cultural politics, which emphasized social intervention, not
ethical reflection. In his own post-war poetic practice, moreover, he
demonstrated how this political programme translated into the sermo
humilis of neorealist chorality. Before the war, Gatto had been one of
the leading Hermetic poets, symptomatically portraying his isolation
from society, his “absence,” in that period of crisis.133 His had been a
rigorously but privately ethical withdrawal from society, a defiant disa-

vowal of Italian Fascism, to which he denied even his tacit consent.134
Participation in the Resistance, however, would change Gatto’s under-
standing of anti-Fascism, and the repercussions of this transformation
would significantly transform his poetry after the war in conjunction with
the changing conception of the role of culture in the age of neorealism.
Revealingly, in fact, many of Gatto’s public pronouncements on the
Resistance showed signs of his adoption of Vittorini’s notion of “a new
culture.” In a 1947 essay, for instance, Gatto insisted on the need to
continue the Resistance struggle even after Fascism’s defeat, to “non
abbandonare l’angoscia e lo sgomento della coscienza provata nei suoi
vecchi orgogli culturali, nei suoi esercizi solitari e impegnata a trovare
una solidarietà più larga, una più profonda consapevolezza nell’azione
[hold onto the anguish and the confusion of a conscience that had been
tested in its old cultural conceits, in its solitary exercises, and that had
become committed to finding a broader solidarity, a deeper awareness
in its action].”135 The point was clear: Hermetic individualism, Hermetic
abstention, would have to give way to active social transformation, shep-
herded by a culture reconceived as practical intervention. For Gatto,
moreover, poetry had an important role to play in this transformation,
as he explained in another 1946 essay, which would serve as the intro-
duction to his first collection of Resistance poetry, Il capo sulla neve (The
head on the snow, 1947):
Per i poeti, per gli scrittori che sentono e vedono la natura umana offesa
ben al di là ormai delle sue tregue politiche tra le guerre, direi che è un
dovere uccidere, sterminare l’arte ripiegata sulle irreparabili sconfitte

umane. In tal senso la resistenza è appena cominciata e la liberazione è
nelle nostre mani di giustizieri o di suicidi. Occorre incominciare a riparare
in questa terra al dolore degli uomini.136
For the poets, for the writers who hear and see human nature wronged well
beyond the political truce between the wars, I would say that it is our duty
to kill, to exterminate the art that retreated before the irreparable human
defeats. In that sense the resistance has only just begun and the liberation
lies in our hands, whether we are executioners or suicides. It is time to be-
gin remedying human suffering in this land.
Gatto here set out a characteristically far-reaching program of cultural

renewal and redemption. With echoes of Vittorini’s Conversazione in
Sicilia as well as of his assault on cultural criticism, characterized by its
“principles” and “values” resting on the “spectacle of man’s suffering in
society,” Gatto argued that human suffering could no longer serve as

the predicate for cultural consolation. Instead, culture would need to be
transformed into a weapon against suffering itself.137
Motivated by this conviction, Gatto sought to reform his own poetic
practice, moving beyond Hermetic expressions of the individual’s eth-
ical refusal of a society corrupted by Fascism and towards a choral dec-
laration of the political redemption of the community of believers. The
continuing realization of this transformation marked the poet’s post-
war neorealist phase, propelling, for instance, what is perhaps the most
famous poem of the Italian Resistance, Gatto’s “Per i martiri di Piazzale
Loreto” (For the martyrs of Piazza Loreto).138 This poem, which circu-
lated among the anti-Fascist forces during the war, and which was subse-
quently included in Il capo sulla neve, recounts the execution of fifteen
partisans, taken from the San Vittore prison and shot in a square in cen-
tral Milan. At first, it casts an impersonal eye on the aftermath of the
massacre: no “I,” no singular vantage point, is provided until the fourth
stanza. Instead of a viewing subject, the poem appears to emerge from
its object, the true target of the German attack: the city of Milan itself. In
the third stanza, then, it is said that the assassins
[...] vollero il massacro

perché Milano avesse alla sua soglia
confusi tutti in uno stesso cuore
i suoi figli promessi e il vecchio cuore
forte e ridesto, stretto come un pugno.139
[...] wanted a massacre

so that Milan would have at her threshold
her promised sons all mingled in one heart
and her old heart reawakened
strong and tight as a fist.140
In this telling, the executions are an expression of the Germans’ fear

at the city’s growing resolve, its increasingly unified opposition to the
occupation. A shared emotion (“all mingled in one heart”) is beginning
to constitute a collective force (“heart [...] strong and tight as a fist”),
and this represents a clear threat to German authority. Having set out
the conditions that preceded and inspired the massacre, the poem now
arrives at its viewing “I” in the first line of the next stanza:
Ebbi il mio cuore ed anche il vostro cuore

il cuore di mia madre e dei miei figli
di tutti i vivi uccisi in un istante

per quei morti mostrati lungo il giorno
alla luce d’estate, a un temporale
di nuvole roventi. Attesi il male
come un fuoco fulmineo, come l’acqua
scrosciante di vittoria, udii il tuono
d’un popolo ridesto dalle tombe.141
I had my heart and your heart, too

my mother’s heart, and my children’s,
those of all the living killed in an instant,
for those dead displayed the whole day
in the summer’s light, in a storm
of red-hot clouds. I awaited evil
like a swift fire, like water
roaring with victory, I heard the thunder
of a people awakened from their tombs.142
Witness to the corpses left in the square, the speaker of the poem takes
up their rebellion as his own cause, and takes into himself the hearts of
his readers, his family, and the victims of the massacre. The poem thus
declares, with pious defiance, that instead of dissolving Milan’s civic unity,
the German assault has managed instead to transubstantiate the bodies
of the victims into a collective spirit, which is borne within the heart of
the poet-witness. The murder of fifteen partisans has transformed an
inchoate threat into an elemental opposition – a living force for which
the poet becomes the vessel, having witnessed the sound, the chorus, of
national resurrection. Filled with this sound, and with the spirit of the
martyrs, the poetic “I” becomes the resisting “we.” This daring gambit,
the poet’s presumption to speak for the victims, thus represents the prel-
ude to the choral recitation of the Resistance liturgy.
Gatto’s contemporaries, struck by the novel poetic and political role
he had taken up after the war, employed various strategies to convey
the significance of his newly audacious project. Massimo Bontempelli,
in his preface to Il capo sulla neve, stressed Gatto’s abandonment of the
Hermetic subject. “Nella lirica di Alfonso Gatto è scomparso l’io come
perno dell’universo (sia che in essi si smemorasse sia ne ritraesse illu-
sione di divinità) [In Alfonso Gatto’s lyric poetry the I no longer appears
as the centre of the universe (whether because it is forgotten or because
it is portrayed as an illusion of divinity)],” Bontempelli explained. “Io
non è per lui che una ammonizione a vedere gli altri, a difenderli, a
ucciderli forse ma per liberarli [‘I’ is nothing more for him than an
admonition to see others, to defend them, to kill them, perhaps, but

in order to free them].”143 Italo Calvino, in an early investigation of
Italian Resistance literature, argued that Il capo sulla neve “si può con-
siderare a tutt’oggi la più piena testimonianza poetica dell’‘uomo della
Resistenza’ sentito come un eterno e necessario prototipo umano [can
be considered to this day the fullest poetic testimony of the ‘man of the
Resistance’ perceived as a necessary and an eternal human prototype].”
Gatto was thus representative of the most significant transformation of
the post-war period, Calvino argued, after which “la nuda parola degli
ermetici, giunta all’estrema essenzialità d’un linguaggio interiore si è
trasformata in una parola di coro, tutta sentimenti ed echi [the naked
word of the Hermeticists, having reached the extreme essentiality of
an inner language, has transformed itself into the word of a chorus, all
feelings and echoes].”144 For related reasons, Vasco Pratolini, Gatto’s
one-time co-editor at the Hermetic journal Campo di Marte, stressed the
poet’s emergent faith in a politically transformative culture, insisting
that “la poesia di Gatto è una poesia civile. E nel senso più estensivo
del termine, religiosa. Religiosa perché totalmente laica. E sotterranea-
mente cristiana [Gatto’s poetry is civic poetry. And, in the fullest sense
of the word, it is religious. Religious because it is totally secular. And
covertly Christian].”145 In Gatto’s poetry, as these three interrelated judg-
ments make clear, the religiosity of the Resistance, having freed the sub-
ject from his self-imposed exile and having symbolically welcomed him
into the community, is expressed chorally, not by the lone artist but by
the transforming society, each member of which is led to undergo the
religious conversion signalled by the poet: “from I to We.” In a figurative
representation of the material transformation to be enacted after the
war, when culture will assert its dominion over society, the poet refuses
to stand apart, pronouncing ethical judgment on the community of sin-
ners. Instead, he becomes the voice of the community, expressing what
Gatto elsewhere termed Il coro della guerra (The chorus of the war).146
“The Dialectical Relationship between the Chorus and the Character”
Not long after the publication of “Per i martiri di Piazzale Loreto,”

Alfonso Gatto appeared in his first feature film: Aldo Vergano’s Il sole
sorge ancora. He was joined by several other notable first-time actors:
the poet and novelist Stefano Terra, the author of Rancore and other
significant post-war chronicles; the playwright and critic Ruggero
Jacobbi, who worked on the film’s screenplay in addition to acting in
a minor role; the film critic Glauco Viazzi, one of the central figures
at the journal Cinema before the liberation, afterwards an influential
commentator on Italian neorealism; Gillo Pontecorvo, at the time a

foreign correspondent for La Repubblica, later to gain renown as the
director of Kapò (1959) and La battaglia di Algeri (1966); Carlo Lizzani,
a critic and screenwriter as well as one of the film’s assistant directors,
who would go on to achieve his own lasting fame as a director in the
years to come. While in interviews Vergano tended to speak of Il sole
sorge ancora’s many amateur actors as an example of standard neorealist
practices, his reviewers seem instead to have found something rather
more remarkable about the film’s high-profile players, whose artistic
accomplishments and intellectual promise lent Vergano’s work an evi-
dent cultural authority.147 What was not commented on at the time,
but is particularly striking in retrospect, is the confluence between the
film’s narrative of political redemption and the intellectual journey
documented in the work of Gatto and the other artists and critics who
joined him on set. Indeed, one way to understand Il sole sorge ancora is
to see it as a choral representation of the unfolding conversion of the
generation of poets, novelists, playwrights, screenwriters, directors, and
critics whose mission was to convert the “old” culture to the “new” while
transforming their own subjectivity in their pursuit of neorealism.
The film is structured on a series of plot reversals that, taken together,
dramatically enact Italy’s ongoing political transformation. The first and
final scenes, for instance, present mirror images of a sort, framing the
film’s conversion narrative. In the first, a group of musicians outside the
Milanese brothel play “Il tamburo della banda d’Affori” (The drum of
the Affori band), a song that, in its original form, had become popular
with disillusioned Italians after it had been censored by the Fascist gov-
ernment; the authorities took its reference to a bandleader directing
“550 pifferi [550 fifes]” to be a mockery of Mussolini and the Chamber
of Fasci and Corporations, with its 550 delegates.148 In the film’s final
scene, a band is once again playing, but this time theirs is a song of cele-
bration, not delusion, of unity, not dissent, performed in honour of the
partisans’ victory.149 Bracketed by these two musical scenes, Cesare, the
film’s protagonist, undergoes a related transformation. At the brothel,
he had expressed a certain cynicism about civic duty, explaining his
desire to return home to a quiet life: “se scappano il Re e Badoglio [if the
King and Badoglio can flee],” he asked one of the prostitutes, “perché
non dovrei scappare io? [why shouldn’t I?]” At the film’s conclusion, he
evinces a newfound spirit of solidarity, telling Laura of the message he
learned from another partisan: “sai Beppe cosa diceva quando eravamo
in montagna? Se dovessi morire, [...] cercate di vivere anche per noi
[You know what Beppe used to say when we were in the mountains? If I
should die, [...] try to live on for us].” From a position of self-interest, in
other words, Cesare has passed to one of fellow feeling, a transformation

he expresses in resonant terms: lexically as well as politically, his “I” has
become a “we.”150 The terms of this personal conversion, inspired by
participation in the anti-Fascist Resistance, are in fact the central motif
of the film, which stages this socially significant passage from singular to
plural, from personal dissent to collective rebellion, as its central struc-
turing mechanism.
As one of the first reviews of Il sole sorge ancora aptly put it, “il film vero
non è nelle passioni dei singoli, bensì in quelli delle masse [the essence
of the film is not to be found in the passions of the individual charac-
ters but in those of the masses].”151 In making this claim, the reviewer
was referring especially to the film’s most famous scene: the public exe-
cution that concludes its second act. Investigating a partisan raid, the
Germans have arrested two suspects: Pietro (Pontecorvo), one of the
local Communist organizers, and Don Camillo (Lizzani), the parish
priest. As the scene begins, German soldiers march through the village,
gathering the citizens at gunpoint until thousands have been forced to
congregate in the square to witness the execution. Bells toll as the pris-
oners are marched, impassive, towards their death. Reflecting in later
years on this powerful scene, Lizzani recalled what happens next in the
following terms:
io, nel ruolo appunto del giovane prete, comincio a mormorare tra me e me
le litanie. A un tratto, un vecchio contadino mormora un primo “Ora pro
nobis ...” Io continuo “Virgo veneranda ...” mentre due, tre poi cinque voci
fanno eco alla mia preghiera. Così, a poco a poco, quell’“Ora pro nobis”
diventa un coro. La mia voce si alza, mentre il coro sembra trasformarsi –
almeno così lo interpreta il comandante del plotone di esecuzione – in
un’esplicita protesta ... La raffica del plotone mette fine alla scena. Una
scena che preannuncia le modalità ritmico-stilistiche peculiari, in seguito,
di tutti i film di De Santis (il rapporto dialettico coro-personaggio).152
playing the role of the young priest, I begin to mutter to myself the litanies.
Suddenly, an old farmer mutters the first “Ora pro nobis ...” I continue
“Virgo veneranda ...” as two, three, and then five voices echo my prayer.
Then, little by little, that “Ora pro nobis” becomes a chorus. My voice rises,
while the chorus seems to transform – or at least that is how the commander
of the firing squad interprets it – into an explicit protest ... The burst from
the firing squad puts an end to the scene. A scene that prefigures the
rhythmic-stylistic modality that would subsequently come to characterize
all of De Santis’s films (the dialectical relationship between the chorus and
the character).
In the film, the pattern of call and response Lizzani described is rein-
forced visually by intercutting shots of the priest and the anonymous
members of the crowd: a group of middle-aged men; a young boy stand-
ing before several older women; a group of children and adolescents;
then an old man, his face unshaven, hat at an angle, who first offers,
alone, the congregation’s refrain: “Ora pro nobis.” As the scene pro-
gresses, the camera continues to alternate between shots of the priest
and shots of the villagers offering their replies to his litany.
Visually as well as aurally, then, the scene exemplifies neorealist cho-
rality, as countless commentators have noted.153 Lizzani’s comments
expand on this point, indicating something of the political significance
of the scene’s choral construction. In Lizzani’s description, the priest’s
prayer is first offered privately, but nevertheless inspires a kind of clan-
destine response from a member of the crowd (the word “mutters” here
is a clue), which then encourages ever more townspeople to reply, “two,
three, and then five,” until the response becomes both choral and polit-
ical, “an explicit protest.” Not only structurally but also ideologically, the
scene can be said to turn on what Lizzani referred to as “the dialecti-
cal relationship between the chorus and the character,” with the priest’s
intonation and the crowd’s expression shown to be interdependent: the
call encouraging the response; the response reinforcing the call. The
priest remains the scene’s centre, emotionally, visually, and aurally, but
his voice is more compelled then compelling. It is the voice of the crowd
that both drives the action and determines the scene’s political import,
stimulating and motivating its own diffusion, gradually recognizing its
own power and its own authority, then coalescing around the priest with
growing unity in its open rebellion against the occupying forces. The
priest becomes the conduit of the crowd’s choral outburst, which he
has inspired but not imposed, and which is then empowered, through
his sacrifice, to carry forward the political rebellion of the war and the
social reformation to follow, a civic mission sanctified through religious
expression.
The transformative chorality at the centre of Il sole sorge ancora thus
exemplifies the vector of cultural engagement prized by neorealism.
First, it portrays a political sentiment that is assiduously popular, ema-
nating from the crowd, with a cleric as its humble messenger. Second, it
derives its political significance from the crowd’s chant, which intensifies
and elevates the priest’s actions, making of his martyrdom an emerging
threat to the totalitarian order. Third, it points forward to the communal
organization that will displace the German occupation, radicalized by the
crowd’s discovery of its increasingly forceful collective voice. Unfolding
in this way, Il sole sorge ancora’s pivotal scene can be said to rehearse
Italian neorealism’s foundational political gesture. Taking up the “reli-

gious enthusiasm” of the Resistance coalition, embodied metonymically
by the martyrdom of the Communist organizer and the Catholic priest,
the film represents in decidedly Christian terms the creation of a new
political community, which comes into existence in the moment of its
choral expression of anti-Fascism.
What is more, it articulates this demonstrative act of social solidarity
in the service of a bold assertion of its own artistic authority, reinforced
through Vergano’s inspired casting of Lizzani, his assistant director and
a former anti-Fascist partisan, in the role of the priest. Vergano had
been chosen to direct the film, after all, because of his own role in the
Resistance, which distinguished him from many of his contemporaries,
and especially from Goffredo Alessandrini, the original choice to helm
the project, who was dismissed in favour of Vergano after a series of
protests over Alessandrini’s contributions to the Fascist film industry.154
Il sole sorge ancora’s partisan priest, portrayed by a filmmaker and former
partisan, thus serves as a kind of analogue for Vergano himself, and the
scene of his execution, in which he channels the crowd’s choral expres-
sion and inspires the rebellion that will remake the civic order, figura-
tively grants the director his artistic authority, bestowed in the name of
the “divine mission” of the Resistance. In fact, it can be said symbolically
to grant this authority not just to one neorealist filmmaker but to an
entire generation of artists – several of whom appeared in Vergano’s
film – whose self-appointed task was to transcend the limitations of
individualist expression in order collectively to create a powerful “new
culture” that could, in Vittorini’s terms, become a “transformative influ-
ence on mankind.”
In its chorality, therefore, Il sole sorge ancora can indeed be said to offer
what Miccichè called an “implicit answer [...] to Vittorini’s question,”
but to do so in the service of something both more ambitious and more
contentious than “an ethics of aesthetics.” Like many other neorealist
texts, it expressed a profound faith in the power of culture to redeem
society, a faith that was frequently communicated in Christian terms –
Vergano’s film, for instance, was dedicated “ai caduti per la resurrezione
della Patria [to those who gave their lives for the resurrection of the
Fatherland]” – but one whose vision of redemption was grounded in
physical struggle rather than metaphysical transcendence. Culture’s
role in that struggle was not just to furnish what Vittorini had compul-
sorily dismissed as “principles and values,” what Alfonso Gatto had sim-
ilarly called “equivocal private morals.” Instead it was impelled to take
on renewed authority – personal and political, material and spiritual –
justified through a rhetorical rejection of intellectual privilege and a
choral assumption of the popular will, in order to remake the very struc-
tures of post-war society. To the extent that they took up this project, the
artists and intellectuals of the age of neorealism were driven by their
profound faith in the politically transformative and socially redemptive
power of cultural expression.
Current conventions, focused on the sincerity of neorealism’s ethics or
the efficacy of its politics, significantly understate the faith that animated
its professed ambition to remake Italy. As we have seen in the course of
this study, neorealism entailed an unprecedented effort to represent the
whole of reality, to encompass in its entirety the truth of human expe-
rience. It inspired a messianic endeavour to save Italian society from
the crises of Fascism and war, confessing and atoning for past iniquities
while at the same time presaging an impending national redemption. It
sought to bind the concrete facts of individual reality to the universality
of collective history, recognizing the distinctiveness of personal struggles
while also situating them within the unfolding narrative of the commu-
nity. And it sought to appropriate the cultural authority to sanctify that
narrative, raiding the storehouse of Christian symbolism in order to rep-
resent the immanent salvation of the Italian polis. More than an ethical
agenda, this was a resolutely eschatological program, and it imparted
a messianic spirit both to the cultural foundations and to the political
ambitions of the neorealist conversation.
Conclusion
By 1949, the neorealist conversation was coming to a close. At least, that

was how the situation appeared to the editorialists at the Italian film
journal Bianco e nero, who in December of that year predicted that “la
discussione sul neorealismo è probabilmente giunta ad una fase deci-
siva e conclusiva [the discussion of neorealism has probably reached
its decisive and conclusive phase].”1 By most measures, this historical
prognostication would appear to have been spectacularly wrong-headed.
Discussions about neorealism did not cease after 1949; if anything, they
grew more insistent. That year saw the publication of the first major
monograph to address Italy’s post-war cinema comprehensively, Vittorio
Calvino’s Guida al cinema, which carried a preface by Vittorio De Sica,
and which announced the arrival of “una nuova tendenza artistica che
prese il nome di ‘neo-realismo’ e che oggi è considerata la tendenza
caratteristica del cinema italiano [a new artistic tendency that took
the name ‘neo-realism’ and that today is considered the characteristic
tendency of Italian cinema].”2 The following year, Anna Banti would
compose her study “Neorealismo nel cinema italiano” (Neorealism in
Italian cinema); Luigi Chiarini would deliver his “Discorso sul neorea-
lismo” (Discourse on neorealism); Carlo Bo would begin conducting his
Inchiesta sul neorealismo (Investigation of neorealism); and Bianco e nero,
the same journal that had predicted an end to discussions of neoreal-
ism, would publish Franco Venturini’s essay “Origini del neorealismo”
(The origins of neorealism).3 The five years to follow would see major
new studies of neorealism by Alessandro Blasetti and Gian Luigi Rondi,
Massimo Mida, Elia Santoro, Carlo Lizzani, Mario Gromo, Giulio Cesare
Castello, and Brunello Rondi.4
This is to say nothing of the ever-expanding and increasingly influen-
tial discussions of neorealism beyond Italy: in Hollywood and Moscow;
in Havana, Buenos Aires, and São Paolo; in Algiers, Rabat, and Dakar; in
Beijing, Tehran, and Mumbai; in Berlin, Madrid, and Paris. The intensity
and authority of the conversations that took place in the first and last of
these cinematic capitals led critics in Italy to assume, as early as 1948,
that their foreign counterparts, French and American in particular, had
themselves invented Italian neorealism through their rapturous recep-
tion of Italian films, a myth that persists to the present day.5 In truth,
international audiences and critics did not independently invent Italian
neorealism. They did, however, ensure its lasting prestige on a global
stage. Venerated both at home and abroad, neorealism has continued
to attract attention worldwide for the last sixty years. It has attracted so
much attention, in fact, that leading film scholars have found it neces-
sary to call for “a moratorium on the mention of neorealism” in order
to encourage the field of Italian film studies “to talk about something
else.”6 Despite that moratorium, the sheer mass of scholarship on neo-
realism has only increased in recent years, and has increased still fur-
ther with the publication of this volume. The very study you are reading,
then, may be taken by some as an additional sign that the 1949 editorial
in Bianco e nero was mistaken in its prediction of an impending end to the
neorealist conversation.
From another perspective, however, it may also be seen to provide evi-
dence in support of that prediction. I have argued for an interpretation
of neorealism as an all-embracing cultural conversation, one in which
contrasting, and at times opposing, positions came up for discussion
and debate. As we have seen, that conversation was beginning to change
considerably by 1949, when Cesare Zavattini, just one year removed from
Ladri di biciclette, came out strongly against the critical “honours, which
involuntarily limit [Italian cinema’s] horizons with the definition of neo-
realism.”7 Zavattini was reacting to a distinct shift in the discourse. A neo-
realist orthodoxy was beginning to take hold; difference was being driven
out. Perceptively picking up on the same conceptual rigidification, the
editorialists at Bianco e nero recognized, correctly, that an end to the con-
versation was in sight.
Conversations about neorealism would continue after 1949, of course,
and continue to the present day. The neorealist conversation, however,
had reached its conclusion. It is the difference between expressions of
and assertions about neorealism, between approaching neorealism as a
field of discussion and invoking neorealism as a standard of judgment.8
No longer an open question, neorealism became a fixed paradigm. It
was possible to push that paradigm to its critical conclusion in order
to pass “dal neorealismo al realismo [from neorealism to realism],” as
Guido Aristarco advocated for Italian cinema and Carlo Salinari for
Italian literature.9 It was possible, as well, to adapt the paradigm to
Conclusion 173
the norms of genre cinema in order to produce new, hybrid forms –

neorealist romance (neorealismo rosa); neorealist noir (neorealismo nero);
and neorealist mysteries (neorealismo giallo) – as Renato Castellani, Luigi
Comencini, and many other directors sought to do throughout the
1950s.10 Either possibility, however, would invariably be classified as a
departure from neorealist orthodoxy by a critical establishment which
insisted on increasingly restrictive conceptual boundaries. Neorealism
could either be adopted or opposed; it could not be altered. Innovations
were dismissed as deviations. The point was no longer to advance the
discourse of the neorealist conversation; it was to define the connota-
tions of the neorealist legacy. As a result, neorealism became static, cir-
cumscribed, conventional. It was fixed and thus it was finished. By 1951,
Giuseppe De Santis asked in the pages of the journal Filmcritica: “È in
crisi il neorealismo?” (Is neorealism in crisis?). In the next issue of the
same journal, Luigi Chiarini replied: “La crisi c’è” (There is a crisis).11
The crisis of neorealism did not go unopposed. Yet the resultant “bat-
taglia per il neorealismo [battle for neorealism],” which sought to revive
the neorealist legacy, served largely to monumentalize and thus further
entomb the movement it claimed to advocate.12 This unintended con-
sequence is perhaps most evident in the fight to protect neorealism’s
funding from the manoeuvrings of Giulio Andreotti, who justified his
efforts to shift Italian government support away from neorealism in large
measure as an attempt to protect Italy’s “dignità nazionale [national dig-
nity].”13 Mounting a counter-offensive, prominent figures in the Italian
film industry created the Movimento per la difesa del cinema italiano
(Movement for the defence of Italian cinema), whose 1948 manifesto
promoted Italian neorealism’s growing international prestige as evi-
dence of its significant contribution to the national cause.14 Neorealism
was not just good cinema, they insisted; it was good for Italy. Andreotti
effectively argued the opposite. The terms of the conflict were thus set.
They would become still more starkly delineated one year later with
the passage of the so-called Andreotti Law, which served, as we have seen,
further to hamstring neorealism financially. Opposition to this law and
to the cinematic trends it would set in motion led neorealism’s propo-
nents to adopt an ever-more inflated rhetoric. Witness Cesare Zavattini’s
1953 “Tesi sul neorealismo” (Theses on neorealism), with which the
screenwriter sought to rally artists and intellectuals to his cause, declar-
ing that “il neorealismo è oggi la nostra sola bandiera [today neorealism
is our only flag].”15 This was a far cry from Zavattini’s position of 1949,
when he had decried the limitations of the neorealist orthodoxy. What
had formerly appeared to be boundaries to his creativity now seemed to
be borders to protect. The implications were clear: neorealism was no
longer expanding its frontier; now it was trying to defend its territory.
As a result, Zavattini’s call to the ramparts attracted many adherents,
including the editorialists at Cinema Nuovo, who took up his position with
particular zeal. “‘Il neorealismo è la nostra bandiera,’ ha detto Zavattini.
Noi vorremmo dire qualcosa di più: il neorealismo è l’Italia nella sua
espressione più viva, più profonda, più umana, più antica e insieme
contemporanea [‘Neorealism is our flag,’ Zavattini said. We wish to say
something more: neorealism is Italy in its most vital, most profound,
most human, most ancient and at the same time most contemporary
expression].”16 By that measure, the neorealist flag was akin to the Italian
flag and the fight for neorealism a matter of national defence. Against
Andreotti, who presented himself as the defender of Italian dignity, neo-
realism came to be championed as a cultural patrimony that embodied
Italy’s true identity.17 Neorealism had been transformed into a kind of
national mythology. For many, it remains so today.
Discussions of neorealism thus inevitably take on a symbolic weight
that far exceeds the cinematic or critical context in which they appear to
be situated. With great frequency, the films of the neorealist canon are
said not only to portray but also to embody Italy’s anti-Fascist struggle and
its post-war recovery, appearing to many, as Paolo Noto and Francesco
Pitassio polemically suggest, to provide “l’emblema più efficace e sinte-
tico della volontà di rinascita e riscatto nazionali [the most effective sin-
gle emblem of the will for national rebirth and redemption].”18 However
extravagant, this honour, this burden, continues to be conferred in a
scholarly as well a popular context. Argues one recent critic, “il neoreal-
ismo è la storia: [...] è la Resistenza, è il dopoguerra, è la Ricostruzione
[neorealism is history: (...) it is the Resistance, it is the post-war period,
it is the Reconstruction].”19 “Italian neo-realist films [...] seem to con-
tain something of a country’s ‘being and fate,’” maintains another.20 It
has been apparent for decades, in fact, that when neorealism comes up
for debate, what is being defended or derided is not just a filmmaking
style but a historical moment, a political ideology, a foundational myth.
Indeed, as Giovanni Falaschi has persuasively argued, it is neorealism’s
extra-textual resonances, its political rather than its poetic entailments,
that ensure its enduring legacy. Without denying its formal or thematic
innovations, Falaschi insisted that
se nel neorealismo si fosse vista solo l’attività artistica o letteraria o cine-

matografica, si sarebbe scritto di meno. Invece i critici se ne sono occupati
così diffusamente perché vi hanno visto ciò che il neorealismo effettiva-
mente conteneva, cioè una grande importanza politico-sociale e ideologica:
discutere del neorealismo ha significato dunque discutere sul nodo storico
Conclusion 175
più importante dell’Italia contemporanea, il passaggio dal fascismo all’attu-

ale forma statale democratico-borghese.21
if neorealism had only been recognized as an artistic, literary, or cinematic

activity, it would have been written about less. Instead, the critics have de-
voted so much attention to it because they have recognized what neore-
alism effectively comprised: that is, something of great socio-political and
ideological importance. To discuss neorealism has therefore meant discuss-
ing the most important historical crux of contemporary Italy, the passage
from Fascism to the current bourgeois-democratic form of government.
As well as a perceptive description of the scholarly consensus, Falaschi

thus offered, perhaps unwittingly, an accurate diagnosis of the limitations
and distortions of what has been called the “institution of neorealism.”22
Invariably transformed by the ideological connotations with which it is
endowed, neorealism has become a fixed historical signifier, ensuring its
cultural importance but also constraining its potential significance.
“In the Name of Italian Neorealism”
Put simply, the conversation about neorealism has all too often become
a conversation about something else entirely. In filmmaking terms, neo-
realism has tended to function as a MacGuffin: instead of being consid-
ered on its own terms, it becomes a mere plot device in an unfolding
narrative of Italian political history, for instance, or the desired object
in teleological accounts of the history of world cinema. In this latter
form, neorealism is usually made to represent the ideal of artistic inde-
pendence, a virtuous alternative to the hegemony of a supposedly venal
and corrupt Hollywood. For filmmakers in Cuba, Argentina, India, and
beyond, Italian neorealism has often functioned as a model for a national
cinema capable of resisting Hollywood’s imperial influence.23 There is
something to this story. In the immediate aftermath of the Second World
War, American business interests flooded the Italian market with more
than six hundred Hollywood films.24 Despite this inundation, which rep-
resented a real threat to an Italian film industry still reeling from the war,
filmmakers like De Sica and Rossellini succeeded in creating a handful
of films that gained immediate recognition worldwide, and in which crit-
ics have often located a successful exemplar of resistance to Hollywood,
a “cinema of contestation.”25
Here, the archetypal and oft-cited example is Vittorio De Sica’s hard
bargaining with the Hollywood producer David O. Selznick, who had
offered to finance Ladri di biciclette on the condition that Cary Grant
star in the role of Antonio Ricci, an offer De Sica flatly refused. In most
accounts, this refusal is reported as a testament to De Sica’s principled
allegiance to neorealism, especially in light of his subsequent decision to
cast the unknown Roman factory worker Lamberto Maggiorani instead
of Grant, a bankable commodity, as the lead in his film.26 Such accounts
miss the mark, however, insofar as they ignore De Sica’s counter-offer, in
which, as the director recounted in an interview at the time, he had asked
Selznick for permission to cast Henry Fonda, AcademyAward–nominated
star of John Ford’s 1940 adaptation of The Grapes of Wrath, settling on
Maggiorani for the role of Ricci only after Selznick had turned down this
request.27 De Sica’s bargain was thus far from the blanket opposition to
Hollywood influence that many would wish to make it out to be. Indeed,
not only De Sica’s film but all of neorealism may better be understood as
engaging in a productive dialogue with the cinema of Hollywood.28
Yet many of neorealism’s supposed champions drown out this dia-
logue in their rush to conscript the movement in a revanchist battle not
only against Hollywood but against popular culture tout court.29 In Italy
in particular, veneration of neorealism has often accompanied a severe
critique of the alleged depravities of contemporary culture. To cite one
representative instance, in his introduction to Camillo Marino’s 1984
study Estetica politica e sociale del neorealismo (Political and social aesthetics
of neorealism), the art historian and critic Luigi Serravalli lambasted the
“cretinizzazione dell’intero popolo italiano [cretinization of the entire
Italian populace]” in order to dramatize his claim that
un paese così ha il bisogno supremo di superstiti come Camillo Marino,

in nome del Neorealismo italiano che (qualunque cosa esso sia stato) può
essere letto, proprio oggi, come un diaframma potente e cosciente contro la
barbarie e la diseducazione, lo sfruttamento e l’analfabetismo di ritorno.30
a country in this situation profoundly needs survivors like Camillo Marino,

to speak in the name of Italian neorealism, which (whatever it might have
been) can be understood, even today, as a powerful and conscious barrier
against barbarism and miseducation, exploitation and rising illiteracy.
For a certain kind of cinephile, it would seem, whatever ails Italy, neore-
alism is the remedy. Those less convinced of this analysis may question
whether the proposed cure is in any way adequate to the diagnosed dis-
ease; they may be inspired, as well, to cast a sceptical eye towards the
diagnosis itself.
Some scepticism should likewise be extended to the repeated clam-
ouring for a neo-neorealism, a renewal of Italian cinema and literature
Conclusion 177
to be achieved through the conscious reclamation of post-war cultural

archetypes, a project whose adherents in the critical establishment and
popular press have exerted significant influence for at least the last
thirty years. In effect, a handful of recent films – Ricordati di me (Gabriele
Muccino 2003); Certi bambini (Antonio and Andrea Frazzi, 2004); Quando
sei nato non puoi più nasconderti (Marco Tullio Giordana, 2005); Centochiodi
(Ermanno Olmi, 2007); Gomorra (Matteo Garrone, 2008); Il Divo (Paolo
Sorrentino, 2008); L’uomo che verrà (Giorgio Diritti, 2009) – have been
seized upon by critics as evidence of a supposed revival of neorealist
glory. Some of these films may indeed have borrowed from their neo-
realist predecessors and may therefore benefit from comparative anal-
ysis. Yet this need not lend any credence to the questionable claim that
the innovations of contemporary Italian cinema must necessarily echo
those introduced by filmmakers seventy years ago or that, as a recent
introduction to the topic put it, “in order to re-invent and regenerate
itself Italian cinema had to take a step back and return to la via maestra,
that of neorealism.”31 Invoked in this way, neorealism appears to be lit-
tle more than a brand identity, used to sell new products by drawing
on a half-remembered sense of Italian cinema’s past greatness and a
superficial lamentation for Italy’s faded virtue.32 In their search for the
MacGuffin, some seem to have lost the plot.
Others seem to have fashioned neorealism into an idol. As early as 1968,
in fact, Gian Carlo Ferretti had reason to lament that the tendentious
defence of the neorealist legacy “ha finito [...] per tradursi [...] in una
sorta di ‘beatificazione’ del neorealismo [wound up (...) becoming (...)
a kind of ‘beatification’ of neorealism].”33 Ferretti’s choice of words is
notable, signalling a rather stunning transference. Neorealism, Ferretti
was saying, had become an object rather than an expression of devout
faith. Revered, idealized, sanctified, it had been invested with a notional
power that significantly outstripped its already substantial artistic influ-
ence. In the critical imagination, then, neorealism would seem itself to
have become something of “un oggetto di culto [an object of worship].”34
As Stefania Parigi aptly puts it, “una lunga serie di narrazioni [...] hanno
finito per conferire un’aura sacrale e monumentale a quell’antica sta-
gione del cinema italiano [a lengthy series of narratives (...) has wound
up granting a sacred and monumental aura to that long-ago period of
Italian cinema].”35 From Tullio Kezich’s call for a return to the “sacro
fuoco neorealista [sacred neorealist flame]” to Carlo Lizzani’s attempt
to deliver his self-described “decalogo neorealista [neorealist deca-
logue]” to Lino Micciché’s invocation of neorealism’s “sacri patres De Sica
Rossellini Visconti,” in fact, there is a distinctly evangelical tenor to more
than a few neorealist apologies.36 One need not question neorealism’s
historical importance or its cultural significance in order to find all this

more than a little problematic. The ostensible incarnation of post-war
Italian history, the manufactured archetype of anti-Hollywood cinema,
the ersatz deity of an enduring aesthetic creed, neorealism seems to per-
meate the critical consciousness in ways that all too often obscure its
cultural complexities.
Neorealism Now
Before the alleged revitalization of the neorealist legacy in the new mil-
lennium, before the academic instauration of the neorealist canon in
the 1980s and 1990s, before the ideological re-evaluation of the neoreal-
ist project in the 1960s and 1970s, before the political contestation over
the neorealist crisis in the 1950s, the cultural contours of Italian neo-
realism assumed an altogether different shape. Neither the stronghold
guarded by its traditionalist defenders nor the impediment assailed by its
iconoclastic critics, neorealism emerged in Italy as a creative exchange
between artists and intellectuals who espoused dissimilar views, worked
in disparate media, and pursued diverse goals. The common adoption
of the term neorealism to characterize this exchange served for a time to
reveal the substantial unity underlying the period’s creative diversity and
artistic hybridity – a unity that the present study has sought to recover.
To that end, my analysis has been guided by an understanding of neo-
realism as a cultural conversation, a coherent field of discourse in which
discussion and debate worked to shift the confines of creativity and to
revise the terms of artistic expression. It has been guided, as well, by
the awareness that those terms must invariably exceed the limits of this
or any study, constrained to illustrate by example, to offer summaries
or samples in place of the totality of a historical culture. It is my hope,
therefore, that others will continue the discussion, corroborating or
complicating the claims I have put forward after considering some of
the many contributions I have had to leave aside. My study is far from
exhaustive; that was never my aim. I have sought only to make it easier
to listen attentively, perceptively, to a conversation that has all too often
been distorted by history, by mythology, and by ideology. I cannot help
but believe that Italian neorealism still has much left to say.
Notes
Introduction
1 See, for instance, Millicent Marcus, Italian Film in the Light of Neorealism
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), xvii; Gian Piero Brunetta,
“Cinema italiano dal neorealismo alla ‘Dolce vita,’” in Storia del cinema
mondiale, vol. 3, tome 1, L’Europa: Le cinematografie nazionali, ed. Gian Piero
Brunetta (Turin: Einaudi, 2000), 583–612 (593); Christopher Wagstaff,
Italian Neorealist Cinema: An Aesthetic Approach (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 2007), 402–5.
2 See, for instance, Luciano Caramel, “La questione del realismo e i realismi
nella pittura e nella scultura del secondo dopoguerra,” in Realismi: Arti
figurative, letteratura e cinema in Italia dal 1943 al 1953, ed. Luciano Caramel
(Milan: Electa, 2001), 22–35; Emanuela Garrone, Realismo neorealismo e
altre storie (Milan and Udine: Mimesi Edizioni, 2015); Antonella Russo,
Storia culturale della fotografia italiana: Dal neorealismo al postmoderno (Turin:
Einaudi, 2011), 9–10; Barbara Grespi, “Italian Neo-Realism between
Cinema and Photography,” in Stillness in Motion: Italy, Photography, and
the Meanings of Modernity, ed. Sarah Patricia Hill and Giuliana Minghelli
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014), 183–216.
3 See, for instance, Vittorio Magnano Lampugnani, “The Myth of
Reality: Notes on Neorealism in Italy 1946–1956,” in Architecture and
Arts 1990/2004: A Century of Creative Projects in Building, Design, Cinema,
Painting, Sculpture, ed. Germano Celant (Milan: Skira, 2004), 75–9;
Enrico Bascherini, Da pagano al neorealismo: Le radici minori dell’architet-
tura moderna (Patti Messina: Casa Editrice Kimerik, 2013); Maristella
Casciato, “Neorealism in Italian Architecture,” in Anxious Modernisms:
Experimentations in Postwar Architectural Culture, ed. Sarah Williams
Goldhagen and Réjean Legault (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000),
25–53; David Escudero, “Beyond Filmmaking: Searching for a Neorealist
180 Notes to pages 3–4
Architecture in Italy, 194X–195X,” The Journal of Architecture 24, no. 4

(2019): 441–68; Mark Shiel, Italian Neorealism: Rebuilding the Cinematic City
(London and New York): Wallflower, 2006), 73–9.
4 On neorealism in music, see Ben Earle, “‘In onore della Resistenza’: Mario
Zafred and Symphonic Neorealism,” in Red Strains: Music and Communism
outside the Communist Bloc, ed. Robert Adlington (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2013), 149–71; Fernando Ludovico Lunghi, “La musica e
il neo-realismo,” in La musica nel film (Rome: Bianco e nero editore, 1950),
56–60. On the importance of neorealism in literature, see, for instance,
Walter Siti, Il neorealismo nella poesia italiana, 1941–1956 (Turin: Einaudi,
1980), 265; Alberto Cadioli, L’industria del romanzo. L’editoria letteraria in
Italia dal 1945 agli anni ottanta (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1981), 27; Vittorio
Spinazzola, L’egemonia del romanzo (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 2007), 17.
5 Two recent essay collections have investigated the breadth of neoreal-
ism’s international influence. See Saverio Giovacchini and Robert Sklar,
eds., Global Neorealism: The Transnational History of a Film Style (Jackson:
University Press of Mississippi, 2012); Laura E. Ruberto and Kristi M.
Wilson, eds., Italian Neorealism and Global Cinema (Detroit: Wayne State
University Press, 2007).
6 Vittorio De Sica, “Gli anni più belli della mia vita.” Originally in Tempo 16,
no. 50 (16 Dec. 1954), now in Vittorio De Sica, ed. Orio Caldiron (Rome:
Edizioni dell’Ateneo & Bizzarri, 1975), 275–81 (278). All translations from
the Italian are my own unless otherwise indicated.
7 In order, these quotations are taken from Franco Vigni, Le città visibili:
Lo spazio urbano nel cinema del neorealismo (1945–1953) (Florence: Aska
edizioni, 2017), 13; Pio Rasulo, La poetica del Neorealismo (Taranto: Edizioni
Nuove proposte, 1987), 47; Giovanni Falaschi, “Negli anni del neore-
alismo,” in Italo Calvino: Atti del Convegno internazionale (Firenze, Palazzo
Medici-Riccardi 26–28 febbraio 1987), ed. Giovanni Falaschi (Milan: Garzanti,
1988), 113–40 (114); Giorgio Nisini, Il neorealismo italiano: Scritture, imma
gini, società (Rome: Giulio Perrone, 2012), 12.
8 This is a critical commonplace. See Giorgio Tinazzi, “Il primo neorealismo
e Rossellini,” in Storia del cinema: Dall’affermazione del sonoro al neorealismo,
ed. Adelio Ferrero (Venice: Marsilio Editori, 1978), 125–33 (126); Bruno
Falcetto, Storia della narrativa neorealista (Milan: Mursia, 1992), 8; Guido
Oldrini, Il cinema nella cultura del Novecento: Mappa di una sua storia critica
(Florence: Casa editrice Le Lettere, 2006), 294.
9 Again, a commonplace, repeated for decades in virtually every study of
neorealism at least since Franco Venturini, “Origini del neorealismo,”
Bianco e nero 11, no. 2 (Feb. 1950): 31–54 (49). See, for instance, Giovanni
Falaschi, Realtà e retorica: La letteratura del neorealismo italiano (Messina and
Florence: G. D’Anna, 1977), 55; Adelaide Sozzi Casanova, Neorealismo
Notes to page 4 181
e neorealisti (Milan: Cooperativa Libraria IULM, 1980), 30; Tommaso

Pomilio, Dentro il quadrante: Forme di visione nel tempo del neorealismo (Rome:
Bulzoni, 2012), 16–17.
10 Ruggero Eugeni, “Quattro cose che so di lui: Neorealismo e identità del
cinema italiano,” in Incontro al neorealismo: Luoghi e visioni di un cinema
pensato al presente, ed. Luca Venzi (Rome: Edizioni Fondazione Ente dello
Spettacolo, 2007), 135–45 (139).
11 Alfonso Canziani, Gli anni del neorealismo (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1977), 15.
12 Mira Liehm, Passion and Defiance: Film in Italy from 1942 to the Present
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 91; Pietro Pintus, Storia e film:
Trent’anni di cinema italiano (1945–1975) (Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 1980), 21.
13 Pierre Sorlin, European Cinemas, European Societies, 1939–1990 (London and
New York: Routledge, 1991), 117.
14 Peter Bondanella and Federico Pacchioni, A History of Italian Cinema
(New York and London: Bloomsbury, 2017), 67; Torunn Haaland, Italian
Neorealist Cinema (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), 24;
Angelo Festa, Il neorealismo nel cinema italiano (Manocalzati: Edizioni Il
Papavero, 2013), 17.
15 Alberto Asor Rosa, “Lo Stato democratico e i partiti politici,” in Letteratura
italiana, vol. 1, Il letterato e le istituzioni, ed. Alberto Asor Rosa (Turin:
Einaudi, 1982), 549–643 (570); Mary P. Wood, Italian Cinema (Oxford and
New York: Berg, 2005), 86; Gaspare De Caro, Rifondare gli italiani? Il cinema
del neorealismo (Milan: Jaca Book, 2014), 27.
16 Falaschi, Realtà e retorica, 55; Cristina Benussi, L’età del neorealismo (Palermo:
Palumbo Editore, 1980), 156; Gian Piero Brunetta, Storia del cinema ita
liano: Dal neorealismo al miracolo economico 1945–1959 (Rome: Editori
Riuniti, 1993), 407; Guglielmo Moneti, Neorealismo fra tradizione e rivoluz-
ione: Visconti, De Sica e Zavattini verso nuove esperienze cinematografiche della
realtà (Siena: Nuova Immagine Editrice, 1999), 60.
17 Pierre Leprohon, The Italian Cinema, trans. Roger Greaves and Oliver
Stallybrass (New York and Washington: Praeger Publishers, 1972), 85;
Lucia Re, Calvino and the Age of Neorealism: Fables of Estrangement (Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press, 1991), 14; Angelo Porcaro, Aspetti critici e let-
terari della narrativa del neorealismo italiano (Pozzuoli: Boopen, 2011), 3.
18 Romano Luperini, “Riflettendo sulle date: alcuni appunti sul neoreal-
ismo in letteratura,” in Les réalismes dans les années 1940: Italie, France,
ed. Giuditta Isotti Rosowsky and Tiphaine Samoyault (Florence: Franco
Cesati Editore, 2001), 81–91 (91); Paolo Noto and Francesco Pitassio, Il
cinema neorealista (Bologna: Archetipolibri, 2010), 52–3; Elena Candela,
Neorealismo: Problemi e crisi (Naples: L’Orientale Editrice, 2003), 33–4;
Bruna D’Ettore, Il neorealismo: pittura e cinema: Origini e fortuna di una sta-
gione artistica (1930–1954) (Treviso: Canova Edizioni, 2014).
19 Even in an introduction to a volume jointly exploring neorealist literature

and cinema, for instance, Tinazzi stressed what he called “il tenue rapporto
tra letteratura e cinema negli anni del neorealismo [the tenuous relationship
between literature and cinema in the age of neorealism].” Giorgio Tinazzi,
“Un rapporto complesso,” in Cinema e letteratura del neorealismo, ed. Giorgio
Tinazzi and Marina Zancan (Venice: Marsilio Editori, 1990), 11–37 (12).
20 The emblematic case is the debate surrounding Corti’s influential account
of neorealist literature, which insists on definitions and distinctions that are
said by Corti’s critics to exclude all the major writers of the post-war period.
See Maria Corti, Il viaggio testuale (Turin: Einaudi, 1978), 25–110. For the
criticism of Corti’s account, see Asor Rosa, “Lo Stato democratico,” 570–2.
21 De Sica, “Gli anni più belli della mia vita,” 278.
22 This argument was first advanced by Pietrangeli, who wrote in 1948 that,
“parlando di realismo o neorealismo cinematografico vorremo soltanto
significare un clima comune, imposto alle coscienze da problemi umani
oggettivi e reali, mutevoli attraverso le contingenze storiche [speaking of
realism or cinematic neorealism, we wish merely to indicate a common
climate, imposed on our consciousness by objective and real human
problems, which change according to historical contingencies].” Antonio
Pietrangeli, “Panoramique sur le cinéma italien,” originally published in
La Revue du Cinéma (May 1948); republished in Panoramica sul cinema ita
liano (Florence: Società Editrice “Il Ponte Vecchio,” 1995), 18.
23 Pierre Bourdieu, “Cognitive Styles in Comparative Literature,” in Knowledge
and Control: New Directions for the Sociology of Education, ed. Michael F.D.
Young (London: Collier-Macmillan Publishers), 1971), 189–207 (191).
24 Kezich’s comments appear in Nello Ajello, Intellettuali e PCI 1944–1958
(Rome and Bari: Editori Laterza, 1979), 211.
25 Gian Luigi Rondi, “Cinema italiano 1945–1951 (il dopoguerra),” in Il neo-
realismo italiano: Documentazioni. Quaderni della mostra internazionale d’arte
cinematografica di Venezia (Rome: Poligrafica Commerciale, 1951), 9–26 (9);
Italo Calvino, “Prefazione 1964 al Sentiero dei nidi di ragno,” in Romanzi e
racconti, by Italo Calvino, ed. Claudio Milanini, 2 vols. (Milan: Mondadori,
1991), I: 1185–204 (1187); Italo Calvino, preface to The Path to the Spiders’
Nests, trans. Archibald Colquhoun and Martin McLaughlin (New York:
Harper Collins, 2000), 7–30 (10).
26 Corti, Il viaggio testuale, 26. See, too, Filippo Maria De Sanctis, “Relazione,”
in Il cinema italiano dal fascismo all’antifascismo Atti del seminario organizzato a
Roma nei giorni 15 febbraio–18 marzo 1964 dal Circolo “Charlie Chaplin” e della
Biblioteca del cinema “U. Barbaro,” ed. Giorgio Tinazzi (Modena and Padua:
Marsilio Editori, 1966), 168–79 (179); Ennio Di Nolfo, “Intimations of
Neorealism in the Fascist Ventennio,” in Re-viewing Fascism: Italian Cinema,
1922–1943, ed. Jacqueline Reich and Piero Garofalo (Bloomington and
Notes to pages 6–9 183
Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2002), 83–104 (87–8); Stuart

Klawans, “Nothing but the Truth? Revisiting Italian Neorealism’s Still-
Decisive Moment,” Film Comment 45, no. 5 (Sept.–Oct. 2009): 48–53 (49).
27 Leonardo Quaresima, “Neorealismo senza,” in Il neorealismo nel fascismo:
Giuseppe De Santis e la critica cinematografica 1941–1943, ed. Mariella Furno
and Renzo Renzi (Bologna: Edizioni della Tipografia Compositori, 1984),
64–73 (66).
28 For the former claim, see Alexander García Düttmann, Visconti: Insights
into Flesh and Blood, trans. Robert Savage (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 2009), 10; for the latter, see Geoffrey Nowell-Smith,
Luchino Visconti, 3rd ed. (London: BFI Publishing, 2008), 26.
29 For the former claim, see Carlo Tagliabue, “Premessa,” in La terra trema:
Un film di Luchino Visconti dal romanzo I Malavoglia di Giovanni Verga, ed.
Sebastiano Gesù (Lipari: Edizioni del Centro Studi, 2006), 11–12 (11); for
the latter, see Gianni Rondolino, Storia del cinema, rev. ed. (Turin: UTET,
2000), 382.
30 For the former claim, see Massimo Mida, Roberto Rossellini (Parma:
Guanda, 1953), 27; for the latter, see Sidney Gottlieb, “Rossellini, Open
City, and Neorealism,” in Roberto Rossellini’s Rome Open City, ed. Sidney
Gottlieb (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 31–42.
31 Some, for example, would confine neorealism exclusively to critical dis-
course, others exclusively to creative expression. For an example of the
former, see Sergio Antonielli, Letteratura del disagio (Milan: Edizioni di
Comunità, 1984), 126. For an example of the latter, see Adriano Aprà,
“Capolavori di massa,” in Neorealismo d’appendice. Per un dibattito sul cinema
popolare: Il caso Matarazzo, ed. Adriano Aprà and Claudio Carabba (Rimini
and Florence: Guaraldi Editore, 1976), 9–36 (9).
32 Natalia Ginzburg, Lessico famigliare (Turin: Einaudi, 1999), 165–6.
33 On neorealist “contamination,” see Giuliana Minghelli, “Neorealismo:
Anacronismo/Avanguardia,” in Ripensare il neorealismo: Cinema, letteratura,
mondo, ed. Antonio Vitti (Pesaro: Metauro Edizioni, 2008), 197–221
(197–9); Alessia Ricciardi, “Neorealism,” in Encyclopedia of Italian Literary
Studies, ed. Gaetana Marrone, 2 vols. (New York: Routledge, 2007), II:
1283–6 (1283); Stefania Parigi, “Le carte d’identità del neorealismo,” in
Nuovo cinema (1965–2005): Scritti in onore di Lino Miccichè, ed. Bruno Torri
(Venice: Marsilio Editori, 2005), 80–102 (81); Paolo Baldan, Per una lettura
del Neorealismo (Venice: La Baùta Edizioni, 1995), 113.
34 In order, these quotations are taken from Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, “Cinema
nuovo and Neo-Realism,” Screen 17, no. 4 (1977): 111–17 (111); Camilla
Colaprete, Carlo Marletti, Giuliano Rossi, and Massimo Vannucchi, “Tra
critica e teoria: Alcune aporie del discorso neorealista,” in Il neorealismo
cinematografico italiano, ed. Lino Miccichè (Venice: Marsilio Editori, 1999),
183–91 (183); Giuliano Manacorda, Storia della letteratura italiana contempo-

ranea 1940–1965 (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1967), 29.
35 Alberto Farassino, “Neorealismo, storia e geografia,” in Neorealismo: Cinema
italiano, 1945–1949, ed. Alberto Farassino (Turin: EDT, 1989), 21–36 (28).
36 Farassino, “Neorealismo, storia e geografia,” 27.
38 In order, these quotations are taken from Farassino, “Neorealismo, storia
e geografia,” 28; Gian Carlo Ferretti, La letteratura del rifiuto e altri scritti
sulla crisi e trasformazione dei ruoli intellettuali, 2nd ed. (expanded) (Milan:
Mursia, 1981 [1968]), 21; Ernesto G. Laura, “Alla scoperta dell’Italia della
scienza e dell’arte,” Cinema 7, no. 128 (28 Feb. 1954): 114; Niccolò Gallo,
“La narrativa italiana del dopoguerra,” originally published in Società 6, no. 2
(1950), republished in Scritti letterari, ed. Ottavio Cecchi, Cesare Garboli,
and Gian Carlo Roschioni (Milan: Edizioni Il Polifilo, 1975), 29–47 (36).
See, too, Piero Raffa, “Per una definizione rigorosa del ‘neorealismo’ cine
matografico,” Nuova corrente 9–10 (1958): 25–38 (esp. 27–30).
39 On Vivere in pace, see Lino Miccichè, “Per una verifica del neorealismo,”
in Il neorealismo cinematografico italiano, ed. Lino Miccichè (Venice: Marsilio
Editori, 1999), 7–28 (8). On Jovine, see Francesco Jovine, “Aspetti del
neo-realismo,” originally published as “Divagazioni letterari” in I diritti
della scuola 1 (23 Sept. 1934), republished in Scritti critici, ed. Patrizia Guida
(Lecce: Edizioni Milella, 2004), 189–91 (189); Arnaldo Bocelli, “Morte e
resurrezione del personaggio,” Mercurio 2, no. 6 (Feb. 1945): 141–5.
1. What Was Neorealism?
1 Lino Miccichè, Visconti e il neorealismo: Ossessione, La terra trema, Bellissima

(Venice: Marsilio Editori, 1990), 175–6. See, too, Giuseppe Ferrara,
“Visconti e il neorealismo italiano,” in L’opera di Luchino Visconti: Atti del
convegno di studi Fiesole 27–29 giugno 1966, ed. Mario Sperenzi (Florence:
Alviero Linari, 1969), 138–67 (160).
2 Luchino Visconti, La terra trema, transcription by Enzo Ungari (Bologna:
Cappelli Editore, 1977), 22–3.
3 Guglielmo Moneti, “La messa in scena del pensiero,” in La terra trema:
Analisi di un capolavoro, ed. Lino Micciché (Turin: Lindau, 1994), 63–97
(64); Luciano De Giusti, I film di Luchino Visconti (Rome: Gremese Editore,
1985), 43.
4 Luchino Visconti, “Sul modo di mettere in scena una commedia di
Shakespeare,” originally published in Rinascita (Dec. 1948), republished
in Il mio teatro, vol. 1, 1936–1953, ed. Caterina d’Amico de Carvalho and
Renzo Renzi (Bologna: Cappelli Editore, 1979), 134–8 (134).
5 Paolo Gobetti, “Insegnamenti del Festival di Venezia: Dal documentario al
‘soggetto’ ricetta del neorealismo cinematografico,” originally published
in L’Unità (11 Sept. 1948), reprinted in Neorealismo D.O.C., ed. Paolo

Gobetti et al. (Turin: Archivio Nazionale Cinematografico della Resistenza,
1995), 181–2.
6 These quotations are taken, in order, from Walter Mauro, “Linguaggio
filmico e linguaggio letterario nel neorealismo italiano,” in Il neorealismo
nella letteratura e nel cinema italiano, ed. Rosa Brambilla (Assisi: Biblioteca
Pro Civitate Christiana, 1987), 35–50 (44); Adelio Ferrero, “La parabola di
Visconti,” in Storia del cinema: Dall’affermazione del sonoro al neorealismo, ed.
Adelio Ferrero (Venice: Marsilio Editori, 1978), 167–84 (168); Tagliabue,
“Premessa,” in La terra trema, 11; Leprohon, The Italian Cinema, 112; Robert
Phillip Kolker, The Altering Eye: Contemporary International Cinema (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1983), 69–70.
7 Marcus, Italian Film in the Light of Neorealism, 14.
8 Carlo Bo, Inchiesta sul neorealismo (Turin: ERI, 1951), 31–2.
9 The temporal category invoked here is that outlined in F.W.J. Hemmings
and Giovanni Carsaniga, The Age of Realism (Hammondworth: Penguin
Books), 1974.
10 Jules Hûret, Enquête sur l’évolution littéraire, ed. Daniel Grojnowski (Paris:
Librairie José Corti, 1999 [1st ed. 1891]), 221–78.
11 See Carlo Bo, “Primo viene il film,” originally published in Cinema Nuovo 2,
no. 2 (1 Jan. 1953), reprinted in Antologia di Cinema Nuovo 1952–1958: Dalla
critica cinematografica alla dialettica culturale, vol. 1, Neorealismo e vita nazionale
(Rimini and Florence: Guaraldi Editore, 1975), 262–4 (262); Giuseppe
Ferrara, Il nuovo cinema italiano (Florence: Le Monnier, 1957), 94–5n1.
12 Ettore Lo Gatto, Letteratura soviettista (Rome: Istituto per l’Europa
Orientale, 1928), 12. The term “neorealismo” seems first to have emerged
around 1915 in Italy, where it was used to refer to American philosophical
New Realism, but these early uses appear distinct from and unrelated to
the literary, artistic, and cinematic uses of the term that would soon follow.
On what might be considered the semantic prehistory of neorealism, see
Sergio Raffaelli, “Neorealismo,” Lingua nostra 71, nos. 1–2 (March–June
2010): 18–19.
13 Julius Evola, “Americanismo e bolscevismo,” Nuova Antologia 1371 (1 May
1929): 110–28 (125); Libero Solaroli, “Il nostro referendum: esterni dal
vero o esterni in studio,” Cinematografo 12 (8 June 1929): 14; Anton Giulio
Bragaglia, “Sistemazione delle teorie scenotecniche,” Il Regime Fascista
(10 Aug. 1932): 3; Giovanni Titta Rosa, “Indifferenza,” La Stampa (15 Nov.
1930): 3. In compiling this account, I have drawn on Nisini, Il neorealismo
italiano, 28–9; and Stefania Parigi, Neorealismo: Il nuovo cinema del dopoguerra
(Venice: Marsilio Editori, 2014), 21.
14 On Barbaro’s importance for the pre-war history of neorealism, see Gian
Piero Brunetta, Umberto Barbaro e l’idea di neorealismo (1930–1943 ) (Padua:
Liviana Editrice, 1969).
15 Umberto Barbaro, “Letteratura russa a volo d’uccello (II),” L’Italia lette

raria 6 (9 Nov. 1930). This essay, the second in a five-part series published
between November 1930 and February 1931, was reprinted in its entirety
in Neorealismo e realismo, ed. Gian Piero Brunetta, 2 vols. (Rome: Editori
Riuniti, 1976), I: 99–118 (108).
16 For the relationship of this tendency to Italian neorealism, see L. Mario
Rubino, “La Neue Sachlichkeit e il romanzo italiano degli anni Trenta,”
in Gli intellettuali italiani e l’Europa (1903–1956), ed. Franco Petroni and
Massimiliano Tortora (Lecce: Piero Manni, 2007), 235–74 (esp. 250).
17 Giovanni Necco, “Espressionismo e neorealismo [1933],” in Realismo e
idealismo nella letteratura tedesca moderna: Caratteristiche e saggi da Goethe a
Carossa (Bari: Gius. Laterza & Figli, 1937), 166–200 (185).
18 Umberto Barbaro, “Alessandro Neverov,” originally published in L’Italia
letteraria 7 (11 Oct. 1931), reprinted in Neorealismo e realismo, vol. 1, 119–21.
19 Umberto Barbaro, preface to Il soggetto cinematografico, by V. Pudovkin
(Rome: Edizioni d’Italia, 1932), quoted in Gian Piero Brunetta, Intellettuali
cinema e propaganda tra le due guerre (Bologna: Pàtron, 1972), 133.
20 Arnaldo Bocelli, “Scrittori d’oggi,” Nuova antologia 7, no. 280 (Dec. 1931).
Bocelli’s account is quoted in Brunetta, introduction to Neorealismo e rea
lismo, 32–3. See, too, Bocelli’s comments about “quegli scrittori, in massima
parte giovanissimi, che si sogliono definire ‘neorealisti’ [those writers,
for the most part very young, who are usually called ‘neorealists’]” in
Almanacco letterario Bompiani (1932), which are quoted and discussed in
Cesare De Michelis, “Vittorini e l’affermazione del primato della poesia,”
Angelus novus 20 (1971): 1–39 (6n17).
21 “Neorealismo,” L’Ambrosiano, 27 July 1931, 1. This account is quoted in
Brunetta, Intellettuali cinema e propaganda tra le due guerre, 134–5. Moravia
himself seems to have been unhappy with this designation; a critic at the
time, summarizing the author’s comments in an interview, reported that
“non è possibile negare al romanziere de ‘Gl’indifferenti’ – la fisionomia,
i fini del neorealismo, o meglio del realismo, perché i ‘nei’ egli si compiace
di conservarli sulla sola epidermide delle donne, cioè delle belle donne
[it is not possible to deny to the novelist of Gli indifferenti the appearance,
the ambition of neorealism, or rather of realism, since he finds a ‘neo’
(a beauty mark) pleasing only on the face of a woman, and even then only
a beautiful woman].” Ettore Zocaro, “Simpatie: Dalla Stazione di Firenze
alla Clinica dell’umorismo,” Il Regime Fascista, 6 Aug. 1932, 3.
22 On neorealism as modernism, see Renato Bertacchini, “Il neorealismo
e le tecniche narrative,” Convivium 29 (May–June 1961): 360–3 (362);
Alfredo Taracchini, “Il neorealismo come letteratura di Stato,” Rendiconti
24 (1972): 333–42; Manuela Scotti, “ ‘Solaria’ e solarismo nella cultura ita
liana del secondo dopoguerra,” in Gli anni di Solaria, ed. Gloria Manghetti
(Verona: Bi & Gi Editori, 1986, 165–71 (170); Giovanni Calogero,

La narrativa del neorealismo (Milan: G. Principato, 1979), 32–3; Vito
Santoro, Letteratura e tempi moderni: Il lungo dibattito negli anni Trenta (Bari:
Palomar, 2005), 17–19; Daniele Gallo, Elementi di letteratura italiana: Il neore-
alismo del Novecento fra guerra e dopoguerra (Milan: Gruppo Editoriale Viator,
2012), 27; Giuliana Minghelli, Landscape and Memory in Post-Fascist Italian
Film: Cinema Year Zero (London and New York: Routledge, 2013), 54.
23 On modernism’s complex composition, see especially Michael H. Levenson,
A Genealogy of Modernism: A Study of English Literary Doctrine, 1908-1922
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), vii; Sean Latham and Gayle
Rogers, Modernism: Evolution of an Idea (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 1.
24 Paolo Valesio, “Foreword: After The Conquest of the Stars,” in Italian
Modernism: Italian Culture between Decadentism and Avant-Garde, ed. Luca
Somigli and Mario Moroni (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004),
ix–xxii. In recent years there has been an attempt by critics and scholars
to identify an Italian modernism said to share important commonalities
with the well-known European modernisms. See Romano Luperini, “Il mo
dernismo italiano esiste,” in Sul modernismo italiano, ed Romano Luperini
and Massimiliano Tortora (Naples: Liguori Editore, 2012), 3–12; Raffaele
Donnarumma, “Tracciato del modernismo italiano,” in Sul modernismo ita-
liano, 13–40; Massimiliano Tortora, Introduction to Il modernismo italiano,
ed. Massimiliano Tortora (Rome: Carocci editore, 2018), 11–14.
25 Thus, for instance, while Steimatsky has argued that “[t]he earliest artic-
ulations of a neorealist project betray an engagement with both realist
and modernist genealogies,” I contend that there were no “modernist
genealogies” in pre- or post-war Italy, and in fact that none would be devel-
oped until the 1990s. I would argue, then, that Italian artists and critics
discovered a realist genealogy in some cultural currents that are now
considered modernist, but that they would not have recognized as such.
Noa Steimatsky, Italian Locations: Reinhabiting the Past in Postwar Cinema
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), xvii.
26 Diego Angeli, “Un romanzo di gesuiti,” Il Marzocco 22, no. 32 (12 Aug. 1917),
cited in Giovanni Cianci, La fortuna di Joyce in Italia: Saggio e Bibliografia
(1917–1972) (Bari: Adriatica Editrice, 1974), 15. On the Italian reception of
Joyce, see also Serenalla Zanotti, “James Joyce among the Italian Writers,” in
The Reception of James Joyce in Europe, vol. 2, France, Ireland and Mediterranean
Europe, ed. Geert Lernout and Wim van Mierlo (London and New York:
Thoemmes Continuum, 2004), 329–61; Sara Sullam, “Le peripezie di Ulisse
nell’Italia del secondo dopoguerra,” Letteratura e letterature 7 (2013): 69–86.
27 Giorgio Prosperi, “Realismo e impersonalità,” Il Saggiatore 12 (1932), cited
in Giuliana Bendelli, “La presenza di James Joyce nelle riviste italiane tra
le due guerre,” in Chi stramalediva gli inglesi: La diffusione della letteratura
inglese e americana in Italia tra le due guerre, ed. Arturo Cattaneo (Milan: Vita
e Pensiero, 2007), 79–110 (107–8); Eugenio Montale, review of Dubliners,
by James Joyce, originally published in La Fiera letteraria 2, no. 38 (19 Sept.
1926), reprinted in Il secondo mestiere: Prose 1920-1979, ed Giorgio Zampa, 2
vols. (Milan: Mondadori, 1996), I: 143–50 (148).
28 Guido Piovene, “Narratori,” La Parola e il Libro 9–10 (Sept.–Oct. 1927):
253; and Giovanni Battista Angioletti, “Aura poetica,” originally published
in La Fiera letteraria (7 July 1929), reprinted in Servizio di guardia: Polemiche
letterarie (Lanciano: Rocco Carabba, 2005), 67–75. Both reviews are cited in
Cianci, La fortuna di Joyce in Italia, 49, 52.
29 Luigi Tonelli, “Marcel Proust, botanico morale,” La Stampa (6 Aug 1922):
3. On the Italian reception of Proust, see Gilbert Bosetti, “Les proustisme
en Italie,” Cahiers du CERCIC 9 (1988): 29–100; Anna Dolfi, “Proust, il
proustismo e l’incidenza proustiana nella cultura italiana del Novecento:
Prodromi di una ricerca,” Revue franco-italica 4 (1993): 21–40; Albarosa
Macrì Tronci, “Uno sguardo al proustismo fiorentino: Specularità e
rifrazioni in Vittorini, Bilenchi, Pratolini,” Esperienze letterarie 27, no. 1
(Jan.–March 2002): 87–100.
30 Mario Pannunzio, “Necessità del romanzo,” Il Saggiatore, June 1932, 154–62,
cited in Cianci, La fortuna di Joyce in Italia, 57; Silvio Benco, “Ricordi di
Joyce,” Pegaso 2, no. 8 (2 Aug. 1930), cited in Bendelli, “La presenza di
James Joyce,” 96–7.
31 Renato Famea, “Joyce, Proust e il romanzo moderno,” Meridiano di Roma,
14 April 1940, cited in Cianci, La fortuna di Joyce in Italia, 81; Augusto
Guerriero, “A proposito di antirealismo,” Critica fascista 5, no. 8 (15 April
1927), cited in Edoardo Esposito, Maestri cercando: Il giovane Vittorini e le
letterature straniere (Milan: CUEM, 2009), 15.
32 On the Crocean foundations of this reading, see Roberto Ludovico, “Tra
Europa e romanzo: ‘Solaria’ e il fantasma James Joyce,” in Frammenti di
Europa: Riviste e traduttori del Novecento, ed. Carla Gubert (Pesaro: Metauro
Edizioni, 2003), 39–59 (40–1).
33 Angioletti, “Aura poetica,” 71.
34 Angioletti, “Aura poetica,” 75.
35 On Solaria and the reception of European modernism, see Gloria
Manghetti, “Appunti per l’europeismo solariano e oltre,” in Le riviste
dell’Europa letteraria, ed. Massimo Rizzante and Carla Gubert (Trento:
Editrice Università degli Studi di Trento: 2002), 187–200; Anna Panicali,
“‘Solaria’: Narrativa e critica,” Rivista di letteratura italiana 22, no. 3 (2004):
121–5; Giuseppe Neri, Solaria: una stagione letteraria del Novecento italiano
(Lungro: Marco, 1994).
36 Giansiro Ferrata, “Sull’aura poetica,” Solaria 4, no. 9–10 (Sept.–Oct. 1929):
40–4 (42).
37 Alberto Moravia, “Omaggio a Joyce,” originally published in Prospettive 4,

nos. 11–12 (15 Dec. 1940), reprinted in Antologia della rivista “Prostpettive,”
ed. Glauco Viazzi (Naples: Giuda Editori, 1974), 131–4.
38 See Eugene Lunn, Marxism and Modernism: An Historical Study of Lukács,
Brecht, Benjamin, and Adorno (London: Verso, 1985).
39 Pericles Lewis, The Cambridge Companion to Modernism (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2007), 5. See, too, Peter Brooks, “Modernism
and Realism: Joyce, Proust, Woolf,” in Realist Vision (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2005), 198–211.
40 Wyndham Lewis, Time and Western Man, (London: Chatto and Windus,
1927), 106, 108.
41 Ezra Pound “James Joyce et Pécuchet [1922],” in Pound / Joyce: The Letters
of Ezra Pound to James Joyce, with Pound’s Essays on Joyce, ed. Forrest Read
(London: Faber and Faber, 1965), 208; Arthur Power, Conversations with
James Joyce, ed. Clive Hart (London: Millington, 1974), 53–4.
42 See, for instance, Bocelli’s comment that “a ben guardare ci si accorge che
perfino la distanza fra l’ala estrema del neorealismo e il surrealismo non è
così grande come a tutta prima potrebbe sembrare [on closer inspection,
one even realizes that the extreme wing of neorealism and surrealism are
much closer than they seem at first].” Arnaldo Bocelli, “Un’annata di rea
lismo narrativo,” La Fiera letteraria 4, no. 1 (2 Jan. 1949): 1.
43 Attilio Ricci, “Arrigo Benedetti e le forme del nuovo realismo,” La città
libera 1, no. 30 (6 Sept. 1945): 12–13.
44 Mario De Micheli, “Realismo e poesia,” Il ’45 1, no. 1 (Feb. 1946): 35–44 (41).
45 Bo, Inchiesta sul neorealismo, 39.
46 Luigi Chiarini, “Discorso sul neorealismo,” Bianco e nero 12, no. 7 (July
1951): 3–25 (4).
47 Cf. Carlo Lizzani, Storia del cinema italiano 1895–1961 (Florence: Parenti
Editore, 1961), 124; Parigi, “Le carte d’identità del neorealismo,” 82–3;
Vito Attolini, Dal romanzo al set: Cinema italiano dalle origini ad oggi (Bari:
Dedalo, 1988), 85.
48 The quotation comes from B. Anemone, review of Roma città libera, orrigi-
nally published in Hollywood 3, no. 28 (12 July 1947), reprinted in Il cinema
ricomincia: I film italiani del 1945 e del 1946, ed. Stefano Della Casa (Turin:
Archivio Nazionale della Resistenza, 1992), 22. For uses of the term “neo-
verismo,” see Gaetano Trombatore, “La battaglia delle idee: Moravia,
La Romana,” Rinascita 4, no. 9 (Sept. 1947): 271; Arturo Lanocita, “La
seconda nascita del film italiano,” originally published in Corriere della Sera,
5 June 1947, reprinted in Cinema freddo: I film italiani del 1947, ed. Paolo
Gobetti et al. (Turin: Archivio nazionale cinematografico della Resistenza,
1993), 103–4; Vinicio Marinucci, “A Locarno l’Italia ha confermato la
posizione di eccezionale significato assunta dal suo cinema nel campo
internazionale,” La Cinematografia italiana 3, nos. 13–14 (July 12 1947): 9.

For contemporary references to the influence of Verga on post-war Italian
literature and cinema, see Lorenzo Quaglietti, “Originalità del verismo,”
Libera arte 1, no. 2 (1 June 1946): 2; Massimo Bontempelli, “Giovane neo-
Verga [Feb. 1945],” in Dignità dell’uomo (1943–1946) (Milan: Bompiani,
1946), 93–6; Emiliano Zazo, “‘I Malavoglia’, oggi,” Avanti! 14 Nov. 1945, 2.
49 As critics such as Falaschi and Asor Rosa have correctly noted, references to
Verga appeared far less frequently in the critical debates and cultural jour-
nals than has often been suggested. Falaschi, Realtà e retorica, 26; Alberto Asor
Rosa, Scrittori e popolo 1965: Scrittori e massa 2015 (Turin: Einaudi, 2015), 89.
50 Romano Luperini, Simbolo e costruzione allegorica in Verga (Bologna: Il
Mulino, 1989), 105–7, 122–5.
51 On the mid-century interpretation of Verga alongside European modernism,
see Romano Luperini, “ ‘I Malavoglia’ nella cultura letteraria e nella produz-
ione narrativa del Novecento,” in Verga: L’ideologia le strutture narrative il “caso”
critico, ed. Romano Luperini (Lecce: Milella, 1982), 181–232 (223–5).
52 Moravia, “Omaggio a Joyce,” 133.
53 Moravia, “L’uomo e il personaggio,” originally published in Prospettive 22
(15 Oct. 1941), reprinted in L’Uomo come fine e altri saggi (Milan: Bompiani,
1964), 19–26 (25).
54 Enrico Emanuelli, “Romanzi fra due tempi,” Costume 3 (15 July 1945):
17–18 (18). See also, e.g., Franco Fortini, “Nuovi libri nuovi lettori,”
Avanti! (Milan edition), 26 August 1945, 1–2; Mario Bonfantini, “Ritratto
del romanzo,” Società Nuova 2, no. 5 (May 1946): 25–30; Giovanni Titta
Rosa, “Fortuna della narrativa,” L’Illustrazione italiana, 12 Jan. 1947, 32;
Giuseppe Raimondi, “Una generazione letteraria.” L’indicatore partigiano 1,
no. 1 (Nov.–Dec. 1947): 3–9 (6–7); Francesco Mei, “Ieri e oggi il romanzo.”
Il Popolo, 28 Dec. 1948, 3.
55 Eurialo De Michelis, “È stato così di Natalia Ginzburg,” Mercurio 5, no. 34
(Jan. 1948): 118–19 (118).
56 On Cinema, see Laurent Scotto d’Ardino, La Revue Cinema et le néo-réalisme
italien: Autonomisation d’un champ esthétique (Saint-Denis: Presses
Universitaires de Vincennes, 1999); Lino Micché, “L’ideologia e la forma:
Il gruppo ‘Cinema’ e il formalismo italiano,” in La bella forma: Poggioli, i cal-
ligrafici e dintorni, ed. Andrea Martini (Venice: Marsilio Editore, 1992), 1–28.
57 Gianni Puccini, “I fermenti di ‘Cinema’ e ‘Bianco e Nero’: Testimonianze,”
in Il cinema italiano dal fascismo all’antifascismo: Atti del Seminario organizzato
a Roma nei giorni 15 febbraio–18 marzo 1964, ed. Giorgio Tinazzi (Venice:
Marsilio Editori, 1966), 110–14 (113).
58 Mario Alicata and Giuseppe De Santis, “Verità e poesia: Verga e il cinema
italiano,” originally published in Cinema 127 (Oct. 10, 1941), reprinted in
Giuseppe De Santis, Verso il neorealismo: Un critico cinematografico degli anni
Quaranta, ed. Callisto Cosulich (Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 1982), 45–50;

Mario Alicata and Giuseppe De Santis, “Ancora di Verga e del cinema
italiano,” originally published in Cinema 130 (Nov. 25, 1941), reprinted in
Verso il neorealismo, 50–3.
59 Jean A. Gili and Marco Grossi, eds., Alle origini del neorealismo: Giuseppe De
Santis a colloquio con Jean A. Gili (Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 2008), 69.
60 De Santis and Alicata, “Verità e poesia: Verga e il cinema italiano,” 49–50.
As Zagarrio puts it, for the Cinema group “Verga è una linea di demarcazi
one con le manie retoriche dell’Italia imperiale; un recupero dell’appa
renza mite e discreta che diventa, anche inconsapevolmente, nelle mani
di chi lo usa, un’arma di battaglia [Verga signals a departure from the rhe-
torical fads of imperial Italy; he signals a recovery of mildness and decency
that, even unknowingly, becomes, in the hands of those who use it, a
weapon].” Vito Zagarrio, “Primato”: Arte, cultura, cinema del fascismo attra-
verso una rivista esemplare (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2007), 210.
61 De Santis and Alicata, “Verità e poesia,” 46. On the vision of realism advo-
cated in this essay, see Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Fascist Modernities: Italy, 1922–1945
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 195; Re, Calvino and the
Age of Neorealism, 137–8; Luperini, Simbolo e costruzione allegorica in Verga,
129; Enrique Seknadje-Askénazi, “À propos de la distinction, dans le
champ du cinéma, entre néoréalisme littéraire et néoréalisme documen-
taire,” in Littérature et cinéma néoréalistes: Réalisme, Réel et Représentation, ed.
Michel Cassac (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2004), 229–43.
62 See especially Franco Montesanti, “Della ispirazione cinematografica,”
originally published in Cinema 129 (Nov. 10, 1941), reprinted in Il lungo
viaggio del cinema italiano: Antologia di “Cinema” 1936–1943, ed. Orio
Caldiron (Padua: Marisilio Editori, 1965), 439–43 (439, 442).
63 De Santis and Alicata, “Ancora di Verga e del cinema italiano,” 52. Marcus
and others have tended to interpret this line to mean that De Santis and
Alicata were advocating “unmediated naturalistic reportages.” I take it,
instead, as a pro forma announcement. Nearly a decade earlier, Longanesi
had similarly called for directors to “gettarsi alla strada, portare le mac-
chine da presa nelle vie, nei cortili, nelle caserme, nelle stazioni [get out
into the streets, bring your camera into the streets, the courtyards, the bar-
racks, the stations],” and Chiarini had called for them to look “fuori dalla
cartapesta dei teatri, all’aria aperta [beyond the false walls of the theatres,
into the open air].” Echoing such statements, “Ancora di Verga” appears
to have adopted a cultural cliché, from which it then departed, rejecting
the more simplistic interpretations of realism with which that cliché was
associated. Marcus, Italian Film in the Light of Neorealism, 16; Leo Longanesi,
“Breve storia del cinema italiano,” L’Italiano 17–18 (1933), quoted in Vito
Zagarrio, Cinema e fascismo: Film, modelli, immaginari (Venice: Marsilio
Editori, 2004), 125–6; Luigi Chiarini, Cinematografo (Rome: Cremonese,

1935), 40.
64 De Santis and Alicata, “Ancora di Verga e del cinema italiano,” 52.
65 Alicata and De Santis, “Verità e poesia,” 48. For Barbaro’s influence on
this essay, and on the Cinema group more generally, see Brunetta, Umberto
Barbaro e l’idea di neorealismo, 143–6.
66 Giuseppe De Santis, “L’arte della profondità [1996 interview],” in Rosso
fuoco: Il cinema di Giuseppe De Santis, ed. Sergio Toffetti (Turin: Lindau, 1996),
17–51 (18). On the reception of literary modernism in the journal Cinema,
see Gian Piero Brunetta, “Il cammino della critica verso il neorealismo,” in
Storia del cinema italiano, vol. 2, Il cinema del regime 1929–1945 (Rome: Editori
Riuniti, 2001), 197–230 (199); Carlo Lizzani, “Linee e premesse di una breve
storia del cinema,” originally published in Bianco e nero, Feb. 1949, reprinted
in Attraverso il Novecento (Turin: Scuola Nazionale di Cinema, 1998), 57.
67 Barbaro, preface to Il soggetto cinematografico, 133; Solaroli, “Il nostro
referendum,” 14; Ettore Maria Margadonna, “Il realismo nel cinema
europeo,” originally published in Comoedia 14, no. 6 (15 May 1932),
reprinted in Critica italiana primo tempo: 1926–1934, ed. Bianca Pividori,
Bianco e nero 34, no. 3–4 (April–May 1973): 92–6; Alberto Cavalcanti, “Le
mouvement néo-réaliste en Angleterre,” originally published in Le rôle intel-
lectuel du cinéma (Paris: Editions de l’Institut International de Coopération
Intellectuelle, 1937), reprinted in Anthologie du cinéma, ed. Marcel Lapierre
(Paris: La Nouvelle Edition, 1946), 271–6.
68 Giuseppe De Santis, quoted in Il sole sorge ancora: 50 anni di resistenza nel
cinema italiano, vol. 2, Memoria, mito storia: La parola ai registi. 37 interviste,
ed. Alessandro Amaducci et al. (Turin: ANCR, 1992), 86.
69 On Ossessione as film noir, see Mary P. Wood, “Italian Film Noir,” in
European Film Noir, ed. Andrew Spicer (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 2007), 236–72 (240); Derek Duncan, “Ossessione,” in European
Cinema: An Introduction, ed. Jill Forbes and Sarah Street (Basingstoke and
New York: Palgrave, 2000), 95–106 (104). For the accepted account of
Ossessione’s status vis-à-vis neorealism, see especially Miccichè, Visconti e il
neorealismo, 65; Minghelli, Landscape and Memory, 20; Parigi, Neorealismo:
Il nuovo cinema del dopoguerra, 38; Bruno Torri, “Il caso ‘Ossessione,’” in
Storia del cinema italiano, vol. 6, 1940/1944, ed. Ernesto G. Laura (Venice:
Marsilio Editori, 2010), 176–84.
70 Visconti had first planned an adaptation of Verga’s L’amante di Gramigna
but the project was rejected by the censors. The treatment of that unmade
film has been published as Luchino Visconti and Giuseppe De Santis,
“L’amante di Gramigna”: Verga e il cinema, ed. Nino Genovese and Sebastiano
Gesù (Catania: Giuseppe Maimone Editore, 1996), 44–8. On the censor-
ship of the project, see Miccichè, Visconti e il neorealismo, 23–5.
71 Gaia Servadio, Luchino Visconti: A Biography (London: Weidenfeld &

Nicolson, 1981), 63.
72 Giuseppe De Santis, “Visconti’s Interpretation of Cain’s Setting in
Ossessione,” trans. Luciana Bohne, Film Criticism 9, no. 3 (Spring 1985):
23–32 (29–30). See, too, Federica Villa, “Giorgio Bassani e le occasioni
letterarie per Luchino Visconti: Qualche appunto preliminare,” in Luchino
Visconti, la macchina e le muse, ed. Federica Mazzocchi (Bari: Edizioni di
Pagina, 2008). 239–55.
73 Umberto Barbaro, “Neo-realismo,” originally published in Film 6, no. 23
(5 June 1943), reprinted in Neorealismo e realismo, vol. 2, Cinema e teatro,
500–4 (501–2). Brunetta sees this essay as a kind of summa of Barbaro’s
aesthetic and ideological position between the wars. Brunetta, “Il cammino
della critica,” 229.
74 Barbaro, “Neo-realismo,” 501, 504; Umberto Barbaro, “Realismo e mora
lità,” originally in Film 6, no. 31 (31 July 1943), reprinted in Neorealismo e
realismo, vol. 2, Cinema e teatro, 505–9.
75 Walter Ronchi, review of Ossessione, by Luchino Visconti, Il Popolo di
Romagna, 19 June 1943, 3. On this review, and the initial critical reception
of Ossessione more broadly, see Mauro Giori, Poetica e prassi della trasgressione
in Luchino Visconti:1935–1962 (Milan: Libraccio, 2018), 67–71.
76 Ronchi, review of Ossessione, 3.
77 Guido Aristarco, review of Ossessione, by Luchino Visconti, originally
published in Corriere Padano, 8 June 1943, reprinted in Storia del cinema
italiano, vol. 6, 1940/1944, ed. Ernesto G. Laura (Venice: Marsilio Editori,
2010), 632–3 (633). Aristarco nevertheless recognized the originality
of Visconti’s film, defending it against a critical establishment that saw
it as nothing more than “una vieta imitazione del neorealismo francese
(Carné, Duvivier e il caposcuola Renoir) [a blocked imitation of French
neorealism (Carné, Duvivier, and the master Renoir)].” Guido Aristarco,
“Equivoci su ‘Ossessione,’” originally published in Corriere padano, 27
June 1943, reprinted in Vent’anni di cultura ferrarese: Antologia del “Corriere
padano,” 2 vols., ed. Anna Folli (Bologna: Pàtron Editore, 1979), II: 275–6.
78 Carl Vincent, “Les horizons du cinéma,” Cahiers de Combat 5 (1939): 27,
cited and discussed in Parigi, Neorealismo: Il nuovo cinema del dopoguerra, 27.
79 Barbaro, “Alessandro Neverov,” 119–21.
80 Luchino Visconti, “Vita difficile del film ‘Ossessione,’” Il Contemporaneo,
24 April 1965, 7–8 (8).
81 Giorgio Bassani, “Giovanni Verga e il cinematografo,” originally published
in Il Popolo, 29 May 1947, republished as “Verga e il cinematografo,” Il
mondo europeo, 1 July 1947, reprinted as “Verga e il cinema,” in Opere, ed.
Roberto Cotroneo (Milan: Mondadori, 1998), 1036–9 (1037).
82 Bassani, “Verga e il cinema,” 1037.
83 As Baldi puts it, “[s]e il modernismo è un fenomeno chiave nel canone let-
terario anglosassone, in Italia l’etichetta di decadentismo è ancora egemo
ne [if modernism is a key phenomenon in the English literary canon, in
Italy the label of decadentism remains hegemonic].” Valentino Baldi, “A
che cosa serve il modernismo italiano?” Allegoria 63 (2012): 66–82 (66).
See, too, Mimmo Cangiano, La nascita del modernismo italiano: Filosofie della
crisi, storia e letteratura 1903–1922 (Macerata: Quodlibet, 2018), 16–17.
84 Giorgio Bassani, “Neorealisti italiani,” originally published in Lo Spettatore
italiano 1, no. 4 (April 1948), reprinted in Opere, 1054–9 (1054).
85 For contemporary discussions of the influence of American literary
“neorealism” on Italian culture, see Bocelli, “Morte e resurrezione del
personaggio,” 141–5; Gianni Castelnuovo, “Il nuovo realismo americano,”
Comunità 2, no. 17 (9 Aug. 1947): 5; Enrico Falqui, “Paragrafi sulla narra-
tiva I,” originally published in Mattino di Roma, 30 Dec. 1947, reprinted in
Novecento letterario: Serie terza (Florence: Vallecchi editore, 1961), 405–12.
See, too, Daniela Brogi, “Tra letteratura e cinema: Pavese, Visconti,
e la ‘funzione Cain,’” in Giovani: Vita e scrittura tra fascismo e dopoguerra
(Palermo: Duepunti edizioni, 2012), 83–110.
86 Cesare Pavese, “Intervista alla radio,” originally broadcast 12 June 1950,
published in La letteratura americana e altri saggi (Turin: Einaudi, 1991),
263–7 (263–4).
87 Antonio Pietrangeli, “Quattordici anni di cinema: Bilancio,” originally
published in Star, 2 Sept. 1944, reprinted in Neorealismo e dintorni, ed.
Antonio Maraldi (Cesena: Società Editrice “Il Ponte Vecchio,” 1995),
19–26 (25).
88 Antonio Pietrangeli, “‘I Malavoglia’ di Verga sullo schermo: Personaggi
che aspettano,” originally published in Fotogrammi, 21 June 1947, reprinted
in Neorealismo e dintorni, 110–12 (111).
89 Pietrangeli, Panoramica sul cinema italiano, 34.
90 Umberto Barbaro, “L’Azione cattolica lavora per Hollywood,” originally
published in L’Unità, 18 Jan. 1948, reprinted in Neorealismo e realismo, vol. 2,
Cinema e teatro, 527–9 (529); Mario Serandrei, “Dal taccuino di un monta-
tore,” originally published in La Critica Cinematografica 9 (June–July 1948),
reprinted in “La Critica Cinematografica” (1946-1948): Antologia, ed. Andrea
Torre (Parma: Uni.Nova, 2005), 298–9.
91 For “neorealism” as a literary term in the immediate post-war context, see
Antonio Piccone Stella, “Il secondo quarto del secolo,” La Nuova Europa 1,
no. 4 (31 Dec. 1944): 5; Giuseppe Sala, “Realismo e religiosità,” Il Commento
2, no. 24 (16 Dec. 1945): 537; Eurialo De Michelis, review of Lavorare stanca,
by Cesare Pavese, Mercurio 3, nos. 19–20 (March–April 1946): 169–70; Enrico
Falqui, “Paragrafi sulla narrativa II,” originally published in Milano Sera,
29–30 Oct. 1946, reprinted in Novecento letterario: Serie terza, 419–23; O.A.
Notes to page 32 195
Bontempo, “Italian Literature in 1946,” The Modern Language Journal 31, no. 5
(May 1947): 283–8 (286); Remo Cantoni, “Nota sul Convegno di Perugia,”
Il Politecnico 38 (Nov. 1947): 11–12 (12); Dario Puccini, review of Il compagno,
by Cesare Pavese, L’Italia che scrive 31, no. 10 (Oct. 1948): 177; Félix A.
Morlion, “Il neorealismo letterario di Eugenio Corti,” originally published in
L’ora dell’azione, 30 Dec. 1948, reprinted in Presenza di Eugenio Corti: Rassegna
della Critica, ed. Argia Monti (Milan: Edizioni Ares, 2010), 99–102; Angelo
Mele, “Un romanzo di cui si parla,” Controvento 1, no. 9 (Dec. 1949), cited in
Sandro de Nobile, Il fermento e non: Le riviste letterarie abruzzesi e il neorealismo
(1948-1959) (Chieti: Edizioni Solfanelli, 2015), 46.
92 Glauco Viazzi, “Il cinema che vorremmo,” originally published in Film
d’oggi 2, no. 5 (2 Feb. 1946), reprinted in Il cinema ricomincia, 117; Alfredo
Orecchio, review of Caccia tragica, by Giuseppe De Santis, originally pub-
lished in Il Messaggero, 5 March 1948, reprinted in Cinema freddo, 18.
93 Carlo Carrà, “Neoclassicismo e neorealismo,” originally published in
L’Ambrosiano, 1 Aug. 1925, reprinted in Tutti gli scritti, ed. Massimo Carrà
(Milan: Feltrinelli, 1978), 253–8; Lionello Venturi, Il gusto dei primitivi
(Bologna: Zanichelli, 1926), 4, referenced by Nisini, Il neorealismo ital-
iano, 32; Roberto Papini, “La crisi delle arti figurative: Il pubblico sba-
diglia,” La Stampa, 14 Feb. 1928, 3; Palm, “La Mostra del pittore Vacca
al Circolo Artistico,” La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno, 24 Oct. 1931, 4; Dario
Sabatello, “Contemporary Italian Painting,” in Exhibition of Contemporary
Italian Painting under the Auspices of the Western Art Museum Association
and the “Direzione generale italiani all’estero” (Tivoli: Officine Grafiche
Mantero, 1934), 5–17 (16–17); Vincenzo Costantini, “Neorealismo,” in
Pittura italiana contemporanea: Dalla fine dell’800 ad oggi (Milan: Hoepli,
1934), 357–86; Marziano Bernardi, “Il Duce alla ‘vernice’ della seconda
Quadriennale,” La Stampa, 5 Feb. 1935, 3; Carlo Carrà, “Dal mio taccuino,”
Il Frontespizio 7 (July 1937): 526–8 (527); Alberto Bragaglia, “Neorealismo
in pittura,” Augustea 13, no. 12 (15 June 1938): 13–15; Carlo Carrà,
“Orientamenti,” originally published in Panorama, 12 Feb. 1940, reprinted
in Tutti gli scritti, 331–4 (331); Carlo Carrà, “La pittura italiana contempo-
ranea nel quadro dell’arte europea,” originally published in Romana 5, no.
5 (May 1941), now in Tutti gli scritti, 290–8 (294).
94 Toti Scialoja, “Dal Neo-realismo al Realismo nuovo,” Immagine 1, no. 4
(Sept.–Oct. 1947): 258–9; Enrico Galluppi, “L’Arte a Roma,” La Fiera letteraria
2, no. 22 (29 May 1947): 6; Marcello Venturi, “Pugni, schiaffi e pennelli,”
originally published in La Voce Repubblicana, 6 Nov. 1947, reprinted in
La via italiana al realismo: La politica culturale artistica del P.C.I. dal 1944 al
1956, by Nicoletta Misler, 2nd ed. (Milan: Mazzotta, 1976), 123–5 (125);
Umbro Apollonio, “La XXIV Biennale di Venezia II,” La Rassegna d’Italia 3,
no. 7 (July 1948): 786–91 (789–90); Domenico Maselli, “Conclusione sulla
XXV Biennale Veneziana: La sorte di Aristide incombe su Carlo Carrà,”

La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno, 13 Aug. 1950, 3.
95 L’Operatore, review of Tombolo, paradiso nero, by Giorgio Ferroni, originally pub-
lished in Intermezzo 21–22 (Nov. 1947), reprinted in Cinema freddo, 77. For instances
of the formation of the neorealist “tendency,” see Amedeo Rivolta, “Gioventù
perduta,” originally published in Hollywood 4, no. 131 (20 March 1948), reprinted
in Gobetti et al., Neorealismo D.O.C., 79; “Il cinema italiano ricomincia da Venezia,”
originally published in La Critica cinematografica 3, no. 12 (Nov. 1948), reprinted
in Gobetti et al., Neorealismo D.O.C., 183–4; Giulio Cesare Castello, “Senza pietà,”
originally published in Bianco e nero 9, no. 10 (December 1948), reprinted in
Gobetti et al., Neorealismo D.O.C., 110; Lorenzo Quaglietti, “Il cinema n eo-realista:
Intervista con Carla Del Poggio Vittorio Duse e De Santis,” originally published in
L’Unità, 10 Dec. 1948, reprinted in Gobetti et al., Neorealismo D.O.C., 170.
96 L.L., “Realtà e cultura nel cinema italiano contemporaneo,” originally
published in Rivista del Cinematografo, April 1948, reprinted in I cattolici e il
neorealismo, ed. Amédéé Ayfre and Sergio Trasatti (Rome: Ente dello spet-
tacolo, 1989), 25–9 (27). For similar attempts to define Italian neorealist
cinema in this period, see Gian Luigi Rondi, “Il cinema italiano realistico,”
La Fiera letteraria 3, no. 21 (30 May 1948): 5; Vittorio Calvino, Guida al
cinema (Milan: Gruppo Editoriale “Academia,” 1949), 339; Mario Gromo,
“Italia,” in Il film del dopoguerra, 1945–1949, ed. Luigi Chiarini (Rome:
Bianco e nero editore, 1949), 71–81; Dino Risi, “Cinema: il cosidetto
‘neorealismo,’” La Rassegna d’Italia, Feb. 1949, 197–9.
97 “Questo è il cinema nostro: Il cammino fra due date 1944–1948,” La
Settimana Incom, no. 19, 14 Oct. 1948, directed by Alberto Pozzetti, written
by Gaetano Carancini, Vinicio Marinucci, and Mario Ungaro, patrimonio.
archivioluce.com/luce-web/detail/IL5000010326/2/questo-e-cinema-
nostro-cammino-due-date-1944-1948.html, last accessed 21 May 2019.
98 “Ladri di biciclette,” originally published in Sipario 4, no. 33 (Jan. 1949),
reprinted in Gobetti et al., Neorealismo D.O.C., 94
99 Ermanno Contini, “Il documentario,” in Il film del dopoguerra, 1945–1949,
167–81 (175, 180); “Radio – Teatri – Cinematografi,” L’Unità, 15 Sept. 1948,
2; Guido Aristarco. “Film di questi giorni: ‘Chiamate Nord 777,’” Cinema 1
(1948): 30–1; Alfredo Panicucci, “Cinema col nonno,” Avanti! 2 Jan. 1949,
3; Vinicio Marinucci, “Appunti sul realismo del film americano,” Bianco e
nero 9, no. 4 (June 1948): 36–41; P. Virg., “Le ‘Prime’ del cinema: L’urlo
della città,” La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno, 14 Sept. 1949, 4; Paolo Gobetti, “Un
anno di cinema,” originally published in L’Unità, 31 Dec. 1949, reprinted
in Patto col diavolo: Il cinema italiano del 1949, ed. Cristina Balzano, Isabella
Novelli, Paola Olivetti, Roberto Radicati, Morena Rossi, Ivana Solavagione,
Marta Teodoro, and Baldo Vallero (Turin: Archivio nazionale cine-
matografico della Resistenza, Regione Piemonte, 1996), 160–1.
100 For international literary neorealism, see, e.g., Luigi Somma, Storia della
letteratura americana (Rome: Casa editrice Libraria corso, 1946), 149; Braccio
Agnoletti, “Ottimismo e neorealismo,” Idea 1, nos. 13–14 (7–14 Aug. 1949):
8; Giovanni Savelli, “Svolgimenti del neo-realismo americano,” La Fiera
letteraria 3, no. 12 (28 March 1948): 4. For Italian literary neorealism, see
Goffredo Bellonci, “Italo Calvino tra i contemporanei,” Mercurio 5, no.
35 (Feb. 1948): 103–8; Renzo Tian, “Paradiso maligno,” La Fiera letteraria
3, no. 37 (5 Dec. 1948): 4; Aldo Borlenghi, “Narrativa 1948,” Avanti! 2
Feb. 1949, 3; Mario Apollonio, “Neorealismo,” Il Popolo, 29 Nov. 1949, 3;
Ferruccio Ulivi, “Sul neorealismo,” Mondo Operaio 2, no. 35 (23 July 1949):
8; Olga Lombardi, “Breve storia del neorealismo italiano,” La Fiera letteraria
4, no. 25 (19 June 1949): 5; Marcello Camilucci, “Romanzi di sinistra,” Vita e
pensiero (April 1950): 209–13 (212). For neorealism in the visual arts, see Toti
Scialoja, “Neorealismo andata e ritorno,” Immagine 2, nos. 9–10 (Aug.–Dec.
1948): 612; Rodolfo Pallucchini, introduction to XXV Biennale di Venezia:
Catalogo (Venice: Alfieri Editore, 1950), xv; Raffaele Carrieri, Pittura scultura
d’avanguardia in Italia (1890-1950) (Milan: Edizioni della conchiglia, 1950),
270–2. On neorealism in architecture and design, see Carlo Perogalli,
Introduzione all’arte totale: Neorealismo e astrattismo architettura e arte industriale
(Milan: Libreria A. Salto, 1952); Giudo Canella and Aldo Rossi, “Mario
Ridolfi,” originally published in Comunità 41 (1956), reprinted in Architettura
urbanistica in Italia nel dopoguerra: L’Immagine della Comunità, ed. M. Fabbri
et al. (Rome: G. Gangemi, 1986), 336–44 (344); Paolo Portoghesi, “Dal neo-
realismo al neoliberty,” originally published in Comunità 65 (1958), reprinted
in Architettura urbanistica in Italia nel dopoguerra, 356–72 (360); Aldo Cuzzer,
“Realismo del neorealismo,” Marcatrè 3, nos. 11–13 (1965): 288–91.
101 See, e.g., Giovanna Gasparini, Neorealismo (Milan: Mursia, 2000), 19;
Antonio Medici, Neorealismo: Il movimento che ha cambiato la storia del cinema,
analizzato, fotogrammi alla mano, nei suoi procedimenti tecnico-formali (Rome:
Dino Audino editore, 2008), 16; John Gatt-Rutter, “The Aftermath of
the Second World War (1945–1956),” in The Cambridge History of Italian
Literature, ed. Peter Brand and Lino Pertile (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2003), 533–57 (535).
102 Bo, “Primo viene il film,” 262. Evidence for the diffusion in an
English-language context of the same mistaken genealogy can be found in
Nicola Chiaromonte, “Realism and Neorealism in Contemporary Italian
Literature,” The English Journal 42, no. 5 (May 1953): 431–9 (437). Four
years earlier, the same author, noting certain similarities between the
latest developments in Italian literature and film, had drawn attention
to a group of filmmakers whom he called “the directors of the so-called
‘neo-realistic’ school.” See Nicola Chiaromonte, “Rome Letter: Italian
Movies,” Partisan Review 16, no. 6 (June 1949): 621–30.
198 Notes to page 35
103 Bo, Inchiesta sul neorealismo, 69.

104 Pietrangeli, Panoramica sul cinema italiano, 18; Gianni Puccini, “Per una
discussione sul film italiano,” originally published in Bianco e nero 9, no. 2
(April 1948), reprinted in Gobetti et al., Neorealismo D.O.C., 159–63 (163).
105 Among the studies to underline the links between the arts in the age of
neorealism, see Elisabetta Chicco Vitzizzai, Il neorealismo: Antifascismo e popolo
nella letteratura dagli anni Trenta agli anni Cinquanta (Turin: Paravia, 1977),
3–4; Daniela Scardia, La stagione del trionfo: La cultura del Neorealismo in
Italia (Cavallino: Pensa Editore, 2016), 14; Gian Carlo Ferretti and Stefano
Guerriero, Storia dell’informazione letteraria in Italia dalla terza pagina a internet,
1925–2009 (Milan: Feltrinelli, 2010), 77–9; Lorenzo Pellizzari, Cineromanzo:
Il cinema italiano 1945–1953 (Milan: Longanesi, 1978), 20; Luigi Fontanella,
“Neorealismo e neorealismi italiani: alcuni appunti,” in Ripensare il neorea-
lismo, 127–31 (127); Francesco Galluzzi, “Il cinema dei pittori: Film e arti
visive nel dopoguerra in Italia,” in Il cinema dei pittori: Le arti e il cinema ital-
iano 1940–1980, ed. Francesco Galluzzi (Milan: Skira, 2007), 13–29.
106 Pierantonio Bertè, “La critica e il neorealismo,” Il Quotidiano, 24 Feb. 1950, 3.
107 See, for instance, Angiola Maria Bonisconti, “Il Nuovo Realismo Musicale,”
Rassegna Musicale 18, no. 2 (1948): 123–9. Claims to a musical neorealism
predated 1945: see, for instance, Alfredo Parente, “L’estetica musicale e
i neorealisti,” La Nuova Italia (April–May 1939), cited in Stefania Parigi,
Neorealismo: Il nuovo cinema del dopoguerra, 23n27.
108 Adriano Olivetti, “Riprendendo il cammino,” originally published
in Comunità 2 (1950), reprinted in Architettura urbanistica in Italia nel
dopoguerra, 13–15. As Milanini put it, “Diffusa fu la passione per una
cultura globale, il desiderio che i vari discorsi di ogni specifica ricerca e
produzione rientrassero a far parte di quel discorso comune che è la storia
degli uomini [There was widespread passion for a global culture, for the
various discourses of each specific field of production to take part in that
common discourse that is the history of mankind].” Claudio Milanini,
introduction to Neorealismo: Poetiche e polemiche, ed. Claudio Milanini
(Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1980), 10.
109 Giulio Ungarelli, “Elio Vittorini: La parola e l’immagine,” Belfagor 63,
no. 377 (30 Sept. 2008): 501–21. Falaschi describes the set of Guttuso’s
designs for the novel as “neorealistico [neorealist].” See Giovanni Falaschi,
“Introduzione e note,” in Conversazione in Sicilia, by Elio Vittorini (Milan:
BUR, 2007), 5–54 (12).
110 Luchino Visconti, “Tradizione e invenzione,” originally published in Stile
italiano nel cinema (Milan: Guarnati, 1941), reprinted in Leggere Visconti, ed.
Giuliana Callegari and Nuccio Lodato (Pavia: Amministrazione Provinciale,
1976), 19–20 (19). On this collaboration, see Lara Pucci, “History, Myth,
and the Everyday: Luchino Visconti, Renato Guttuso, and the Fishing
Communities of the Italian South,” Oxford Art Journal 36, no. 3 (2013):
417–35 (420); and Gian Piero Brunetta, Cinema italiano tra le due guerre:
Fascismo e politica cinematografica (Milan: Mursia, 1975), 94. On Visconti’s Verga,
see, too, Giovanna Taviani, “Tra Verga e Zola: Visconti e il dibattito sulla rivi
sta ‘Cinema,’” in Il verismo italiano fra naturalismo francese e cultura europea, ed.
Romano Luperini (San Cesario di Lecce: Manni Editori, 2007), 55–81.
111 Luchino Visconti, “Oltre il fatto dei Malavoglia,” originally published in Vie
Nuove, 22 Oct. 1960, reprinted in Leggere Visconti, 48–50.
112 Vittorini discussed his request of Visconti in an April 1950 letter to Vasco
Pratolini. See Elio Vittorini, Gli anni del “Politecnico”: Lettere 1945–1951,
ed. Carlo Minoia (Turin: Einaudi, 1977), 315; Nino Genovese and
Sebastiano Gesù, Vittorini e il cinema (Siracusa: Emanuele Romeo Editore,
1997), 30–1. The author’s comments on the cinematic aspects of his illus-
trated novel are taken from Elio Vittorini, “La foto strizza l’occhio alla
pagina,” originally in Cinema nuovo 3, no. 33 (15 April 1954), reprinted
in Letteratura arte società, vol. 2, Articoli e interventi 1938–1965, ed. Raffaella
Rodondi (Turin: Einaudi, 2008), 701–8 (702). On Vittorini’s project, see
especially Heike Brohm, “Elio Vittorini e l’intermedialità: A proposito
di Conversazione in Sicilia del 1953,” Rivista di letteratura italiana 25, no. 2
(2007): 87–104; Jan Baetens and Bart Van Den Bossche, “Back Home,
Back to the Image? The Editorial History of Conversazione in Sicilia as a
Case of Tense Relations between Literature and Photography,” Italian
Studies 70, no. 1 (Feb. 2015): 117–30; and Angelo Rella, Elio Vittorini
e la seduzione delle immagini: Dal “Politecnico” a Conversazione illustrata
(Szczecin: Szczecin volumina, 2011), 213–64.
113 Fiamma Lussana, “Neorealismo critico: Politica e cultura della crisi in
Luchino Visconti,” Studi Storici 43, no. 4 (Oct.–Dec. 2002): 1083–103
(1100–1). Critics have frequently traced cinematic elements in Vittorini’s
novel. See, for instance, Elena Lencioni, “Tra cinema e romanzo: Fenomeni
di scrittura filmica in Uomini e no,” Italianistica 38, no. 3 (2009): 81–96.
114 Elio Vittorini, “Prefazione a ‘Il garofano rosso,’” originally published in Il
garofano rosso (Milan: Mondadori, 1948), reprinted in Letteratura arte società,
478–501 (484–5).
115 See, for instance, Filippo Focardi, Il cattivo tedesco e il bravo italiano: La
rimozione delle colpe della seconda guerra mondiale (Rome and Bari: Laterza,
2013), 155; Felice Rappazzo, Vittorini (Palermo: Palumbo, 1996), 37; Ennio
Di Nolfo, La repubblica delle speranze e degli inganni: L’Italia dalla caduta del
fascismo al crollo della Democrazia Cristiana (Florence: Ponte alla Grazia,
1996), 92; Antonio Girardi, Nome e lagrime: Linguaggio e ideologia di Elio
Vittorini (Naples: Liguori Editore, 1975), 57.
116 Elio Vittorini, letter to Michel Arnaud, 7 July 1947, in Gli anni del
“Politecnico,” 124. See, too, Elio Vittorini, “Intervista con la giornalista Kay
Gittings,” originally published in Corriere del Libro 2, no. 2 (15 Feb.–March

1947), reprinted in Letteratura arte società, 326–39 (333); Elio Vittorini,
“Uomo e sottosuolo,” Il Politecnico 35 (Jan.–March 1947), reprinted in
Letteratura arte società, 424–7 (426).
117 Vittorini, “Prefazione a ‘Il garofano rosso,’” 486.
118 Elio Vittorini, Conversazione in Sicilia, in Le opere narrative, by Elio Vittorini,
ed. Maria Corti, 2 vols. (Milan: Mondadori, 1974), I: 569–710 (§XI, 603–4).
119 Sandro Briosi, Elio Vittorini (Florence: Il Castoro, 1970), 93; Sergio
Pautasso, Elio Vittorini (Turin: Borla Editore, 1967), 170.
120 On these passages, see Rosa Montesanto, “Nota al corsivo in ‘Uomini e
no,’” in Elio Vittorini: Atti del Convegno nazionale di studi (Siracusa – Noto,
12–13 Feb. 1976), ed. Paolo Mario Sipala and Ermanno Scuderi (Catania:
Edizioni Greco, 1978), 79–87; Raffaella Rodondi, “Nota ai testi,” in Le opere
narrative, II: 1165–248 (1213); Giovanni Falaschi, La Resistenza armata nella
narrativa italiana (Turin: Einaudi, 1976), 84–5; Virna Brigatti, Diacronia di
un romanzo: Uomini e no di Elio Vittorini (1944–1966) (Milan: Ledizioni,
2016), 79–80; Guido Bonsaver, Elio Vittorini: Letteratura in tensione
(Florence: Franco Cesati, 2008), 143.
121 Elio Vittorini, Uomini e no. in Le opere narrative, I: 711–920 (§ LXIV, 809)
122 See especially Goffredo Bellonci, “Il romanzo italiano,” Svizzera italiana 7,
no. 64 (1947): 274–81 (280); R., “La gente parla di: ‘Uomini e no,’” La
lettura 1, no. 1 (23 Aug. 1945): 9; Enrico Falqui, “Elio Vittorini: ‘Uomini e
no,’” originally published in Risorgimento liberale, 12 Sept. 1945, reprinted
in Novecento letterario: Serie sesta (Florence: Vallecchi editore, 1961), 154–8.
For the term’s application to Vittorini’s earlier work, see especially
Giacomo Antonini, “La nuova prosa narrativa italiana,” in Narratori italiani
d’oggi, 2nd ed. (Florence: Vallecchi Editore, 1943 [1939]), 15–105 (83).
123 Fiorenzo Forti, “In margine alla narrativa della Resistenza,” L’indicatore
partigiano 1, no. 4 (July–Aug. 1948): 23–4 (23); Olgo Lombardi, Narratori
neorealisti (Pisa: Nistri-Lischi Editori, 1957), 18-19.
124 Bo, Inchiesta sul neorealismo, 30; Elio Vittorini, “Inghilterra,” originally pub-
lished in Tempo 4, no. 52 (23 May 1940), reprinted in Letteratura arte società,
90–2 (91).
125 Sergio Pautasso, Guida a Vittorini (Milan: Rizzoli Editore, 1977), 163;
Anthony M. Cinquemani, “Vittorini’s Uomini e no and Neorealism,” Forum
Italicum 17, no. 2 (1983): 152–63 (152); Anna Panicali, Elio Vittorini: La
narrativa, la saggistica, le traduzioni, le riviste, l’attività editoriale (Milan:
Mursia, 1994), 162.
126 Ajello, Intellettuali e PCI, 221; Milanini, introduction to Neorealismo: Poetiche
e polemiche, 12; Nicola Tranfaglia, “Pavese e l’Italia degli anni Quaranta,”
in Cesare Pavese: Atti del Convegno internazionale di studi. Torino-Santo Stefano
Belbo, 24-27 ottobre 2001, ed. Margherita Campanello (Florence: Leo S.
Olscchki, 2005), 131–42 (141); Gigliola De Donato, Saggio su Carlo Levi

(Bari: De Donato, 1974), 8; Giulio Ferroni, Passioni del Novecento (Rome:
Donzelli, 1999), 59. For the problematic definition of a neorealist literary
canon, see Nicola Turi, “Il romanzo neorealista,” in Il romanzo in Italia,
vol. 3, Il primo Novecento, ed. Giancarlo Alfano and Francesco de Cristofaro
(Rome: Carocci editore, 2018), 375–84.
127 Bondanella and Pacchioni, A History of Italian Cinema, 68; Marcia Landy,
Italian Film, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 15.
128 Nisini, Il neorealismo italiano, 57–9; Cesare De Michelis, Alle origini del neore-
alismo: Aspetti del romanzo italiano negli anni ’30 (Cosenza: Lerici, 1980), 81;
Anna Baldini, “Il Neorealismo: Nascita e usi di una categoria letteraria,” in
Letteratura italiana e tedesca 1945–1970: Campi, polisistemi, transfer, ed. Irene
Fantappiè and Michele Sisto (Rome: Istituto italiano di studi germanici, 2013),
109–28 (126); Massimo Mida and Lorenzo Quaglietti, Dai telefoni bianchi al
neorealismo (Bari: Laterza, 1980), 183n1; Pierre Sorlin, Italian National Cinema,
1896–1996 (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), 89–90; Porcaro, Aspetti
critici e letterari della narrativa del neorealismo italiano, 26; Baldan, Per una lettura
del Neorealismo, 6; Sergio Turconi, La poesia neorealista italiana, (Milan: Mursia,
1977), 16, 74n26; Parigi, “Le carte d’identità del neorealismo,” 83.
129 Bo, Inchiesta sul neorealismo, 16; Alberto Moravia, Gli indifferenti (Milan:
Bompiani, 1949 [2nd ed.]), cited in Ines Scaramucci, “La narrativa del
neorealismo italiano,” Il neorealismo nella letteratura e nel cinema italiano, ed. Rosa
Brambilla (Assisi: Biblioteca Pro Civitate Christiana, 1987), 69–88 (76).
130 Euralio De Michelis, “Zavattini o il sentimento frenato [Part 1],” La Nuova
Italia 5 (May 1938): 152; Euralio De Michelis, “Zavattini o il sentimento
frenato [Part 2]” La Nuova Italia 6 (June 1938): 187, cited by Parigi,
Neorealismo: Il nuovo cinema del dopoguerra, 23; Mario Verdone, “La parte
dello scrittore nel cinema italiano: Il contributo di Zavattini,” Cinema:
Quindicinale di divulgazione cinematografica 2, no. 30 (Nov. 1949): 284–6.
131 Giovanni Battista Angioletti, “Joyce, martirio dei traduttori,” La Nuova
Stampa 6, no. 47 (24 Feb. 1950): 3. This same definition of neorealism
as modernism is evident in many of the reviews of the 1951 Inchiesta.
See Giuseppina Nirchio, “Sintesi di un’inchiesta,” La Fiera letteraria 33
(2 Sept. 1951): 5–6 (5); Emilio Cecchi, “Processo senza sentenza ai nar-
ratori italiani,” L’Europeo, 5 Aug. 1951; Giuseppe De Robertis, “Inchiesta
sul Neorealismo,” Tempo illustrato, 1 Sept. 1951, 3; I.I., “Notizie del teatro:
Teatro e neorealismo,” L’Unità, 19 Jan. 1952, 3.
132 Barbaro, “L’Azione cattolica lavora per Hollywood,” 529.
133 Nowell-Smith, Luchino Visconti, 26.
134 Salvatore Rosati, review of Paesi tuoi, by Cesare Pavese, L’Italia che scrive 24,
nos. 7–8 (July–Aug. 1941): 229; Salvatore Rosati, “Prosa 1941,” Romana:
Rivista mensile degli Istituti di cultura italiana all’estero 5, no. 12 (Dec. 1941):
778–89; Mario Alicata, review of Paesi tuoi, by Cesare Pavese, originally pub-
lished in Oggi, 19 July 1941, reprinted in Scritti letterari (Milan: Mondadori,
1968), 84–8 (84–5).
135 Pavese “Intervista alla radio,” 264.
136 Domenico Purificato, “Realismo e tradizione,” L’Unità, 19 July 1952, 3;
Renato Guttuso, “Sulla via del realismo,” originally published in Alfabeto
3–4 (15–29 Feb. 1952), reprinted in Scritti, ed. Marco Carapezza (Milan:
Classici Bompiani, 2013), 1103–15.
137 The notion of “fossilizzazione” was developed in Massimo Mida,
“A colloquio con il popolare regista di ‘Fabiola,’” L’Unità, 2 March 1950, 3.
The quotations are taken, in order, from Turi Vasile, “Non esiste una scuo
la neorealista italiana, esiste il cinema italiano,” Rivista del Cinematografo 11
(1949): 7–8; g.m., “Il pubblico è stanco di neorealismo e formule simili,”
La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno, 16 Nov. 1948, 3.
138 Cesare Zavattini, “Il cinema e l’uomo moderno,” speech delivered at
the Convegno Internazionale di Cinematografia di Perugia (24–27 Sept.
1949), then published in Umberto Barbaro, Il cinema e l’uomo moderno
(Milan: Le Edizioni Sociali, 1950), reprinted in Cinema: Diario cinematogra
fico e Neorealismo ecc., ed. Valentina Fortichiari and Mino Argentieri (Milan:
Bompiani, 2002), 678–83 (680).
139 Visconti, “Sul modo di mettere in scena una commedia di Shakespeare,” 134.
140 Elia Santoro, “Il Festival veneziano del cinema,” La Provincia del Po, 12 Aug.
1948; M. Cattraneo, “Al lido di Venezia dive problematiche e mocassini,”
Provincia del Po, 26 Aug. 1948, both quoted in Mauro Giori and Tomaso
Subini, “Questioni aperte su La terra trema: Ipotesi preliminari intorno ad
alcuni nuovi documenti,” Cabiria 176 (2014): 4–36 (17, 34n45).
141 Luigi Chiarini, “Cattivi pensieri sul realismo,” Cinema 1 (1948): 11.
142 Visconti, “Tradizione e invenzione,” 19.
143 Visconti, “Oltre il fatto dei Malavoglia,” 48–9.
144 On Verga’s concept of “Il caso [fate],” see Alberto Asor Rosa, “I Malavoglia
di Giovanni Verga,” Letteratura italiana: Le opere, vol. 3, Dall’Ottocento al
Novecento (Turin: Einaudi, 1995), 733–877 (756–9). On Visconti’s political
rereading of I Malavoglia, see P. Adams Sitney, Vital Crises in Italian Cinema:
Iconography, Stylistics, Politics (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995),
66–7; Nino Genovese and Sebastiano Gesù, “Verga e il cinema: ‘Castigo
di Dio’ o ‘San Cinematografo’?” in Verga e il cinema, ed. Nino Genovese
and Sebastiano Gesù (Catania: Giuseppe Maimone Editore, 1996), 7–25
(21); Cristina Bragaglia, Il piacere del racconto: Narrativa italiana e cinema
1895–1990 (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1993), 130–2.
145 On the resulting “infinite regress of intertextual borrowings” underlying the
reading of Verga and Homer that inspired the film, see Millicent Marcus,
“Visconti’s La terra trema: The Typology of Adaptation,” in Filmmaking by
the Book: Italian Cinema and Literary Adaptation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1993), 25–44 (26). See, too, Rosario Castelli, “Storia e glo-
ria di un capolavoro annunciato. La terra trema: Tra ‘epos’ romanzesco e
reale ‘maraviglioso,’” in La terra trema: Un film di Luchino Visconti dal romanzo
I Malavoglia di Giovanni Verga, ed. Sebastiano Gesù (Lipari: Centro Studi e
Ricerche di Storia e Problemi Eoliani, 2006), 21–45.
146 Visconti, La terra trema, 102, 53.
147 Visconti, La terra trema, 121, 187.
148 On Visconti and literary modernism, see Francesco Rosi, introduction to
La terra trema: Trascrizione di Enzo Ungari (Bologna: Cappelli Editore, 1977),
9–17 (16); Lussana, “Neorealismo critico,” 1085, 1094; Servadio, Luchino
Visconti, 30. Although a complete Italian translation of Ulysses was not
available until 1960, excerpts circulated in Italy as early as 1926. Moreover,
versions in English and French would have been available to Visconti in
France, where the novel was first published in 1922, and where Visconti
lived during the period he worked with Renoir. See Serenella Zanotti, Joyce
in Italy: L’Italiano in Joyce (Rome: Aracne Editrice, 2004), 33, 38, 59, 78, 93.
149 Mario Serandrei, “Dall’Ulysse di Joyce (1930),” originally published in
Cinematografo, nos. 5–6 (May–June 1930), reprinted in Poemi e scenari cine
matografici d’avanguardia, ed. Mario Verdone (Rome: Officina Edizioni,
1975), 299–302 (302).
150 Hugh Kenner, Ulysses (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1980), 24.
151 On the mythological resonances of Visconti’s adaptation, see Sandro
Bernardi, “La terra trema: Il mito, il Teatro, la Storia,” in Il cinema di Luchino
Visconti, ed. Veronica Pravadelli (Venice: Marsilio Editori, 2000), 65–88; as
well as Sam Rohdie, “Luchino Visconti’s La terra trema,” Journal of Modern
Italian Studies 13, no. 4 (2008): 520–31 (529–30); Suzanne Liandrat-Guigues,
“De l’hubris à la métis ou de la nécessité du courbe (La Terre tremble, Luchino
Visconti, 1948),” Gaia: Revue interdisciplinaire sur la Grèce Archaïque 7 (2003):
585–92; Agata Sciacca, “I Malavoglia nell’occhio di Visconti,” Prospettive sui
Malavoglia: Atti dell’incontro di studio della Società per lo studio della Modernità
letteraria, Catania, 17–18 febbrario 2006, ed. Giuseppe Savoca and Antonio Di
Silvestro (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2007), 137–59 (158–9).
152 We can ascertain the date of the confrontation because the eviction notice
the Valastros received after ’Ntoni’s failed bid for independence is dated
25 October 1947. On Mussolini’s saying, see the chapter “‘Andare verso il
popolo’: L’Ufficio stampa e le origini della propaganda di massa
(1926–1933),” in Philip V. Cannistraro, La fabbrica del consenso: Fascismo e
mass media (Rome and Bari: Laterza, 1975), 67–99. On the Fascist implica-
tions of the scene in La terra trema, see Sitney, Vital Crises in Italian Cinema,
77–78; Vincent F. Rocchio, Cinema of Anxiety: A Psychoanalysis of Italian
Neorealism (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999), 102–3.
153 Lino Micciché, “Visconti e il mito del personaggio positivo,” in L’opera di

Luchino Visconti, 123–37 (128).
154 Peter Brunette, Roberto Rossellini (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1987), 60.
155 Antonello Trombadori, “Prima mostra di artisti-artigiani,” originally pub-
lished in L’Unità, 6 April 1946, reprinted in La via italiana al realismo,
118–19. On Trombadori’s contributions to La terra trema, see Ajello,
Intellettuali e PCI, 210; Stefania Parigi, Cinema-Italy, trans. Sam Rohdie, ed.
Sam Rohdie and Des O’Rawe (Manchester: Manchester University Press,
2009), 60. On his contributions to the visual arts after the war, see Luciano
Caramel, Arte in Italia 1945–1960, new edition (Milan: Vita e Pensiero,
2013), 48; Adrian R. Duran, Painting, Politics, and the New Front of Cold War
Italy (Farnham, Surrey, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014), 30–1.
156 Pietrangeli, “ ‘I Malavoglia’ di Verga sullo schermo,” 110–12.
157 On Alicata’s adaptation, which he carried out while imprisoned in Regina
Coeli, where he had been sent for his anti-Fascist activities, see Mario Alicata,
“Appunti per una sceneggiatura dei ‘Malavoglia’ [1943],” in Verga: Guida
storico-critica, ed. Enrico Ghidetti (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1979), 240–2.
158 Silvano Castellani, “I nostri registi: Attività di Luchino Visconti,” Star 1,
no. 10 (14 Oct. 1944): 11. On Visconti’s “homage” to Renoir in La terra
trema, see Ivo Blom, Reframing Luchino Visconti: Film and Art (Leiden:
Sidestone Press, 2018), 224.
2. “Renewal through Conservation”: Neorealism after Fascism
1 On the opposition in the film as symbolic of the anti-Fascist Resistance,

see Guglielmo Moneti, Studi su Caccia Tragica (Giuseppe De Santis, 1947),
(Siena: Nuova Immagine Editrice, 2004), 44; Alberto Farassino, Giuseppe De
Santis (Milan: Moizzi editore, 1978), 22; Andrea Martini, “Precursore del
cinema della modernità,” in Giuseppe De Santis: La trasfigurazione della realtà,
ed. Marco Grossi (Rome: Centro sperimentale di cinematografia, 2007),
18–25 (22).
2 As early as 1972, Isnenghi called for scholars to “portare l’accento sui nessi
e le giunture [put the accent on the links and joints]” in their analyses
of mid-century Italian culture. Nearly twenty years later, Ben-Ghiat reit-
erated this exhortation, suggesting that “studies which stress continuities
rather than disjunctures may prove more fruitful for understanding twen-
tieth-century Italian culture.” Nearly thirty years after the publication of
Ben-Ghiat’s essay, I contend that this approach has by now largely borne its
fruits and that it is thus time to look anew at possible post-war disjunctures.
Mario Isnenghi, “Trenta-Quaranta: l’ipotesi della continuità,” Quaderni
storici 12, no. 34 (1977): 103–7 (104); Ruth Ben-Ghiat, “Neorealism in
Italy, 1930–50: From Fascism to Resistance,” Romance Languages Annual 3

(1991): 155–9 (159).
3 Callisto Cosulich, “I conti con la realtà,” Storia del cinema italiano, vol. 7,
1945/1948, ed. Callisto Cosulich (Venice: Marsilio Editori, 2003), 3–34
(19). See, too, Miccichè’s extended critique of what he calls the “visione
mitica della fase neorealistica come rivoluzione ‘ex abrupto’ [mythic
vision of the neorealist phase as an ‘ex abrupto’ revolution].” Lino
Miccichè, “Il cinema italiano sotto il fascismo: Elementi per un ripensam-
ento possibile,” Risate di regime: La commedia italiana 1930–1944, ed. Mino
Argentieri (Venice: Marislio Editori, 1991), 37–63 (38).
4 Gian Luigi Rondi, “Cinema italiano oggi,” in Cinema italiano oggi, ed.
Alessandro Blasetti and Gian Luigi Rondi (Rome: Carlo Bestetti – Edizioni
d’Arte, 1951), 49–145 (52).
5 Gian Luigi Rondi, “Cinema italiano oggi,” 145.
6 Edgar Morin, L’An zéro de l’Allemagne (Paris: Éditions de la Cité univer-
selle, 1946). The most sustained reflection on the connections between
Morin and Rossellini is to be found in Inga M. Pierson, Towards a Poetics of
Neorealism: Tragedy in the Italian Cinema, 1942–1948 (PhD diss., New York
University, 2009), 198–217.
7 See, for instance, Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century
(London and New York: Penguin Books, 1999), 216; Tony Judt, preface to
The Politics of Retribution in Europe: World War II and Its Aftermath, ed. István
Deák, Jan T. Gross, and Tony Judt (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2013), vii–xii (vii); Keith Lowe, Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath
of World War II (London and New York: Penguin Books, 2013), xiv–xv;
Ian Buruma, Year Zero: A History of 1945 (London: Atlantic Books, 2013),
242–243, 260.
8 Claudio Pavone, “La continuità dello Stato: Istituzioni e uomini,” in Alle
origini della Repubblica: Scritti su fascismo, antifascismo e continuità dello Stato
(Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1995), 70–159. See, too, Filippo Focardi, La
guerra della memoria: La Resistenza nel dibattito politico italiano dal 1945 a oggi
(Bari: Editori Laterza, 2005), 37–53; Philip Cooke, The Legacy of the Italian
Resistance (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 111–13.
9 In order, these quotations are taken from Landy, Italian Film, 83; and
Bondanella and Pacchioni, A History of Italian Cinema, 40. For the effect
of the political debates of the 1960s and 1970s on Italian film studies, see
Giulia Fanara, Pensare il neorealismo: Percorsi attraverso il neorealismo cine-
matografico italiano (Rome: Lithos, 2000), 208.
10 Giorgio Bàrberi Squarotti, La cultura e la poesia italiana del dopoguerra
(Bologna: Capelli, 1968), 72. For early instances of the efforts to emphasize
the importance for post-war neorealism of Italian culture under Fascism,
see Ferrara, Il nuovo cinema italiano, 91–2; Guido Oldrini, “Postille alla
critica del neorealismo,” Ferrania 3 (March 1962): 17–19 (17); Claudio

Quarantotto, Il cinema, la carne e il diavolo (Milan: Edizioni del Borghese,
1963), 170–6; Riccardo Scrivano, “Le vie della narrativa,” in Riviste, scrittori
e critici del Novecento (Florence: Sansoni, 1965), 203–15; Manacorda, Storia
della letteratura italiana contemporanea, 3–16; Ferretti, La letteratura del rifiuto
[1968], 145; Ruggero Jacobbi, “Storia di un giornale letterario,” in Campo di
Marte trent’anni dopo 1938–1968, ed. Ruggero Jacobbi (Florence: Vallecchi
Editore, 1969), 7–83 (11); Camillo Bassotto. ed., Atti del convegno di studi
sulla resistenza nel cinema italiano del dopoguerra 24/27 Aprile 1970, Palazzo del
Cinema, Lido (Venice: La Biennale di Venezia, 1970), 93; Romano Luperini,
Gli intellettuali di sinistra e l’ideologia della ricostruzione nel dopoguerra (Rome:
Edizioni di Ideologie, 1971), 9; Roy Armes, Patterns of Realism (New York:
A.S. Barnes and Company, 1971), 41; Mario Santoro, Momenti della narrativa
italiana: Dal romanzo storico al romanzo neorealista (Naples: Liguori Editore,
1971), 283–4; Taracchini, “Il Neorealismo come letteratura di Stato,” 337.
11 On these two significant festivals and their impact on Italian film histo-
riography, see Adriano Aprà and Patrizia Pistagnesi, “Il cinema italiano,
questo sconosciuto,” in I favolosi anni trenta: Cinema italiano 1929-1944, ed.
Adriano Aprà and Patrizia Pistagnesi (Rome: Electa, 1979), 24–33.
12 Gruppo Cinegramma (Francesco Casetti, Alberto Farassino, Aldo Grasso,
and Tatti Sanguinetti), “Neorealismo e cinema italiano degli anni ’30,” in
Il neorealismo cinematografico italiano, ed. Lino Miccichè (Venice: Marsilio
Editori, 1999), 331–85 (376–7).
13 Gian Piero Brunetta, “Padri ‘buoni’ e verità scomode,” originally
published in La Repubblica, 27 Oct. 1976, reprinted in Cinema italiano sotto il
fascismo, ed. Riccardo Redi (Venice: Marsilio Editori, 1979), 261–3 (262–3).
14 Tullio Kezich, “Hanno fatto pace col nonno fascista,” originally published
in La Repubblica, 12 Oct. 1976, reprinted in Cinema italiano sotto il fascismo,
251–2. On the shifting approaches to Italian cinema from the Fascist
ventennio since the 1970s, see Vito Zagarrio, “Per una revisione critica del
cinema ‘fascista’: Il dibattito dagli anni settanta al Duemila,” in Cinema e
fascismo: Film, modelli, immaginari (Venice: Marsilio Editori, 2004), 13–39.
15 Bruno Bongiovanni, “Gli intellettuali la cultura e i miti del dopoguerra,”
in Storia d’Italia, vol. 5, La Repubblica 1943–1963, ed. Giovanni Sabbatucci
and Vittorio Vidotto (Bari: Editori Laterza, 1979), 441–523 (454).
16 As De Caro puts it, “[n]on c’è effettivamente dubbio sulla continuità tra
le due fasi, [...] così nel cinema come, con conseguenze anche meno
commendevoli, in molti altri aspetti della vita nazionale [there is indeed
no doubt regarding the continuity between the two phases, (...) in the
cinema as (...) in many other aspects of national life].” De Caro, Rifondare
gli italiani, 9. For decades, in fact, virtually every study of neorealism has
insisted on continuity between pre- and post-war culture. See, for instance,
Jean A. Gili, “Problemi e tendenze del cinema italiano: Lo sviluppo del

dissenso dal ’40 al ’45,” in Gli intellettuali in trincea, ed. Saveria Chemotti
(Padua: CLEUP, 1977), 121–32; Nino Tripodi, “Cinema in rosso e nero,” in
Intellettuali sotto due bandiere (Rome: Ciarrapico Editore, 1978), 427–70; Ted
Perry, “The Road to Neorealism,” Film Comment 14, no. 6 (Nov.–Dec. 1978):
7–13; Pellizzari, Cineromanzo, 8; Calogero, La narrativa del neorealismo, 16–20;
Siti, Il neorealismo nella poesia italiana, 197n4; Romano Luperini, Il Novecento:
Apparati ideologici, ceto intellettuale, sistema formali nella letteratura italiana con-
temporanea (Turin: Loescher editore, 1981), xviii–xix; Giuseppe Langella,
Il secolo delle riviste: Lo statuto letterario dal ‘Baretti’ a ‘Primato’ (Milan: Vita
e Pensiero, 1982), 328–83; Piero Luxardo Franchi, “L’altra faccia degli
anni Trenta,” Indagini Otto-Novecentesche 182 (1983): 263–88; Angela Dalle
Vacche, The Body in the Mirror: Shapes of History in Italian Cinema (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1992), 257; Sitney, Vital Crises in Italian Cinema,
4; Baldan, Per una lettura del Neorealismo, 6; Fanara, Pensare il neorealismo, 221;
Brunetta, Storia del cinema italiano, 349; Maurizio Fantoni Minnella, Non
riconciliati: Politica e società nel cinema italiano dal neorealismo a oggi (Turin:
UTET, 2004), 11–12; Steven Ricci, Cinema and Fascism: Italian Film and
Society, 1922–1943 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 22–3;
Ennio Di Nolfo, “Le origini del ‘neorealismo’ cinematografico italiano nel
ventennio fascista,” Nuova antologia 2250 (April–June 2009): 126–45 (144);
Noto and Pitassio, Il cinema neorealista, 51; Porcaro, Aspetti critici e letterari
della narrativa del neorealismo italiano, 3; Haaland, Italian Neorealist Cinema,
3; Parigi, Neorealismo: Il nuovo cinema del dopoguerra, 87–88; Simonetta Milli
Konewko, Neorealism and the “New” Italy: Compassion in the Development of
Italian Identity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 11.
17 Even as he argues, unconvincingly, that with the neorealist auteurs after the
war “si riparte [...] da zero [things began again (...) from zero],” Brunetta
grants that “non si butta via certo il patrimonio professionale accumulato
dagli operatori nei decenni precedenti [the professional inheritance that
film crews had accumulated in the previous decades was certainly not
thrown away],” an admission that effectively negates the claim it is intended
to modify. Gian Piero Brunetta, ‘E um dia repente aqui el cinema italiano
explodindo com Roma cidade aperta,’” in Invenzioni dal vero: Discorsi sul neo-
realismo, ed. Michele Guerra (Parma: Diabasis, 2015), 23–41 (28).
18 Orio Caldiron, introduction to Le fortune del melodrama, ed. Orio Caldiron
(Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 2004), 9–25 (11–12); Ernesto G. Laura, “I per-
corsi intrecciati della commedia anni ’30,” in Risate di regime, 109–37
(135–6); Aprà, “Capolavori di massa,” 11; Giorgio Tinazzi, “Sulla ‘popola-
rità’ nel cinema italiano del dopoguerra,” in Dietro lo schermo: Ragionamenti
sui modi di produzione cinematografici in Italia, ed. Vito Zagarrio (Venice:
19 Stephen Gundle, Mussolini’s Dream Factory: Film Stardom in Fascist Italy

(New York: Berghahn, 2013), 12; Ernesto G. Laura, “I reduci del c inema
di Salò,” in Storia del cinema italiano, vol. 7, 1945/1948, ed. Callisto Cosulich
(Venice: Marsilio Editori, 2003), 310–29; Salvatore Ambrosino, “Il cinema
ricomincia: Attori e registi tra continuità e frattura,” in Neorealismo: Cinema
italiano, 1945–1949, ed. Alberto Farassino. Turin: EDT, 1989), 63.
20 On this point, see Parigi, “Le carte d’identità del neorealismo,” 90; Di
Nolfo, “Intimations of Neorealism in the Fascist Ventennio,” 84; Gian
Piero Brunetta, Cent’anni di cinema italiano, vol. 2, Dal 1945 ai giorni nostri
(Bari: Editori Laterza, 1998), 39; Francesco Pitassio and Simone Venturini,
“Building the Institution: Luigi Chiarini and Italian Film Culture in the
1930s,” in The Emergence of Film Culture: Knowledge Production, Institution
Building and the Fate of the Avant-Garde in Europe, 1919–1945, ed. Malte
Hagene (New York: Berghahn, 2014), 249–67 (263); Giuliana Muscio, “Le
ceneri di Balzac: Sceneggiatura e sceneggiatori nel neorealismo,” in Sulla
carta: Storia e storie degli sceneggiatura in Italia, ed Mariapia Comand (Turin:
Lindau, 2006), 109–41 (121); Antonella C. Sisto, Film Sound in Italy:
Listening to the Screen (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 107–9.
21 On stylistic continuities in cinema, see especially Zagarrio, “Before the
(Neorealist) Revolution,” 19–36.
23 Ennio Flaiano, “Città aperta,” originally published in Domenica, 30 Sept.
1945, reprinted in Lettere d’amore al cinema, ed. Cristina Bragaglia (Milan:
Rizzoli Editore, 1978), 81–2; Luigi Comencini, “Roma città aperta,” Avanti!
24 Oct. 1945, 2.
24 See Luigi Freddi, Il cinema, 2 vols. (Rome: L’Arnia, 1949), I: 209. On
this tradition in cinema under Fascism, see Mino Argentieri, L’occhio del
regime (Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 2003), 108–9; Caminati, “The Role of
Documentary Film in the Formation of the Neorealist Cinema,” in Global
Neorealism: The Transnational History of a Film Style, ed. Saverio Giovacchini
and Robert Sklar (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2012), 52–70
(esp. 58–62); Zagarrio, Cinema e fascismo, 195–7.
25 Mario Gromo, “Sullo schermo: La nave bianca di F. De Robertis e Ro.
Rossellini,” La Stampa, 1 Nov. 1941, reproduced in Gianni Rondolino,
“La critica italiana e la ‘trilogia della guerra fascista,’” in L’antirossellinismo
(Turin: Edizioni Kaplan, 2010), 29–46 (30).
26 “Stile e maniera,” Bianco e nero 10, no. 12 (Dec. 1949): 3–7. On the use of
non-professional actors in neorealist films, see Stephen Gundle, Fame Amid
the Ruins: Italian Stardom in the Age of Neorealism (New York and Oxford:
Berghan Books, 2020), 303–32.
27 Corrado D’Errico, “Camicia nera, il grande film della nuova Italia,” origi-
nally published in Il dramma 160 (15 April 1933), reprinted in Critica ita
liana primo tempo, 159–61 (160).
28 In order, these quotations are taken from Haaland, Italian Neorealist

Cinema, 3; Rocchio, Cinema of Anxiety, 101; Sam Rohdie, “A Note on the
Italian Cinema During Fascism,” Screen 22, no. 4 (1981): 87–90 (90).
29 Siobhan S. Craig, Cinema after Fascism: The Shattered Screen (New York and
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 21. In the last decade, a similar
case has been made, for instance, by Silvio Celli, “Piccoli cineasti crescono:
A passo ridotto con i Cineguf,” in Schermi di regime. Cinema italiano degli
anni trenta: La produzione e i generi, ed. Alessandro Faccioli (Venice: Marsilio
Editori, 2010), 190–200 (199); Maurizio Zinni, Fascisti di celluloide: La memo-
ria del ventennio nel cinema italiano (1945–2000) (Venice: Marsilio Editori,
2010), 25–6; Giacomo Lichtner, Fascism in Italian Cinema since 1945: The
Politics and Aesthetics of Memory (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2013), 11; Chiara Ferrari, The Rhetoric of Violence and Sacrifice
in Fascist Italy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 127; De Caro,
Rifondare gli italiani, 71.
30 See, for instance, Lino Miccichè, “Il cadavere nell’armadio,” in Cinema
italiano sotto il fascismo, ed. Riccardo Redi (Venice: Marsilio Editori, 1979),
9–18.
31 See Liborio Termine, “Il dibattito sugli antefatti,” in Storia del cinema itali
ano, vol. 7, 1945/1948, ed. Callisto Cosulich (Venice: Marsilio Editori,
2003), 73–81; Parigi, Neorealismo: Il nuovo cinema del dopoguerra, 40–1.
32 “La lotta intorno al cinema,” Quarta parete 2, no. 14 (24 Jan. 1946): 1–2 (2).
33 “Nomi, possibilità del cinema italiano,” Sud 1, no. 7 (20 June 1946): 10, 12.
34 C., “[Note].” Quarta parete 1, no. 2 (11 Oct. 1945): 2.
35 Fernaldo Di Giammatteo, review of Cielo sulla palude by Augusto Genina,
Bianco e nero 10, no. 12 (Dec. 1949): 50–3
36 Daniela Baratieri, “La riedizione di due film fascisti,” in Storia del cinema
italiano, vol. 9, 1954/1959, ed. Sandro Bernardi (Venice: Marsilio Editori,
2004), 178–9.
37 Pietrangeli, Panoramica sul cinema italiano, 12, 14, 18, 33. See, too, the dis-
cussion of the contributions of filmmakers such as Brignone, Camerini,
Castellani, Franciolini, Lattuada, Mastrocinque, Mattòli, Poggioli,
and Soldati, in Pietrangeli, “Quattordici anni di cinema,” 19–26; and
Pietrangeli, “Colpi di scena all’A.C.C.I: Cronaca della riunione,” originally
published in Star, 13 Jan. 1945, reprinted in Neorealismo e dintorni, 41–6.
See, as well, the emphasis on Alessandrini’s influence on neorealist film-
makers in Silvio Guarnieri, “Cinema e letteratura [1950],” in Cinquant’anni
di narrativa in Italia (Florence: Parenti editore, 1955), 137–62 (148–9).
38 Venturini, “Origini del neorealismo,” 42.
39 Venturini, “Origini del neorealismo,” 41.
40 Venturini, “Origini del neorealismo,” 42–3.
41 Vito Attolini, “Prima, durante, dopo il fascismo,” in Il cinema di Francesca De
Robertis, ed. Massimo Causo (Bari and Milan: Edizioni dal Sud, 2018), 39–49.
42 Mario Verdone, “Colloquio sul neorealismo,” originally published in

Bianco e nero 2 (Feb. 1952), reprinted in Il mio metodo: Scritti e interviste, ed.
Adriano Aprà (Venice: Marsilio Editori, 1987), 84–94 (85).
43 Roberto Rossellini, “Entretien avec Roberto Rossellini,” trans. Johanna
Capra, originally published in Cahiers du Cinéma 37 (July 1954), reprinted
in Il mio metodo, 113–14.
44 Blasetti, “Cinema italiano ieri,” in Cinema italiano oggi, 17–48 (34).
45 Blasetti, “Cinema italiano ieri,” 48.
46 In order, these quotations are taken from Craig, Cinema after Fascism, 1;
and Brunette, Roberto Rossellini, 8.
47 Paolo Mario Sipala, “La poetica del neorealismo,” in Il neorealismo nella
letteratura e nel cinema italiano, 51–68 (54). A less pithy articulation of the
same argument can be found in Mino Argentieri, Il cinema in guerra: Arte,
comunicazione e propaganda in Italia 1940–1944 (Rome: Editori Riuniti,
1998), 335.
48 In order, these references to Italy’s post-war social and political renewal are
taken from Palmiro Togliatti, Rinnovare l’Italia: Documenti del V Congresso del
P.C.I. (Rome: Società editrice “L’Unità,” 1946), 14; Giuseppe Petronio, “La
crisi dell’idealismo e la critica letteraria,” Socialismo 3, nos. 3–5 (1 March
1947): 33–36 (36); “Avvertenza,” Il ’45 1, no. 1 (Feb. 1946): 3–4; Enrico
Emanuelli, “Giorni, sentimenti,” Costume 2 (25 June 1945): 12–13.
49 In order, these references to Italy’s post-war cultural renewal are taken
from Alberto Moravia, “Nuovo realismo nella letteratura,” Vie Nuove 2, no.
44 (2 Nov. 1947): 8; Tito Guerrini, “Scrittori dell’età borghese,” Vie Nuove
2, no. 2 (12 Jan. 1947): 8; Sala, “Realismo e religiosità,” 537; Pietrangeli,
“‘I Malavoglia’ di Verga sullo schermo,” 111.
50 See, for instance, Mirella Serri, I redenti: Gli intellettuali che vissero due volte,
1938–1948 (Milan: Corbaccio, 2005); and Giuseppe Iannaccone, Il fascismo
‘sintetico’: Letteratura e ideologia negli anni Trenta (Milan: Greco & Greco, 1999).
51 Historians have increasingly emphasized this point in recent years. See
Rosario Forlenza and Bjørrn Thomassen, Italian Modernities: Competing
Narratives of Nationhood (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 149–50;
Luca La Rovere, L’eredità del fascismo: Gli intellettuali, i giovani e la transizione
al postfascismo 1943–1948 (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2008), 11; Robert
Ventresca, “Debating the Meaning of Fascism in Contemporary Italy,”
Modern Italy 11, no. 2 (2006): 189–209; and Hans Woller, I conti con il
fascismo: L’epurazione in Italia 1943–1948 (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1997), 14.
In scholarship on neorealism, however, such views have received less
attention. One notable exception is the work of Minghelli, whose central
question “is not one of continuity, but rather of trauma,” and who thus
sees neorealism as an important locus for confronting the Fascist past.
Minghelli, Landscape and Memory, 3.
52 Filippo Burzio, “Il crollo dell’Europa,” originally published in La nuova

stampa, 14 Aug. 1946, reprinted in Repubblica anno primo: Scritti politici di
attualità (Turin: Casa Editrice Egea, 1948), 22–5; Il lunarista, “Gennaio-
Febbraio,” Il Campo 1, nos. 1–2 (Jan.–Feb., 1946): 1–4.
53 In order, these references are taken from Pietro Barbieri, “Presentazione,”
Idea: Mensile di cultura politica e sociale 1, no. 1 (Jan. 1945): 3–4; Pantaleo
Caraballese et al., La crisi dei valori (Rome: Partenia, 1945); Giorgio
Sacerdote, “La crisi della società contemporanea,” Il Commento 2, no. 4
(16 Feb. 1945): 104; Vittore Branca, “Umanità del realismo romantico,” Il
Ponte 2, no. 4 (1946): 317–24 (324).
54 Luciano Anceschi, “Crisi e poesia,” La Rassegna d’Italia 1, no. 9 (Sept.
1946): 110–16 (116).
55 Carlo Levi “Crisi di civiltà,” originally published in La Nazione del popolo,
12–13 Sept. 1944, reprinted in Il dovere dei tempi: Prose politiche e civili, ed.
Luisa Montevecchi (Rome: Donzelli, 2004), 60–2 (60).
56 Gabriele Pepe, La crisi dell’uomo (Rome: Capriotti Editore, 1945), 19.
57 Renzo Modesti, “Della poesia contemporanea,” La Via: Rivista mensile di
poesia e di cultura 1, no. 1 (Jan. 1946): 12–14.
58 Emanuelli, “Giorni, sentimenti,” 12–13.
59 Giorgio Granata, “Speranze di un nuovo mondo,” Risorgimento liberale,
18 Sept. 1945, 1.
60 Benedetto Croce, “L’Italia nella vita internazionale,” originally presented
as a speech at Rome’s Teatro Eliseo, 21 Sept. 1944, published in Scritti e di
scorsi politici (1943–1947), 2 vols. (Bari: Laterza, 1963), II: 87–104 (102).
61 Benedetto Croce, “La libertà italiana nella libertà del mondo,” originally
presented as a speech at the Congresso dei partiti uniti nei Comitati di
liberazione, Bari, 28 Jan.1944, published in Scritti e discorsi politici, I: 49–58
(56–7). On Croce’s metaphor, see Charles L. Leavitt IV, “‘An Entirely New
Land’? Italy’s Post-war Culture and Its Fascist Past,” Journal of Modern Italian
Studies 21, no. 1 (Jan. 2016): 4–18.
62 Benedetto Croce, “The Fascist Germ Still Lives,” New York Times Magazine,
28 Nov. 1943, 9, 44–5.
63 Detailed accounts of this political rejection of Croce can be found in
Daniela La Penna, “The Rise and Fall of Benedetto Croce: Intellectual
Positionings in the Italian Cultural Field, 1944–1947,” Modern Italy 21,
no. 2 (May 2016): 139–55; David Ward, Antifascisms: Cultural Politics in
Italy, 1943–46: Benedetto Croce and the Liberals, Carlo Levi and the “Actionists”
(Madison, NJ, and Vancouver: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996;
David D. Roberts, Benedetto Croce and the Uses of Historicism (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1987), esp. 224–38; Charles L. Leavitt
IV, “Probing the Limits of Crocean Historicism,” The Italianist 37, no. 3
(2017): 387–406.
64 Eugenio Artom, “Il compito del liberalismo,” originally published

in La Nazione del popolo, 21 Jan. 1945, reprinted in Un quotidiano della
Resistenza: ‘La Nazione del popolo’: Organo del Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale
(11 agosto 1944–3 luglio 1946), ed. Pier Luigi Ballini, 2 vols. (Florence:
Edizioni Polistampa, 2008), I: 247–8 (247).
65 Giaime Pintor, “Il colpo di stato del 25 luglio,” originally published in
Quaderni italiani 4 (1944), reprinted in Il sangue d’Europa (1939–1945), ed.
Valentino Gerratana (Turin: Einaudi, 1965), 165–81 (181).
66 Vittore Branca, “La nuova ‘Nazione,’” originally published in La Nazione
del popolo, 12 Aug. 1944, reprinted in Un quotidiano della Resistenza, I: 152–3
(152).
67 Giuseppe Del Bo, “Orientarsi prima di ricostruire,” La Cittadella 2,
nos. 7–10 (15–30 May 1947): 9.
68 Pepe, La crisi dell’uomo, 25–6.
69 Fabbri, for instance, argues that “the reference to neorealism cannot but
authenticate the narrative trope of post-1943 Italy as the nation’s year
zero, a point of departure for all sorts of self-specious versions of national
history.” Lorenzo Fabbri, “Neorealism as Ideology: Bazin, Deleuze, and the
Avoidance of Fascism,” The Italianist 35, no. 2 (June 2015): 182–201 (194).
While I concur with this challenge to the year-zero narrative, I question
the claim that such a narrative is inherent in neorealist discourse.
70 Giovanni Ronchini, Le questioni del canone e del realismo. Due casi: Le terre del
Sacramento e Metello (Reggio Emilia: Edizioni Diabasis, 2007), 124–5. See,
too, Anna Maria Torriglia, Broken Time, Fragmented Space: A Cultural Map
for Postwar Italy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), 3, 6; Mario
Cannella, “Ideology and Aesthetic Hypotheses in the Criticism of Neo-
Realism,” Screen 14, no. 4 (Winter 1973–4): 5–60 (16, 27); Giuseppe Ghigi,
La memoria inquieta: Cinema e resistenza (Venice: Cafoscarina, 2009), 15.
71 See G. Silvano Spinetti, Vent’anni dopo: Ricominciare da zero (Rome: Edizioni
di “Solidarismo,” 1964), 224–5, 232–4.
72 See, for instance, Alberto Moravia, “Colpe letterarie,” Domenica 1, no. 1
(6 Aug. 1944): 1, 6; Libero Bigiaretti, “Cronache delle lettere: I discorsi
del giorno,” Domenica 1, no. 2 (13 Aug. 1944): 5; Massimo Bontempelli,
“Meriti letterari,” Domenica 1, no. 4 (27 Aug. 1944): 1, 6; Bruno Romani,
“Autonomia della letteratura,” Domenica 2, no. 5 (4 Feb. 1945): 1, 8;
Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli, “Cultura e popolo,” Rinascita 2, no. 2 (Feb.
1945): 48; Ugo Bernasconi, “Responsabilità degli artisti [Discorso tenuto al
Centro Maestri Comacini in Como l’8 maggio 1946],” La Rassegna d’Italia
1, no. 11 (Nov. 1946): 63–72.
73 See, for instance, Bontempelli, “Apologia del ventennio letterario [Aug.
1944],” Dignità dell’uomo, 33; Bontempelli, “Apologia seconda [June
1945],” in Dignità dell’uomo, 124–6; Enrico Falqui, La letteratura del ventennio
nero (Rome: Edizioni della Bussola, 1948), 320; Francesco Flora, Ritratto di
un Ventennio (Naples: Gaetano Macchiaroli Editore, 1944), 114.
74 Gaetano Trombatore, “Letteratura e popolo,” La Fiera letteraria 1, no. 24
(19 Sept. 1946): 1.
75 Trombatore, “Letteratura e popolo,” 1.
76 Trombatore, “Letteratura e popolo,” 1.
77 Giovanni Battista Angioletti, “Scrittori del ventennio e letteratura popo-
lare,” La Fiera letteraria 1, no. 26 (3 Oct. 1946): 1 (emphasis in the original).
78 Angioletti, “Scrittori del ventennio e letteratura popolare,” 1.
79 Trombatore “Letteratura e popolo,” 1. The debate continued several
weeks later, with the following entries: Gaetano Trombatore, “Per fatto
personale,” La Fiera letteraria 1, no. 28 (17 Oct. 1946): 1; Giovanni Battista
Angioletti, “Non fu Arcadia,” La Fiera letteraria 1, no. 28 (17 Oct. 1946): 1.
80 Pepe, La crisi dell’uomo, 106 (emphasis in the original).
81 Giuseppe Petronio, “Innovazione e tradizione,” Avanti! 4 Aug. 1948, 3. For
a similar position, see Virgilio Guzzzi, “Nuova guerra ed arte antica,” Ulisse
1, no. 2 (Aug. 1947): 234–40.
82 Giuseppe Petronio, “Cultura vecchia e nuova,” Avanti! 23 June 1948, 2.
83 Renato Nicolai, “L’insegnamento di De Sanctis: Letteratura ma in mezzo
alla società,” Vie Nuove 2, no. 28 (13 July 1947): 8.
84 Mario Mafai “Possibilità per un’arte nuova,” Rinascita 2, no. 3 (March
1945): 89–91 (90).
85 Antonio Pesenti, “Crisi sociale e ricostruzione,” Mercurio 2, no. 11 (July
1945): 5–9 (6).
86 Mario Bonfantini, “Situazione della cultura,” Società Nuova 2, nos. 7–9
(July–Sept. 1946): 1–2 (2). See, too, Giani Stuparich, Discorso per l’inaugu-
razione dell’attività del Circolo della cultura e delle arti: Funzione della cultura
e messaggio dell’arte, 17.IV.1946 (Padua-Trieste: Simone Volpato Studio
Bibliografico, 2010), 14.
87 Renato Guttuso, “Pitture di Mario Mafai,” originally published in Rinascita
11 (Nov. 1945), reprinted in Scritti, 212–15 (214).
88 The speech was delivered on 13 Nov. 1944 in honour of Bandinelli’s assump-
tion of the chair of art history at the University of Florence. It was first
published as Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli, “L’impegno degli intellettuali,”
in La Nazione del Popolo, 14 November 1944, reprinted in Un quotidiano della
Resistenza, II: 575–8 (578). It was subsequently published as Ranuccio Bianchi
Bandinelli, “A che serve la storia dell’arte antica?,” Società 1, nos. 1–2 (1945):
8–23. On Bianchi Bandinelli’s speech and essay, see Eugenio Garin, “La
cultura dopo la liberazione,” in Storia d’Italia. Le regioni dall’Unità a oggi: La
Toscana, ed. Giorgio Mori (Turin: Einaudi, 1986), 711–31 (714); Luperini,
Gli intellettuali di sinistra, 61–2; Eugenio Di Rienzo, Un dopoguerra storiografico:
Storici italiani tra guerra civile e Repubblica (Florence: Le Lettere, 2004), 208–10.
89 Luperini argues, in fact, that Bianchi Bandinelli’s call for “renewal

through conservation” “esprimeva una posizione coerente con l’atteggia-
mento complessivo del PCI [expressed a position consistent with the over-
all attitude of the PCI].” Luperini, Il Novecento: Apparati ideologici, II: 371.
A similar argument was advanced in one of the first substantial retrospec-
tive accounts of post-war Italian culture. See Mario Sansone, “La cultura,”
in Dieci anni dopo 1945–1955: Saggi sulla vita democratica italiana (Bari:
Editori Laterza, 1955), 515–98 (esp. 519–20).
90 Carlo Bo, “I pericoli della letteratura [1949],” in Riflessioni critiche
(Florence: Sansoni, 1953), 7–35 (11).
91 In addition to the articles quoted and cited in the discussion that follows,
see also Giansiro Ferrata, “Letteratura e società: Ascoltiamo anche il punto
di vista dell’ammalato che vogliamo curare – Ecco che cosa ci direbbe,”
L’Unità, 11 Dec. 1946, 3; Giovanni Titta Rosa, “Non viene dal cielo: Lo
scrittore è parte della sua societa,” L’Unità, 16 Dec. 1948, 3; Roberto
Battaglia, “Esigenza di chiarificazione,” Vie Nuove, 12 Dec. 1948; Alberto
Moravia, “Moravia a Sereni,” Vie Nuove, 19 Dec. 1948; Luigi Longo, “Longo
a Moravia,” Vie Nuove, 26 Dec. 1948; Giuseppe Di Vittorio, “C’è da fare
per voi nel mondo del lavoro: Giuseppe Di Vittorio risponde a Libero
Bigiaretti,” Unità, 19 Feb. 1949, 3.
92 Libero Bigiaretti, “Letteratura e società: Lettera aperta ad Emilio Sereni,”
L’Unità, 13 Nov. 1948, 3.
93 Emilio Sereni, “Letteratura e società: Risposta di Sereni a Bigiaretti,”
L’Unità, 16 Nov. 1948, 3.
94 See Francesco Jovine, “Letteratura e società: Risposta di Jovine a Sereni,”
L’Unità, 24 Nov. 1948, 3; Giannino Degani, “La forma e i contenuti:
La polemica sulla letteratura,” L’Unità, 17 Nov. 1948, 3; Antonello
Trombadori, “Coscienza e spontaneità: La polemica sulla letteratura,”
L’Unità, 30 Nov. 1948, 3; Margherita Guidacci, “Letteratura e società,”
originally published in Cronache Sociali 4–5 (1949), reprinted in Cronache
Sociali: 1947–1951, ed. Marcella Glisenti and Leopoldo Elia, 2 vols. (Rome:
Luciano Landi Editore, 1961), II: 1083–7; Franco Catalano, “Letteratura e
società,” Avanti! 3 Dec. 1948, 3.
95 Alfonso Gatto, “I debiti e i crediti: La polemica sulla letteratura,” L’Unità,
7 Dec., 1948, 3. Gatto’s emphasis on history was shared by at least one of
the “letteratura e società” debate’s commentators. See l.a., “Quattro poeti
dopo la guerra,” Socialismo 5, no. 1 (Jan. 1949): 14–17 (esp. 14).
96 Sereni, “Letteratura e società: Risposta di Sereni a Bigiaretti,” 3.
97 Italo Calvino, “Saremo come Omero!” originally published in Rinascita
(Dec. 1948), reprinted in Saggi, 1945–1985, ed. Mario Barenghi, 2 vols.
(Milan: Mondadori, 1995), I: 1483–7.
98 Calvino, “Saremo come Omero,” 1485–6.
99 The English translation, which I have quoted elsewhere, here reads “begin
again from scratch,” but I have chosen to remain more faithful to the
Italian original, which reads “ricominciare da zero.” Calvino, “Prefazione
1964 al Sentiero dei nidi di ragno,” 1185 (emphasis mine).
100 His account was not always consistent, however. Just a few years earlier,
in his 1960 “Autobiografia politica giovanile” (Political Autobiography of
Youth), Calvino explained that in the post-war period “[n]on si trattava
d’una rottura totale [...]: dovevamo trovare tra le idee dei nostri padri
quelle cui potevamo riattaccarci per ricominciare, quelle che loro non
erano stati capaci o non avevano fatto in tempo a rendere operanti [we
weren’t after a total break (...): we had to find among the ideas of our
fathers those we could hang onto in order to start again, those that they
had been unable or had not had the chance to implement, or to imple-
ment in time].” Italo Calvino, “Autobiografia politica giovanile,” in Eremita
a Parigi: Pagine autobiografiche (Milan: Mondadori, 1994), 149–79 (168–9).
In the 1964 preface to Il sentiero, he would make precisely the opposite
point. On the republished edition of Il sentiero and Calvino’s tendency to
reframe his early literary ambitions, see especially Jennifer Burns, “Telling
Tales about ‘Impegno’: Commitment and Hindsight in Vittorini and
Calvino,” Modern Language Review 95, no. 4 (2000): 992–1006.
101 Calvino, “Prefazione 1964,” 1192; Calvino, preface to The Path to the Spiders’
Nests, 16.
102 Italo Calvino, Il Sentiero dei nidi di ragno: Romanzi e racconti, I: 5–147 (71),
[First edition Turin: Einaudi, 1947]; Italo Calvino, The Path to the Spiders’
Nests, trans. Archibald Colquhoun and Martin McLaughlin (New York:
Harper Collins, 2000), 102.
103 Calvino, Il Sentiero dei nidi di ragno, 144; Calvino, The Path to the Spiders’
Nests, 181.
104 Although he finds a more unadulterated happy ending in Calvino’s novel
than do I, Weiss identifies important parallels between Pin’s new begin-
nings and those of the Italian nation. Benno Weiss, Understanding Italo
Calvino (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1993), 15. Others
who read the conclusion as marking, (perhaps too) optimistically, the birth
of a new era both for Pin and for Italy include Frank Rosengarten, “The
Italian Resistance Novel,” in From “Verismo” to Experimentalism: Essays on the
Modern Italian Novel, ed. Sergio Pacifici (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1969), 212–38 (225); Falaschi, La Resistenza armata, 119–21.
105 Among those who stress the significant incompleteness of Pin’s transfor-
mation, see Domenico Scarpa, Italo Calvino (Milan: Mondadori, 1999),
223; Martin McLaughlin, Italo Calvino (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press, 1998), 29–30; Claudia Nocentini, Italo Calvino and the Landscape of
Childhood (Leeds: Northern University Press, 2000), 27; Re, Calvino and
the Age of Neorealism, 307; Claudio Milanini, L’utopia discontinua: Saggio su

Italo Calvino (Milan: Garzanti, 1990), 19; Raffaele Cavalluzzi, “La vita degli
uomini come ‘storia di sangue e corpi nudi’: Personaggi omodiegetici
del Sentiero dei nidi di ragno di I. Calvino,” Critica letteraria 182 (2019):
59–75 (74–5).
106 Italo Calvino, “Sherwood Anderson scrittore artigiano,” originally pub-
lished in L’Unità, 4 Nov. 1947, reprinted in Saggi 1945–1985, I: 1283–5
(1284–5).
107 Landy, Italian Film, 83.
108 Giuseppe De Santis, “Un grande film collettivo,” in Mario Serandrei: Giorni
di gloria, ed. Laura Gaiardoni (Florence: Il Castoro, 1998), 23–4. On this
film, including De Santis’s contribution, see Ivelise Perniola, Oltre il neore-
alismo: Documentari d’autore e realtà italiana del dopoguerra (Rome: Bulzoni
Editore, 2004), 24–32.
109 See, too, the use of the same rhetorical formulation in, e.g., Libero
Bigiaretti, “Dove va la letteratura?” Domenica, 31 Dec. 1944, 6.
110 Alberto Lattuada, “A proposito del cinema italiano: Paghiamo i nostri debiti,”
originally published in Film d’oggi 1, no. 4 (30 June 1945), reprinted in
Il cinema ricomincia, 125.
111 Although he makes no mention of the significant connections I trace in
this section, Medici offers an otherwise convincing account of the links
between Ossessione and Caccia tragica. Medici, Neorealismo, 44.
112 It is worth recalling, as well, that Antonioni, one of Caccia tragica’s screen-
writers, had some years earlier emphasized the significance of this location
for the rebirth of Italian cinema in an influential essay and a subsequent
documentary. See Michelangelo Antonioni, “Per un film sul fiume Po,” orig-
inally published in Cinema 68 (25 April 1939), reprinted in Sul cinema, ed.
Carlo di Carlo and Giorgio Tinazzi (Venice: Marsilio Editori, 2004), 77–80.
113 Cosulich, “I conti con la realtà,” 19. Arguing the same point from the
other side, Argentieri has claimed that “[i]l neorealismo non è stato a
sufficienza scandagliato quale occasione per ripensare la collettività e la
propria storia attraverso gli occhiali di una cultura che avesse fatto saltare
i ponti con il passato. Il neorealismo non è stato a sufficienza scandagliato
come espressione dell’inizio di un rivolgimento [neorealism has not been
sufficiently explored as an opportunity to rethink our and its own history
through the lens of a culture that had destroyed its bridges with the past.
Neorealism has not been sufficiently investigated as an expression of the
beginning of a revolution].” Mino Argentieri, “Cinema e vita nazionale,”
in Rosso fuoco: Il cinema di Giuseppe De Santis, ed. Sergio Toffetti (Turin:
Lindau, 1996), 109–26 (115–16). While I concur with his emphasis on
neorealist renewal, I insist that this renewal was not at all envisioned as
destroying bridges to the past.
114 Piero Calamandrei, “Il nostro programma,” originally published in Il

Ponte 1, no. 1 (April 1945), reprinted in Scritti e discorsi politici, ed. Norberto
Bobbio, vol. 1, Storia di dodici anni (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1966),
99–103 (100).
115 For the PCI’s role in Caccia tragica, see Farassino, Giuseppe De Santis, 21. On
cinema’s significance for the 18 April 1948 Italian elections, see especially
Nicola Tranfaglia, ed., Il 1948 in Italia: La storia e i film (Florence: La Nuova
Italia, 1991).
3. “Chronicle and Tragedy”: The Neorealist Representation of History
1 Bicycle Thieves: A Film by Vittorio De Sica, trans. Simon Hartog

(Hertfordshire: Lorrimer Publishing, 1968), 35. Among those who have
emphasized the importance of Ricci’s exchange with the officer, see
especially Giaime Alonge, Vittorio De Sica: Ladri di biciclette (Turin: Lindau,
1997), 39–40; Marcus, Italian Film in the Light of Neorealism, 54–5.
2 Cesare Zavattini, “Ladri di biciclette,” originally in Bis 11 (25 May 1948),
reprinted in Cinema: Diario cinematografico e Neorealismo ecc., 77–83 (77).
3 Vittorio De Sica, “Abbiamo domandato a Vittorio De Sica perché fa un
film dal ‘Ladro di biciclette,’” originally published in La Fiera letteraria 3,
no. 5 (6 Feb. 1948), reprinted in Vittorio De Sica, ed. Orio Caldiron (Rome:
Edizioni dell’Ateneo & Bizzarri, 1975), 258–9.
4 De Sica, “Abbiamo domandato a Vittorio De Sica,” 259.
5 Cesare Zavattini, “Film-lampo: Sviluppo del neorealismo” (26 June 1952),
reprinted in Cinema: Diario cinematografico e Neorealismo ecc., 711–13 (711).
6 Carlo Salinari, La questione del realismo (Florence: Parenti Editore, 1960).
7 In order, these quotations are taken from Turconi, La poesia neorealista ita
liana, 108 (emphasis in the original); Alberto Asor Rosa, Vasco Pratolini
(Rome: Edizioni Moderne, 1958), 115–16; Manacorda, Storia della letteratura
italiana contemporanea, 32 ; Corti, Il viaggio testuale, 52; Giovanna Benvenuti
Riva, Letteratura e Resistenza (Milan: Principato editore, 1977), 28.
8 Philip Morgan, “‘I was there, too’: Memories of Victimhood in Wartime
Italy,” Modern Italy 14, no. 2 (May 2009): 217–31 (217). As Di Scala relates,
while the First World War had seen greater Italian combat deaths, the
Second World War “more than made up the difference among civilians.”
Spencer M. Di Scala, Italy from Revolution to Republic, 1700 to Present, 2nd ed.
(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998), 277.
9 Calvino, “Prefazione 1964 al Sentiero dei nidi di ragno,” 1186; Calvino, pref-
ace to The Path to the Spiders’ Nests, 8.
10 Andrea Battistini, Sondaggi sul Novecento (Cesena: Società editrice ‘Il Ponte
Vecchio,’ 2003), 202. Falcetto, Storia della narrativa neorealista, 116, 131.
Corti famously collapsed this dichotomy, emphasizing the interpenetration
or contamination of the two forms of narrative, in her influential study.

Corti, Il viaggio testuale, 34–5, 56. Although it remains a key point of refer-
ence, Corti’s thesis has been repeatedly and convincingly challenged, most
recently in Nisini, Il neorealismo italiano, 13.
11 Re, Calvino and the Age of Neorealism, 89–90; Stefano Calabrese, intro-
duction to Parole in guerra: Romanzo e resistenza, ed. Stefano Calabrese
(Modena: Mucchi editore, 1996), 3–22 (3); Falaschi, La resistenza armata,
27–8; Gaetano Gazziano, Occasioni e valori del Neorealismo (Florence: De
Bono, 1988), 53.
12 Angiolo Gracci, “Prefazione alla I edizione (1945),” in Brigata sinigaglia,
4th ed. (Naples: La città del Sole, 2006), 45.
13 Roberto Battaglia, Un uomo un partigiano (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2004
[1945]), 19–20.
14 Roberto Battaglia, Un uomo un partigiano, 7. A similar argument can be
found in Giusto Astuti, “Due anni di letteratura,” Socialismo 2, no. 3 (March
1946): 77–8.
15 See the entry from 4 Dec. 1943 in Emanuele Artom, Diari di un partigiano
ebreo, gennaio 1940–febbraio 1944, ed. Guri Schwarz (Turin: Bollati
Boringhieri, 2008), 80–1.
16 Attilio Riccio, “Arrigo Benedetti e le forme del nuovo realismo,” La città
libera 1, no. 30 (6 Sept. 1945): 12–13 (13); Giuseppe Sala, review of Paura
all’alba, by Arrigo Benedetti, Il Campo: Rassegna mensile di politica, cultura
e arte 1, nos. 1–2 (Jan.–Feb. 1946): 76–7 (76); Enrico Falqui, “Arrigo
Benedetti: ‘Paura all’alba,’” originally in Risorgimento liberale, 18 Dec.
1945, reprinted in Novecento letterario: Serie sesta, 316–20 (316); Gianfranco
Piazzesi, review of Paura all’alba, by Arrigo Benedetti, Società 1, no. 3
(1945): 292–4.
17 Eurialo De Michelis, review of Filo spinato, by Giuseppe Zàggia, Mercurio
3, no. 17 (Jan. 1946): 125–6; Rosario Assunto, review of Il pino e la rufola,
by Ezio Taddei, Socialismo 2, nos. 7–8 (1 July 1946): 223; Enrico Falqui,
“Silvio Micheli: ‘Pane duro,” originally published in Risorgimento liberale,
22 May 1946, reprinted in Novecento letterario: Serie sesta. Florence: Vallecchi
Editore, 1961. 210–13.
18 L.C., “Letture,” Avanti! 24 Nov. 1945, 2
19 Rosario Assunto, “Le poetiche dello scriver male,” Lettere d’oggi 4–5
(Jan.–Feb. 1947): 5–6 (5).
20 Enzo Forcella, review of Il mio granello di sabbia, by Luciano Bolis, La Fiera
letteraria 1, no. 8 (30 May 1946): 5.
21 Luciano Bolis, Il mio granello di sabbia (Turin: Einaudi, 1973 [1946]), 3.
22 Piero Carmagnola, “Prefazione all’edizione 1945,” in Vecchi partigiani miei,
new edition, ed. Andrea D’Arrigo (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2005), 19–20
(19); Marcello Venturi, “Io povero soldato,” L’Unità, 13 March 1949, 3.
23 Alberto Moravia, in Confessioni di scrittori: Interviste con se stessi (Turin: ERI,

1951), 77.
24 Cesare Pavese, “Hanno ragione i letterati,” originally broadcast over the
radio on 4 Feb. 1948, and first published in Il Sentiero dell’Arte 30 Oct. 1948,
reprinted in La letteratura americana, 249–52 (249).
25 Pavese, “Hanno ragione i letterati,” 251.
26 Mario Bonfantini, “Moralità moderne: Letteratura del dopoguerra,” Società
Nuova 2, no. 1 (Jan. 1946): 22–5 (25).
27 Giambattista Vicari, “Per una provvisoria rinunzia,” Lettere d’oggi 3
(Dec. 1946): 2–3 (3).
28 Alfredo Gargiulo, “La parte dello scrittore,” La Fiera letteraria 1, no. 3
(25 April 25 1946): 3.
29 Giovanni Titta Rosa, “Mescolarsi alla vita,” Mondo operaio 2, no. 12 (19 Feb.
1949): 12.
30 Mino Caudana, “Aquile di piombo,” Avanti! 21 May 1946, 1.
31 Niccolò Gallo, “La narrativa italiana del dopoguerra,” 30.
32 Giuseppe Antonelli, “Lo scrittore che non scrive i suoi libri,” Avanti!
15 Sept. 1946, 3.
33 Enrico Falqui, “Paragrafi sulla narrativa V [1946],” Novecento letterario: Serie
terza, 431–6 (434).
34 Falqui, “Paragrafi sulla narrativa V,” 435–6.
35 Giuseppe Antonelli, “Invito alla cronaca,” Avanti! 24 Nov. 1946, 3.
36 Piero Regnoli, review of Ladri di biciclette, by Vittorio De Sica, L’Osservatore
Romano, 26 Nov. 1948, 2.
37 Pietro Bianchi, review of Roma città aperta, by Roberto Rossellini, originally
published in Oggi, 6 Nov. 1945, reprinted in L’occhio di vetro: Il cinema degli
anni 1945–1950 (Milan: Edizioni il Formichiere, 1979), 15–16; Emanuele
Farneti, “Punto e da capo,” La città libera 1, no. 43 (6 Dec. 1945): 15;
Silvano Castellani, “Servizio informazioni: ‘Città aperta’ a porte chiuse,”
Star 2, no. 37 (6 Oct. 1945): 1; Alberto Moravia, review of Roma città aperta,
by Roberto Rossellini, originally published in La Nuova Europa, 30 Sept.
1945, reprinted in Cinema italiano: Recensioni e interventi 1933–1990, ed.
Alberto Pezzotta and Anna Gilardelli (Milan: Bompiani, 2010), 56–7;
Pasquale Prunas, review of Roma città aperta, by Roberto Rossellini, Sud
1, no. 1 (Nov. 1945): 7–8 (7); vice, “ ‘Roma, città aperta’ al Festival del
Cinema,” originally published in Indipendente (26 Sept. 1945), reprinted
in La storia di Roma città aperta, ed. Stefano Roncoroni (Bologna: Cineteca
Bologna, 2006), 460.
38 Alfredo Orecchio, review of Paisà, by Roberto Rossellini, originally pub-
lished in Il Messaggero, 9 March 1947, reprinted in La Resistenza nel cinema
italiano del dopoguerra. Quello che scrissero... allora. Convegno di studi: Palazzo
del Cinema 24–27 aprile 1970, ed. Nedo Ivaldi (Rome: Eliograf, 1970), 53;
Gian Luigi Rondi, “Germania anno zero,” originally published in Il Tempo,

13 April 1948, reprinted in Prima delle “prime”: Film italiani 1947–1997
(Rome: Bulzoni, 1998), 43–5 (43); Gian Luigi Fiandaca, “Germania
anno zero,” originally published in Hollywood 5, no. 175 (22 Jan. 1949),
reprinted in Gobetti et al., Neorealismo D.O.C., 73.
39 Vito Pandolfi, “Le stagioni dello spettacolo. Il Festival cinematografico
a Venezia: Le opere italiane,” La Rassegna d’Italia 3, no. 10 (Oct. 1948):
1071–6 (1073); Irene Brin, review of Caccia tragica, by Giuseppe De Santis,
originally published in Film rivista 4, no. 13 (30 July 1947), reprinted in
Cinema freddo, 22.
40 Giuseppe De Santis, “Anche il cinema ha la parola nel dibattito sui fatti
di Calabria,” originally published in L’Unità (15 Nov. 1949), reprinted in
Gobetti et al., Neorealismo D.O.C., 171.
41 “Il cinema italiano ricomincia da Venezia,” 183–4.
42 Pio Baldelli, “Cronaca, realtà e poesia,” Cinema 3, no. 15 (Feb. 1950):
70–3 (73).
43 Gianni Puccini, “Per una discussione sul film italiano,” originally published
in Bianco e nero 9, no. 2 (April 1948), reprinted in Gobetti et al., Neorealismo
D.O.C., 159–63 (159).
44 Puccini, “Per una discussione sul film italiano,” 160–1.
45 Gianfranco Piazzesi, “Necessità di una cronaca,” Società 1, no. 3 (July–Sept.
1945): 6–9 (7).
46 Piazzesi, “Necessità di una cronaca,” 8.
49 “Letteratura d’occasione,” originally published in Società 1, no. 4 (1945),
reprinted in Neorealismo: Poetiche e polemiche, 49–53. The essay was pub-
lished anonymously but Bilenchi subsequently claimed autorship. See
Alberto Cadioli, Tra prosa d’arte e romanzo del Novecento (1920–1960) (Milan:
Acipelago Edizioni, 1989), 187–8n2.
50 “Letteratura d’occasione,” 52.
53 Franco Calamandrei, “Raccontare significa chiarire a noi stessi la vita,”
Il Politecnico 13–14 (22–29 Dec. 1945): 8.
54 Franco Calamandrei, “Narrativa vince cronaca,” Il Politecnico 26 (23 March
1946): 3.
55 Franco Calamandrei “Narrativa vince cronaca,” 3.
56 Franco Fortini, “Documenti e racconti,” Il Politecnico 28 (6 April 1946): 3.
57 Franco Calamandrei, “Una generazione e un suo narratore,” Il Politecnico
30 (June 1946): 35–6 (35).
58 Franco Calamandrei, “Una generazione e un suo narratore,” 36.
59 Gianfranco Piazzesi, “Dieci giorni che sconvolsero il mondo di John Reed,”

Società 2, no. 6 (June 1946): 562–4 (563).
60 Piazzesi, “Dieci giorni che sconvolsero il mondo,” 563.
62 Among those who have similarly argued that the debate was caused by
a confusion in terms, see Asor Rosa, “Lo Stato democratico,” 577; Anna
Vecchiutti, “Concezione e ruolo della letteratura nel ‘Politecnico’ di
Vittorini,” Problemi 69 (1984): 54–72 (60–1); Falcetto, Storia della narrativa
neorealista, 139–40.
63 Benedetto Croce, Teoria e storia della storiografia, 2 vols. (Naples: Bibliopolis,
2007 [1916]), I: 39.
64 Croce, Teoria e storia della storiografia, I: 18; Benedetto Croce, “Storia e cro-
naca,” in A Croce Reader: Aesthetics, Philosophy, History, and Literary Criticism,
ed. and trans. Massimo Verdicchio (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
2017), 40–50 (45).
65 Croce, Teoria e storia della storiografia, I: 19; Croce, “Storia e cronaca,” 46.
66 Croce, Teoria e storia della storiografia, I: 24.
67 Benedetto Croce, “Contro la ‘storia universale’ e i falsi universali: Encomio
dell’individualità,” in Discorsi di varia filosofia, 2 vols. (Bari: Laterza,
1959), I: 129–62 (130); Benedetto Croce, “In Praise of Individuality and
against ‘Universal History’ and Fake Universals in General,” in Philosophy,
Poetry, History: An Anthology of Essays by Benedetto Croce, trans. Cecil Sprigge
(London: Oxford University Press, 1966), 509–38 (509).
68 Benedetto Croce, “Considerazioni sul problema morale dei nostri tempi
[15 Dec. 1944],” originally published in Quaderno della “Critica” 1, no. 1
(1945), reprinted in Pensiero politico e politica attuale: Scritti e discorsi (1945)
(Bari: Laterza, 1946), 3–24 (3).
69 Carlo Levi, “Giolittismo ideale,” originally published in Italia libera
3 (1 Dec. 1945), reprinted in Il dovere dei tempi, 110–11 (110).
70 Antonio La Penna, “I giovanissimi e la cultura negli ultimi anni del fasci
smo II,” Società 3, nos. 7–8 (July–Dec. 1946): 678–90 (682).
71 On Croce’s anti-Fascism, see Fabio Fernando Rizi, Benedetto Croce and
Italian Fascism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), 87–91.
72 See, for instance, Lucio Lombardo-Radice, Fascismo e anticomunismo (Turin:
Einaudi, 1946), 27. On this turn, see Rodolfo Montuoro, “Il filosofo e
la guerra: Benedetto Croce e il secondo conflitto mondiale,” in L’Italia
in guerra 1940–43, ed. Bruna Micheletti and Pier Paolo Poggio (Brescia:
Annali della Fondazione “Luigi Micheletti,” 1990–1), 853–62 (855–6);
Sandro Setta, Croce, il liberalismo e l’Italia postfascista (Rome: Bonacci
Editore, 1979), 158–60; Ward, Antifascisms, 56.
73 Enrico Ghidetti, Il Tramonto dello storicismo: Capitoli per una storia della
critica novecentesca (Florence: Le Lettere, 1993), 106; Roberts, Benedetto
Croce, 224–38; Alberto Asor Rosa, “La cultura,” in Storia d’Italia, vol.
4, tome 2, Dall’Unità a oggi (Turin: Einaudi, 1972), 1592; Raffaello
Franchini, Intervista su Croce, ed. Arturo Fratta (Naples: Società Editrice
Napoletana, 1978), 9.
74 Luigi Russo, “La collera del Vico e la stizza del Croce (Dalle Memorie di un
vecchio crociano),” Belfagor 4, no. 5 (31 Aug. 1949): 560–82 (562).
75 Natalino Sapegno, “Croce e la mia generazione,” in Letteratura e critica:
Studi in onore di Natalino Sapegno, 5 vols. (Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 1979), V:
617–21 (620).
76 Elio Vittorini, “La dittatura dell’idealismo,” originally published in L’Unità,
20 May 1945, reprinted in Letteratura arte società, 210–12 (211).
77 The quotations are taken, respectively, from Franco Catalano, “Marxismo
ed estetica: Croce e la nostra età,” Avanti! 26 Nov. 1949, 3; Luigi Russo, “La
collera del Vico e la stizza del Croce,” 571, 581.
78 The quotations are taken, respectively, from Emiliano Zazo, “Arte e so
cietà,” Avanti! 29 Nov. 1949, 3; Giuseppe Bertolucci, “Bruciare il veleno
crociano,” Avanti! 23 Nov. 1949, 3
79 Giacomo Debenedetti, “Probabile autobiografia di una generazione,” orig-
inally an address to the Pen Club in Venice, Sept. 1949, published in Saggi
(Milan: Mondadori, 1999), 97–123 (110–11).
80 Mario Sansone, “La lezione di Croce,” in Croce quarant’anni dopo, ed.
Edoardo Tiboni (Pescara: EDIARS, 1993), 7–14 (10).
81 On Croce and neorealism, see Ajello, Intellettuali e PCI, 206–7; Roberto De
Gaetano, Teorie del cinema in Italia (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino Editore,
2005), 27–8; Francesco Casetti, Theories of Cinema, 1945–1995 (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1999), 22–3.
82 Quoted in Bo, Inchiesta sul neorealismo, 15. For the source of Flora’s ter-
minology, see Benedetto Croce, La poesia di Dante (Bari: Laterza, 1956
[1920]), 49–68; Benedetto Croce, Poesia e non poesia: Note sulla letteratura
europea del secolo decimonono (Bari: Laterza, 1955 [1922]); Benedetto Croce,
La Poesia: Introduzione alla critica e storia della poesia e della letteratura (Bari:
Laterza, 1936), 58–63.
83 Quoted in Bo, Inchiesta sul neorealismo, 49–51. On the idealistic foundations
of Gadda’s judgment, see Manuela Marchesini, La galleria interiore dell’In-
gegnere (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2014), 99.
84 Carlo Dionisotti, “Letteratura ‘Partigiana,’” originally published in Aretusa
3, nos. 7–8 (Jan.–Feb. 1946), reprinted in Aretusa: Prima rivista dell’Italia
liberata, ed. Raffaele Cavalluzzi (Bari: Palomar, 2001), 147–58.
85 Doriana Danton, “La notte porta consiglio, ovvero: ‘Roma, città libera,’”
originally published in Hollywood 3, no. 18 (3 May 1947), reprinted in Il
cinema ricomincia, 23; Castello, “Senza pietà,” 110; Rivolta, “Gioventù per-
duta,” 79; Guido Guerrasio, “De Sica sociale,” La lettura, 4 May 1946.
86 Guido Aristarco, Neorealismo e nuova critica cinematografica. Cinematografia

e vita nazionale negli anni quaranta e cinquanta: Tra rotture e tradizioni
(Florence: Nuova Guaraldi Editrice, 1980), 20–1.
87 The Crocean framework of Aristarco’s analysis of neorealism was already
apparent in his 1949 comment that “il problema del cosiddetto ‘neore-
alismo’ va di là dalla ‘formula’ e dalla cronaca pura e semplice. Si tratta
di arte o di non arte [the problem of so-called ‘neorealism’ goes beyond
the ‘formula’ of the chronicle, plain and simple. It is about art versus
non-art],” Guido Aristarco, “Presentazione,” Sequenze: Quaderni di cinema 1,
no. 4 (Dec. 1949): 1–3 (1–2).
88 Milanini, introduction to Neorealismo: Poetiche e polemiche, 13.
89 Romano Bilenchi, Amici, new edition, ed. Sergio Pautasso (Milan: Rizzoli,
1988), 217.
92 Tito Perlini, “Left-Wing Culture in Italy since the Last War,” 20th Century
Cultural Studies 5 (Sept. 1971): 6–17 (12); Asor Rosa, “La cultura,” 1602.
On Il Politecnico’s contradictory Croceanism, see also Gazziano, Occasioni e
valori del Neorealismo, 221.
93 Calvino, “Saremo come Omero,” 1485–6.
94 On neorealism’s “bottom up” approach, see Gian Piero Brunetta, “Italian
Cinema and the Hard Road towards Democracy, 1945,” Historical Journal of
Film, Radio and Television 15, no. 3 (1995): 343–8 (344).
95 Bontempelli, “Ritrovamento dell’orrore [Nov. 1944],” in Dignità dell’uomo,
50–4 (54).
96 Zavattini, “La condizione migliore – 1946,” in Cinema: Diario cinematografico
e Neorealismo ecc., 58–59 (59).
97 Quoting, respectively, Sala, “Realismo e religiosità,” 537; Giulio Preti,
“Marxismo e religione,” La Cittadella 2.7–10 (15 April–30 May 1947): 6;
Mario Stefanile, “Lezione di una guerra,” Sud 1, no. 1 (15 Nov. 1945): 2;
Raffaello Franchini, “Cultura, come?” Sud 1, no. 7 (20 June 1946): 2. This
aspect of neorealism is stressed in Ricciardi, “Neorealism,” 1284; Raffa,
“Per una definizione rigorosa,” 36.
98 Pietrangeli, “Quattordici anni di cinema italiano,” 26.
99 Cesare Zavattini, “Cinema italiano domani,” originally in Cinema italiano
oggi (1950), reprinted in Cinema: Diario cinematografico e Neorealismo ecc.,
693–6 (693)
100 As Wagstaff aptly put it, in the neorealist context “[t]he job of the ‘realist’
artist [...] is to portray the universal contained in the particular.” Wagstaff,
Italian Neorealist Cinema, 69. See, too, Brunetta, “Dal neorealismo al neo-
realismo,” in Ripensare il neorealismo, 63–75 (69); Roberto De Gaetano,
“Introduzione: Il cinema senza uniforme,” in Lessico del cinema italiano:
Forme di rappresentazione e forme di vita, ed. Roberto De Gaetano, 2 vols.

(Milan and Udine: Mimesis, 2014), I: 7–40 (18–19); Spinazzola, L’egemonia
del romanzo, 16; Falcetto, Storia della narrativa neorealista, 120; Fernanda
Moneta, Cinema neorealista e infanzia violata (Rome: UniversItalia, 2012),
12; Milanini, introduction to Neorealismo: Poetiche e polemiche, 10.
101 Marsha Kinder, “The Subversive Potential of the Pseudo-Iterative,” in Vittorio
De Sica: Contemporary Perspectives, ed. Howard Curle and Stephen Snyder
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 204–9. These terms are
adapted from Gérard Genette, “Time and Narrative in À la recherche du temps
perdu,” in Essentials of the Theory of Fiction, ed. Michael J. Hoffman and Patrick
D. Murphy (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), 121–38 (127–30).
102 Kinder, “The Subversive Potential of the Pseudo-Iterative,” 208.
103 A similar analysis is found in Noto and Pitassio, Il cinema neorealista, 25–6.
104 Antonello Trombadori, “Prefazione alla prima Edizione [1944],” in Gott
mit uns, by Renato Guttuso (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1960), 17–22 (21).
105 Arnaldo Bocelli, “Letteratura della resistenza: Che cosa è stata, e che cosa
è in Italia,” Vie Nuove 2, no. 35 (7 Sept. 1947): 8. See, too, the editorial
“Premessa,” Mercurio 1, no. 4 (Dec. 1944): 5–7 (6).
106 Lorenzo Quaglietti, “‘Caccia tragica’ di Giuseppe De Santis: Da un breve fatto
di cronaca una grande opera cinematografica,” L’Unità, 6 March 1948, 3.
107 Pasquale Prunas, “Una lezione,” Sud 1, no. 7 (20 June 1946): 11.
108 G.P., “In nome della legge di Pietro Germi,” originally published in Bianco
e nero 10, no. 5 (May 1949), now in Gobetti et al., Neorealismo D.O.C., 86–8.
109 Leopoldo Trieste, “Trieste racconta Trieste,” in Leopoldo Trieste: Un intruso a
Cinecittà (Turin: ERI/Edizioni Rai Radiotelevisione italiana, 1985), 25–61
(52); Giorgio Taffon, “Il teatro di Leopoldo Trieste: 1944–1947,” in Anna
Bonacci e la drammaturgia sommersa degli anni ’30–’50, ed. Anna T. Ossani
and Tiziana Mattioli (Pesaro: Metauro Edizioni, 2003), 303–19; Giovanni
Antonucci, Storia del teatro italiano del Novecento (Rome: Edizioni Studium,
1996), 177–8.
110 Leopoldo Trieste, “Cronaca: Commedia in tre atti,” in Leopoldo Trieste:
Inseguendo sirene, vol. 2., Alcune opere, ed. Carmelo Zinnato (Catanzaro:
Abramo editore, 1999), 35–62. On the significance of this play, see
Gianfranco Angelucci, “Leopoldo Trieste,” in Profili di Scena: Maurizio
Costanzo – Tullio Pinelli – Luigi Squarzina – Leopoldo Trieste (Bari: Editori
Laterza, 2003), 432–41 (448).
111 Trieste, “Cronaca,” 39
112 Trieste, “Cronaca,” 35, 61.
113 Trieste, “Quando scrissi Cronaca,” in Leopoldo Trieste: Un intruso, 65–6 (66).
On the neorealism of Trieste’s essay and play, see, too, Mario Verdone,
“Leopoldo Trieste tra neorealismo teatrale e cinema,” Ridotto 51, nos. 4–5
(April–May 2003): 29–31.
114 Leopoldo Trieste, “Cronaca e tragedia,” Quarta Parete 2, no. 12 (10 Jan.
1946): 1–2 (2).
115 Trieste, “Cronaca e tragedia,” 1.
117 See, among other responses, the letters from three readers in “Dopo
l’articolo di Leopoldo Trieste i lettori polemizzano sul tema ‘Cronaca e
Tragedia,’” Quarta parete 2, no. 14 (24 Jan. 1946): 2; and “Lettere di
Vittorio Gassman,” in Leopoldo Trieste: Inseguendo sirene, vol. 1, Tratti
biografici, 127–8 (128n1).
118 Leonardo De Mitri, “Cronaca e Teatro,” Quarta Parete 2, no. 13 (17 Jan.
1946): 5.
119 De Mitri, “Cronaca e Teatro,” 5.
120 Croce, Teoria e storia della storiografia, 24.
123 Trieste, “Cronaca,” 60.
124 Bicycle Thieves, 35.
125 Martin Clark, Modern Italy, 1871–1995 (London and New York: Longman,
1996), 317; Christopher Duggan, The Force of Destiny: A History of Italy since
1796 (London and New York: Penguin, 2007), 554.
126 Robert S.C. Gordon, Ladri di biciclette [Bicycle Thieves] (Basingstoke and
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 41. See, too, Sorlin, “Settant’anni
dopo: perché il neorealismo continua a essere vivo,” in Invenzioni dal vero,
265–73 (271); Moneti, Neorealismo fra tradizione e rivoluzione, 106–7; Bruno
Torri, “La più pura espressione del neorealismo,” in De Sica: Autore, regista,
attore, ed. Lino Miccichè (Venice: Marsilio Editori, 1992), 43–54 (47);
Gualtiero De Santi, Vittorio De Sica (Venice: Editrice il Castoro, 2003), 62–3;
Carlo Lizzani and Gianni Bozzacchi, Neorealismo: Non eravamo solo Ladri di
biciclette (Rome: Triwold, 2013), 81.
127 Francis Koval, “Interview with De Sica,” Sight and Sound 19, no. 2 (April
1950): 63.
129 Giulio Cesare Castello, “Ladri di biciclette,” originally published in Bianco e
nero 10, no. 5 (May 1949), reprinted in Gobetti et al., Neorealismo D.O.C., 97.
130 Arnaldo Frateili, “Vittorio De Sica poeta dei poveri,” originally published
in Milano Sera, 25 Nov. 1948, reprinted in Ladri di biciclette: Nuove ricerche
e un’antologia della critica (1948–1949), ed. Gualtiero De Santi (Atripalda:
Laceno, 2009), 115–17 (115).
131 Rudi Berger, review of Ladri di biciclette, originally published in L’Umanità,
21 Jan. 1949, reprinted in Ladri di biciclette: Nuove ricerche, 144–5.
132 Gino Visentini, “Ladri di biciclette,” originally published in Cinema 1, no. 2
(10 Nov. 1948), reprinted in Gobetti et al. Neorealismo D.O.C., 98–9.
133 On the scene’s apparent ambiguity, see Sorlin, European Cinemas, European
Societies, 123–4; Landy, Italian Film, 138.
134 For the first interpretation, see Vigni, Le città visibili, 107. For the second,
see Leprohon, The Italian Cinema, 114–16. For the third, see Pietro Cavallo,
“Un paese in bianco e nero: L’Italia del ’48 in cinque film,” in Le linee d’om-
bra dell’identità repubblicana: Comunicazione, media e società in Italia nel secondo
Novecento, ed. Pietro Cavallo and Gino Frezza (Naples: Liguori Editore,
2004), 81–105 (96).
4. “From I to We”: Neorealism’s Choral Politics
1 Quoting Ennio Flaiano, “ ‘A mandunella,” originally published in

Bis 8 (4 May 1948), reprinted in Lettere d’amore al cinema, ed. Cristina
Bragaglia (Milan: Rizzoli Editore, 1978), 95–8 (97); and Mario Gromo,
“Italia,” 78. Similar pronouncements can be found in Salinari, La que
stione del realismo, 40–2; Canziani, Gli anni del neorealismo, 18; Gian Piero
Brunetta, “La ricerca dell’identità nel cinema italiano del dopoguerra”
in Identità italiana e identità europea nel cinema italiano dal 1945 al miracolo
economico, ed. Gian Piero Brunetta (Turin: Edizioni della Fondazione
Giovanni Agnelli, 1996), 11–67 (41); Gasparini, Il Neorealismo, 42–3;
Sozzi Casanova, Neorealismo e neorealisti, 21; Armando Borrelli, Neorealismo
e Marxismo (Avellino: Edizioni di Cinemasud, 1966), 24; Luigi Reina,
“Neorealismo e crisi,” in Romanzo e mimesis. Dal romanticismo al neoreal-
ismo: Aspetti della narrativa italiana (Salerno: Società editrice salernitana,
1975), 195–210 (200); Fabio Vighi, Traumatic Encounters in Italian Film:
Locating the Cinematic Unconscious (Bristol and Portland: Intellect, 2006),
57–8.
2 Baldan, Per una lettura del Neorealismo, 8–9; Landy, Italian Film, 15; Wagstaff,
Italian Neorealist Cinema, 29; Claudio Venturi and Antonio Di Cicco,
introduction to Gli anni del neorealismo, ed. Claudio Venturi and Antonio
Di Cicco (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1980), 1–10 (4); Gian Carlo Ferretti,
“Illustrazione del problema,” in Introduzione al neorealismo: I narratori, ed.
Gian Carlo Ferretti (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1974), 7–24 (8); Francesco
De Nicola, Neorealismo (Milan: Editrice Bibliografica, 1996), 31–2; Paolo
Turco, “Alle origini del neorealismo: Dal populismo al marxismo,” in
Populismo, neorealismo e avanguardia, ed. Pio Baldelli (Avellino: Edizioni di
Cinemasud, 1967), 7–25 (19).
3 Sipala, “La poetica del neorealismo,” 66; Angelo Restivo, The Cinema
of Economic Miracles: Vitality and Modernization in the Italian Art Film
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), 24–5; Konewko, Neorealism
and the “New” Italy, 6–7; Ermanno Taviani, “L’immagine della nazione
nella cinematografia tra fascismo e repubblica,” in 1945–1946: Le origini
della Repubblica, vol. 1, Contesto internazionale e aspetti della transizione, ed.

Giancarlo Monina (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino Editore, 2007), 239–76
(252–3); Goffredo Fofi, “Neorealismo e oltre (1979),” in I limiti della
scena: Spettacolo e pubblico nell’Italia contemporanea (1945–1991) (Milan:
Linea d’ombra edizioni, 1992), 57–67 (60); Parigi, Neorealismo: Il nuovo
cinema del dopoguerra, 49–50; Todd McGowan, “Political Desire in Italian
Neorealism,” in The Real Gaze: Film Theory after Lacan (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 2007), 107–12; Brunetta, Cent’anni di cinema
italiano, vol. 2, Dal 1945 ai giorni nostri, 8–9.
4 Vittorio Spinazzola, Cinema e pubblico: Lo spettacolo filmico in Italia
1945–1965 (Milan: Bompiani, 1974), 7; Richard Dyer, “Music, People
and Reality: The Case of Italian Neo-realism,” in European Film Music.
ed. Miguel Mera and David Burnand (Aldershot and Burlington, VT:
Ashgate Publishing, 2006), 28–40 (28); Francesco Pitasso, “Popular
Tradition, American Madness and Some Opera. Music and Songs in
Italian Neo-Realist Cinema,” Cinéma & Cie 11, nos. 16–17 (Spring–Fall
2011): 141–6 (141); John Gatt-Rutter, Writers and Politics in Modern
Italy (New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1978), 13; Renzo Renzi,
“Neorealismo e sua eutanasia,” in Commedia all’italiana: Angolazioni contro-
campi, ed. Riccardo Napolitano (Rome: Gangemi Editore, 1986), 55–63
(58–9); Gianfranco Casadio, Adultere, fedifraghe, innocenti: La donna del
“neorealismo popolare” nel cinema italiano degli anni Cinquanta (Ravenna:
Longo editore, 1990), 21–2.
5 This argument was advanced most forcefully in Asor Rosa, Scrittori e popolo,
129–17. See, too, Re, Calvino and the Age of Neorealism, 113; Taracchini,
“Il Neorealismo come letteratura di Stato,” 341; Turconi, La poesia neore-
alista italiana, 9; Alberto Abruzzese, “Il rapporto politica-cultura durante
il neorealismo,” in Politica e cultura nel dopoguerra con una cronologia
1929/1964 e una antologia (Pesaro: Mostra internazionale del nuovo cine
ma, 1974), 12–23 (14); Benussi, L’età del neorealismo, 53; Tinazzi, “Sulla
‘popolarità’ nel cinema italiano del dopoguerra,” 83; Cannella, “Ideology
and Aesthetic Hypotheses,” 31–4; Raffaele Cavalluzzi, “Neorealismo:
Dimensioni spazio-temporali di un’utopia della realtà,” Italianistica 2–3
(2002): 71–5 (72); Bruno Torri, Cinema italiano: Dalla realtà alle metafore
(Palermo: Palumbo, 1973), 25; Michele Guerra, “Il fatto e la forma: Breve
viaggio tra le consapevolezze neorealiste,” in Intorno al neorealismo: Voci,
contesti, linguaggi e culture dell’Italia del dopoguerra, ed. Giulia Carluccio,
Emiliano Morreale, and Mariapaola Pierini (Milan: Scalpendi editore,
2017), 43–9 (44–5).
6 See, for instance, Kolker’s claim that “[a] notion of passivity is built into
neo-realist theory, and as a result the filmmakers only allow their charac-
ters and their audience to reap the rewards of passivity: more pain, more
poverty, softened somewhat by a notion of stoicism and endurance (on

the part of the characters) and sadness, understanding, and not a little
bit of superiority (on the part of the audience).” Kolker, The Altering Eye,
68–9. See, too, the cogent critique advanced along similar lines in Karl
Schoonover, Brutal Vision: The Neorealist Body in Postwar Italian Cinema
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012), 219.
7 Sitney, Vital Crises in Italian Cinema, 36; Rocchio, Cinema of Anxiety, 47;
Kriss Ravetto, The Unmaking of Fascist Aesthetics (Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 2001), 74; Steimatsky, Italian Locations, 47–48; Zinni,
Fascisti di celluloide, 21; Lichtner, Fascism in Italian Cinema since 1945, 18; De
Caro, Rifondare gli italiani, 69.
8 Gualtiero De Santi, “Il neorealismo o della messa in scena etica del reale,”
Cinema e cinema 21 (1979): 66–75 (69); Romano Luperini and Eduardo
Melfi, Neorealismo, neodecadentismo, avanguardie (Rome and Bari: Editori
Laterza, 1980), 12; Gianni Rondolino, Luchino Visconti (Turin: UTET,
1981), 221; Asor Rosa, “Il neorealismo o il trionfo del narrativo,” in Cinema
e letteratura del neorealismo, 79–102 (80); Antonielli, Letteratura del disagio,
115; Liehm, Passion and Defiance, 129; Marcus, Italian Film in the Light of
Neorealism, 23; Salvatore Battaglia, “Le Italie sconosciute della stagione
neorealista,” in I facsimile della realtà: Forme e destini del romanzo italiano dal
realismo al neorealismo (Palermo: Sellerio, 1991), 115–24 (115); Guglielmo
Moneti, Lezioni di Neorealismo (Siena: Nuova immagine, 1998), 20; Giorgio
Luti, “Il dibattito sul neorealismo nelle riviste del dopoguerra,” Nuova
antologia 2218 (2001): 179–96; Ghigi, La memoria inquieta, 27; Guerra,
“‘Una sconfinata tematica sull’uomo’: umanismi neorealisti,” in Invenzioni
dal vero, 97–109 (97); Scardia, La stagione del trionfo, 399–400.
9 For early instances of this tendency, see Adolfo Diana, “Aspetti letterari del
primo e del secondo dopoguerra in Italia,” Momenti 7, no. 18 (May–June
1954): 11; Sergio J. Pacifici, “Notes toward a Definition of Neorealism,”
Yale French Studies 17 (1956): 44–53 (52); Ruggero Jacobbi, Secondo
Novecento (Milan: Nuova Accademia, 1965), 85; Guido Oldrini, “Problemi
di teoria generale del neorealismo [1965],” in Problemi di teoria e storia del
cinema (Naples: Guida Editori, 1976), 69–97 (83); Manacorda, Storia della
letteratura italiana contemporanea, 1940–1965, 31.
10 Miccichè, “Per una verifica del neorealismo,” 27–8. Miccichè was not
the only critic to draw this connection. See, too, Battistini’s claim that
Vittorini’s essay “risulta il manifesto del neorealismo [is the manifesto of
neorealism].” Battistini, Sondaggi sul Novecento, 84.
11 Elio Vittorini, “Una nuova cultura,” originally published in Il Politecnico 1
(29 Sept. 1945), reprinted in Letteratura arte società, 234–7 (234).
12 Vittorini, “Una nuova cultura,” 235; Elio Vittorini, “Polemica e no per
una nuova cultura,” originally published in Il Politecnico 7 (10 Nov. 1945),
reprinted in Letteratura arte società, 247–58 (254).
13 Luciano Anceschi, “Dove va la cultura?” Avanti! 9 Dec. 1945, 1–2;

Giovanni Titta Rosa, “Dove va la cultura? Problema morale,” Avanti!
13 Dec. 1945, 1–2; Vittorio Sereni, “Dove va la cultura? Funzione rispetto
alla società,” Avanti! 16 Dec. 1945, 1–2; Enrico Emanuelli, “Dove va la
cultura? Quattro appunti,” Avanti! 20 Dec. 1945, 1–2; Alberto Vigevani,
“Dove va la cultura? Esigenza d’una civiltà,” Avanti! 29 Dec. 1945, 1–2;
Giuseppe Dessì, “Dove va la cultura? Arte libera o arte sociale?” Avanti!
6 Jan. 1946, 1–2; Sergio Solmi, “Dove va la cultura? Cultura aperta
o chiusa?” Avanti! 13 Jan. 1946, 1–2; Carlo Bo, “Dove va la cultura? Non
cedere al tempo,” Avanti! 27 Jan. 1946, 1–2.
14 Bigiaretti, “Dove va la letteratura,” 6.
15 Arturo Tofanelli, “Tre romanzi,” Avanti! 19 Aug. 1945, 1–2.
16 Luigi Comencini, “Il cinema a congresso,” Avanti! 3 Oct. 1945, 2.
17 Mario Bonfantini, “Occasioni: Dove va la cultura?” Società Nuova 2, no. 1
(Jan. 1946): 26–8.
18 Gio Cai, “Fiducia nella cultura,” Comunità 2, no. 1 (19 April 1947): 3.
19 Stephen Greenblatt, “Culture,” in The Greenblatt Reader, ed. Michael Payne
(Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), 11–17 (11).
20 See, for instance, Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and
Society (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 87; Terry
Eagleton, The Idea of Culture (Oxford, UK, and Malden, MA: Blackwell,
2000), 1.
21 Alberto Moravia, “Romanzo e cultura,” Comunità 1, no. 4 (July 1946): 10.
Post-war glosses of the term “cultura” can be found in Giacomo Devoto,
“Cultura dei due dopoguerra,” originally published in Nuovo Corriere, 3
May 1949, reprinted in Autobiografia di un giornale: “Il Nuovo Corriere” di
Firenze 1947–1956, ed. Fabrizio Bagatti, Ottavio Cecchi, and Giorgio van
Straten (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1989), 149–51 (149); Franco Cagnetta,
“Note sugli intellettuali italiani,” Socialismo 2, no. 6 (1 June 1946): 156–60
(157n1); r.b., “Per l’università proletaria,” Nuova critica sociale 1, nos. 4–5
(Aug.–Sept. 1945): 60–2 (61).
22 See, for instance, Adriano Olivetti, “Democrazia integrata,” Comunità 1,
no. 2 (May 1946): 3.
23 Felice Balbo, Il laboratorio dell’uomo [1946], in Opere 1945-1964 (Turin:
Editore Boringhieri, 1966), 107–99 (116, 118).
24 Antonio Banfi, “Per una cultura umana,” L’Unità, 27 Jan. 1946.
25 Franco Fortini, “Chiusura di una polemica: Cultura come scelta n ecessaria,”
Il Politecnico 17 (19 Jan. 1946): 1.
26 Elio Vittorini, “Lettera agli elettori,” originally published in L’Unità, 6 April
1946, reprinted in Letteratura arte società, 279–81 (280–1).
27 Vittorini, “Una nuova cultura,” 235 (emphasis in the original).
28 Vittorini, “Una nuova cultura,” 234. On the Italian reception of these
thinkers in the period immediately preceding the publication of Vittorini’s
essay, see Michela Nacci, Tecnica e cultura della crisi (1914–1939) (Turin:
Loescher, 1982), 47–52; Pasquale Voza, Coscienza e crisi: Il Novecento italiano
tra le due guerre (Milan: Liguori editori, 1983), 11.
29 Mann developed his notion of “militant humanism” in Thomas Mann,
“Europe Beware [1935],” in Order of the Day: Political Essays and Speeches
of Two Decades (Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1969), 69–82.
Maritain’s “humanism of the Incarnation” is outlined in Jacques Maritain,
The Twilight of Civilization, trans. Lionel Landry (London: Sheed & Ward,
1946 [1943]), 16–17. Croce’s “religione della libertà [religion of liberty]”
received its fullest expression in a work dedicated to Mann: Benedetto
Croce, Storia d’Europa nel secolo decimonono (Bari: Gius. Laterza & Figli,
1967 [1932]), 370–2. Berdyaev called for a “spiritual revolution” in Nicolas
Berdyaev, Slavery and Freedom (London: Centenary Press, 1943), 254.
30 Vittorini, “Una nuova cultura,” 235.
33 Berdyaev, Slavery and Freedom, 140; Miguel de Unamuno, The Agony
of Christianity, trans. Kurt F. Reinhardt (New York: Frederick Ungar
Publishing Co., 1960), 78–9; Georges Bernanos, A Diary of My Times, trans.
Pamela Morris (New York: Macmillan, 1938), 182–3; Lin Yutang, Between
Tears and Laughter (New York: John Day Company, 1943), 157; Jacques
Maritain, True Humanism, trans. M.R. Adamson (London: Centenary Press,
1938), 289. Perhaps most notably, this phrase had been invoked as a model
of good governance by prominent Christian Democrats, including future
prime minister Alcide De Gasperi, in the years before Vittorini’s essay was
published. See especially Alcide De Gasperi, “La parola dei Democratici
Cristiani: Il Programma della Democrazia Cristiana,” originally published
in Il Popolo, 12 Dec. 1943, reprinted in Alcide De Gapseri nel Partito Popolare
Italiano e nella Democrazia Cristiana: Un’antologia di Discorsi politici 1923-1954,
ed. Giovanni Allara and Angelo Gatti, 4 vols. (Rome: Edizioni Cinque
Lune, 1990), II: 77–88 (85–7).
36 Alberto Savinio, “Immagine perduta,” originally published in Janus
Pannonius 1, no. 1 (Jan.–March 1947), reprinted in Scritti dispersi, 1943–
1952, ed. Paola Italia (Milan: Adelphi, 2004), 491–5 (493).
37 Giuseppe Sala, “La religione dei letterati,” Il Popolo, 16 Jan. 1945, 1; Bruno
Nardini, “Mito leggenda storia,” L’Ultima 3, no. 30 (25 June 1948): 5–14 (13).
38 Mario Dal Pra, “Politica e cultura,” Avanti! 2 June 1948, 3; Luciano della
Mea, “Marxismo ed estetica: Storicizzare Croce,” Avanti! 7 Dec. 1949, 3.
39 Antonio La Penna, “I giovanissimi e la cultura negli ultimi anni del
fascismo I,” Società 3, no. 3 (1947): 380–405 (401); Antonio La Penna,
“I giovanissimi e la cultura negli ultimi anni del fascismo II,” 690;

Raimondi, “Una generazione letteraria,” 9.
40 Benedetto Croce, “Una risposta di scrittori, professori e pubblicisti italiani,
al manifesto degli intellettuali fascisti,” originally published in Il Mondo,
1 May 1925, reprinted in Fascismo e cultura, by Emilio R. Papa (Venice:
41 I. Schuster, “O Cristo o comunismo (10-2-1945),” Riv. Dioc. Mil. 34 (1945),
quoted in Antonio Acerbi, “Il problema dei giovani nella pastorale dei
vescovi durante il secondo dopoguerra (1945–1958),” in Chiesa e progetto
educativo nell’Italia del secondo dopoguerra (1945–1958) (Brescia: Editrice
La Scuola, 1988), 37–74 (43); “Seduta antimeridiana e pomeridiana di
venerdì 4 agosto [1944],” in I congressi del Partito d’Azione, ed. Giancarlo
Tartaglia (Rome: Archivio Trimestrale, 1984), 39–47 (45); Comitato
Nazionale A.N.P.I. e Ufficio Partigiani alla Presidenza del Consiglio, Cento
dei centomila (Rome: Convitto scuola ANPI, 1947), quoted in Alan R. Perry,
Il santo partigiano martire: La retorica del sacrificio nelle biografie commemorative
(Ravenna: Longo Editore, 2001), 16.
42 Gianfranco Contini, “Relazione sulle cose di Ginevra: Dove va la cultura
europea,” La Fiera letteraria 1–2 (31 Oct. 1946): 2; Oreste Macrì, “Lo spirito
europeo,” originally published in Libera voce, 16–30 Nov. 1946, reprinted
in Realtà del simbolo: Poeti e critici del Novecento italiano (Trento: La Finestra,
2001), 594–7 (596).
43 Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, “Saluto all’assemblea costituente: Seduta del
25 giugno 1946,” in Discorsi parlamentari di Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, vol.
4 (Rome: Tipografia della Camera dei deputati, 1965), 1608–9, quoted
in Maurizio Viroli, Come se Dio ci fosse: Religione e libertà nella storia d’Italia
(Turin: Einaudi, 2009), 357.
44 Partigiani della Provincia di Parma, Parma Partigiana: Albo d’oro dei caduti
nella guerra di Liberazione 1943–1945 (Modena: Soc. Tip. Modenese,
[1947?]), quoted in Alan R. Perry, Il santo partigiano martire, 17.
45 Julian Bogi, I quisling, povera terra... (Turin: Gattiglia, 1946), 11. On the
discourse of martyrdom in the commemoration of the Fosse Ardeatine,
see the section “Sacrificio, martirio, consacrazione?” in Alessandro Portelli,
L’ordine è già stato eseguito: Roma, le Fosse Ardeatine, la memoria (Rome: Donzelli
editore, 1999), 259–65; Guri Schwarz, Tu mi devi seppellir: Riti funebri e culto
nazionale alle origini della Repubblica (Turin: UTET, 2010), 61–83. On the char-
acteristic religiosity of partisan writing, see Domenico Tarizzo, Come scriveva
la Resistenza: Filologia della stampa clandestina 1943-1945 (Florence: La Nuova
Italia, 1969), 44–45; Mauro Boarelli, La fabbrica del passato: Autobiografie di mili-
tanti comunisti (1945–1956) (Milan: Feltrinelli, 2007), 14–16; Marta Bonzanini,
introduction to Con le armi e con la penna: Poesia clandestina della Resistenza
(Novara: Interlinea, 2009), 14–41 (26); Corti, Il viaggio testuale, 67–73.
46 See Pietro Malvezzi and Giovanni Pirelli, eds., Lettere di condannati a morte
della Resistenza italiana (8 settembre 1943–25 aprile 1945) (Milan: Mondadori,
1968), 147–8.
47 On the concept of civil religion, see Emilio Gentile, Politics as Religion,
trans. George Staunton (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), xii,
143. On its relevance to the Resistance, see, too, Stephen Gundle, “The
‘Civic Religion’ of the Resistance in Post-war Italy (1943–1949),” Modern
Italy 5, no. 2 (2000): 113–32; Yuri Guaiana, “The Formation of a Civil
Religion in Republican Italy,” Journal of Modern Italian Studies 14, no. 3
(2009): 329–45.
48 “Questa è la vittoria dell’uomo comune,” Giornale dell’Emilia, 26 April
1945, quoted in Stefano Cavazza, “La transizione difficile: L’immagine
della guerra e della resistenza nell’opinione pubblica nell’immediato
dopoguerra,” in La grande cesura: La memoria della guerra e della resistenza nella
vita europea del dopoguerra, ed. Giovanni Miccoli, Guido Neppi Modona, and
Paolo Pombeni (Milan: Società editrice il Mulino, 2001), 427–64 (457).
49 “VIII Settembre,” originally published in L’Uomo, 8 Sept. 1945, reprinted in
Il secolo dei manifesti: Programmi delle riviste del Novecento, ed. Giuseppe Lupo
(Turin: Nino Aragno Editore, 2006), 309–13 (310).
50 On this tendency, see Ernesto Preziosi, “Tra solidarietà e Resistenza: Sulla
partecipazione dei cattolici,” in Ribelli per amore: I cattolici e la Resistenza,
ed. Ernesto Preziosi (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino Editore, 2007), 17–40
(esp. 36); Paolo Blasina, “Resistenza, guerra, fascismo nel cattolicesimo
italiano (1943–1948),” in La grande cesura, 123–93; Lorenzo Bedeschi, La
sinistra cristiana e il dialogo con i comunisti (Parma: Guanda, 1966); Nicola
Antonetti, L’Ideologia della Sinistra cristiana: I cattolici tra Chiesa e comunismo
(1937–1945) (Milan: Franco Angeli Editore, 1976), 17–20; Angelo Ventrone,
La cittadinanza repubblicana: Come cattolici e comunisti hanno costruito la democra-
zia italiana (1943–1948) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1996); Gianni Baget-Bozzo,
L’Intreccio: Cattolici e comunisti 1945–2004 (Milan: Mondadori, 2004).
51 Fabrizio Onofri, “Le tre ideologie dell’Italia contemporanea,” Rinascita,
Dec. 1945, 279.
52 On Italy’s “diffused religion,” see Roberto Cipriani, “‘Diffused Religion’
and New Values in Italy,” in The Changing Face of Religion, ed. James A.
Beckford and Thomas Luckmann (Newbury Park, CA, London, and
New Delhi: SAGE Publications, 1991), 24–48; Robert N. Bellah, “The
Five Religions of Modern Italy,” in Varieties of Civil Religion, by Robert N.
Bellah and Phillip E. Hammond (Cambridge and New York: Harper &
Row Publishers, 1980), 86–118. On the adoption of this religious imagery
in the Resistance, see Rosario Forlenza, “Sacrificial Memory and Political
Legitimacy in Postwar Italy: Reliving and Remembering World War II,”
History & Memory 24, no. 2 (Fall–Winter 2012): 73–116.
53 See, for instance, Alberto Moravia, La speranza, ossia cristianesimo e

comunismo (Rome: Documento, Libraio Editore, 1944); Italo Calvino,
“Marxismo e cattolicesimo,” originally published in L’Unità, 9 March
1947), reprinted in Saggi: 1945-1985), I: 1473–5; Ignazio Silone, “Come
ricostruire? (Appunti per un dialogo tra socialisti e cattolici),” Mercurio 2,
no. 9 (May 1945): 15–19.
54 Antonio Greppi, “Attuare il cristianesimo,” Corriere d’informazione 1, no.
167 (2 Dec. 1945): 1. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this call was used to bolster
Vittorini’s vision for an interventionist, evangelical “new culture.” See
Giuseppe Del Bo, “Religione per un comunista,” Il Politecnico 13–14 (22–29
Dec. 1945): 7.
55 Ernesto Buonaiuti, La Chiesa e il comunismo (Rome: Bompiani, 1945), 5–8;
36–7, quoted in Daniela Saresella, Cattolici a sinistra: Dal modernismo ai
giorni nostri (Rome and Bari: Editori Laterza, 2011), 45.
56 As Battini puts it succinctly, “il progetto di una religione civile repubbli-
cana condivisa fallì [the project for a Republican civil religion failed].”
Michele Battini, “Una debole religione politica: il patriottismo costitu
zionale,” in 1945–1946: Le origini della Repubblica, vol. 1, Contesto interna-
zionale e aspetti della transizione, ed. Giancarlo Monina (Soveria Mannelli:
Rubbettino Editore, 2007), 229–38 (231). See, too, Paolo Acanfora,
“Myths and the Political Use of Religion in Christian Democratic Culture,”
Journal of Modern Italian Studies 12, no. 3 (2007): 307–38; Rosaria Leonardi,
“Il sacro come strumento politico: Le elezioni del 1948, la Democrazia
Cristiana e i manifesti elettorali,” California Italian Studies 5, no. 1 (2014):
457–84; Angelo Ventrone, “Fascist legacies: L’antifascismo bloccato in
Italia,” in Antifascismo e identità europea, ed. Alberto De Bernardi and Paolo
Ferrari (Rome: Carocci editore, 2004), 318–40; Robert A. Ventresca,
From Fascism to Democracy: Culture and Politics in the Italian Election of 1948
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004).
57 A similar process of politicization (and political appropriation) of religious
imagery had been central to Italian unification. See Lucy Riall, “Martyr
Cults in Nineteenth-Century Italy,” The Journal of Modern History 82, no. 2
(June 2010): 255–87. On the broader cultural turn of Resistance memory,
see Leonardo Rapone, “Antifascismo e storia d’Italia,” in Fascismo e antifa
scismo: Rimozioni, revisioni, negazioni, ed. Enzo Collotti (Bari: Editori
Laterza, 2000), 219–39 (223–4); Cooke, The Legacy of the Italian Resistance,
77, 87–9; Maurilio Guasco, Politica e religione nel novecento italiano: Momenti e
figure (Turin: Il Segnalibro, 1988), 248.
58 Quoted in Giuseppe Chinnici, Cinema, Chiesa e Movimento Cattolico Italiano
(Rome: Aracne Editrice, 2003), 123.
59 Gian Luigi Rondi, “La terra trema applaudita a Venezia,” Il Tempo, 3 Sept.
1948, quoted in Giori and Subini, “Questioni aperte su La terra trema,” 15;
Franco Fortini, “La pietà e la giustizia,” in Ladri di biciclette di Vittorio De

Sica: Testimonianze, interventi, sopralluoghi, ed. Orio Caldiron and Manuel
De Sica (Rome: Editoriale Pantheon, 1997), 38–9. On the latter film’s
religious symbolism, see Virgilio Fantuzzi, “La religiosità nel cinema di
Vittorio De Sica,” in Vittorio De Sica: L’attore, il regista, l’uomo totale. Atti della
I Rassegna Cinematografica d’Autore. Troina 9/15 dicembre 1996, ed. Isidoro
Giannetto and Giovanni Virgaduala (Troina: Laboratorio per l’Arte e la
Cultura l’Ambiente, 1997), 69–83.
60 On the film’s religious symbolism, see Virgilio Fantuzzi, “Riflessi
dell’iconografia religiosa nel film ‘Roma città aperta’ di Roberto
Rossellini,” La civiltà cattolica 146, no. 4 (4 Nov. 1995): 264–76; David
Bruni, Roberto Rossellini Roma città aperta (Turin: Lindau, 2006), 99–100,
112; Peter Fraser, Images of the Passion: The Sacramental Mode in Film
(Wiltshire: Flicks Books, 1998), 51–2; Marcia Landy, Stardom Italian Style:
Screen Performance and Personality in Italian Cinema (Bloomington and
Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2008), 98–100; Alessio Scarlato,
“Religione,” in Lessico del cinema italiano: Forme di rappresentazione e forme di
vita, ed. Roberto De Gaetano, 3 vols. (Milan: Mimesis, 2016), III: 93–161
(107–8); Sara Pesce, Memoria e immaginario: La seconda guerra mondiale nel
cinema italiano (Genoa: Le Mani, 2008), 50–5.
61 Gian Luigi Rondi, “Cinema italiano oggi,” 56–7; Gian Luigi Rondi,
“Cinema italiano 1945–1951 (il dopoguerra),” 9.
62 JoAnn Cannon, “Resistance Heroes and Resisting Spectators: Reflections
on Rossellini’s Roma, città aperta,” The Italianist 17, no. 1 (1997): 145–75
(149); Re, Calvino and the Age of Neorealism, 113; Brunetta, Storia del cinema
italiano, 473–4; Tag Gallagher, The Adventures of Roberto Rossellini (New York:
Da Capo Press, 1998), 249.
63 Examining the “sacrificial memory” of the Resistance, Schwarz convinc-
ingly argues that “L’Italia repubblicana nata dalla resistenza ebbe in effetti
come suo fondamento il rapporto coi morti, coi martiri e gli eroi della
guerra (e della guerra civile in particolare) [Republican Italy, borne from
the Resistance, effectively had as its foundation a relationship with the
dead, the martyrs and heroes of the war (and especially the civil war)].”
Schwarz, Tu mi devi seppellir, 34.
64 As Mancino puts it, “il film, anziché registrare il clima teso della capitale
occupata dai nazisti, sembrò voler preludere al dopo [the film, rather than
registering the tense climate of the capital under Nazi occupation, seemed
to wish to foreshadow the next phase].” Antonio Giulio Mancino, Il processo
della verità: Le radici del film politico-indiziario italiano (Turin: Kaplan, 2008),
28. See, too, David Forgacs, “Neorealismo, identità nazionale, modernità,”
in Incontro al neorealismo, 41–7 (42–3); Gian Piero Brunetta, “In nome
del padre Roberto....,” in Rossellini: Dal neorealismo alla diffusione della
conoscenza, ed. Pasquale Iaccio (Naples: Liguori Editore, 2006), 1–16 (10);
Pietro Cavallo, Viva l’Italia: Storia, cinema e identità nazionale (1932–1962)
(Naples: Liguori Editore, 2009), 177–8.
65 Stefano Roncoroni, ed., The War Trilogy: Open City, Paisan, Germany – Year
Zero, trans. Judith Green (New York: Grossman Publishers, 1973), 70.
66 Although Perry ascribes more orthodoxy to the civil religion’s appropri-
ation of Christian symbolism than I believe is warranted, he nevertheless
provides what is to my mind the best account of that symbolism’s trans-
formation, explaining that “morire per l’Italia o il Partito non può essere
assimilato al morire per Cristo e la sua chiesa: la sacralizzazione degli eroi
laici si produsse quindi per secolarizzazione di un tratto specifico della
cultura cristiana [dying for Italy or for the Party cannot be equated to
dying for Christ and his Church; the sacralization of lay heroes was thus
produced through the secularization of a specific facet of Christian cul-
ture].” Alan R. Perry, Il santo partigiano martire, 39–40n100. Rancière is per-
haps even closer to the mark when he identifies in Rossellini’s film both
“asceticism and idolatry,” “renunciation and incarnation,” “prayer and
blasphemy.” Jacques Rancière, Film Fables, trans. Emiliano Battista (Oxford
and New York: Berg, 2001), 129–30.
67 On the appropriation of religious imagery in Rossellini’s film, in which
“[a]ll seven sacraments undergo a transformation into their political coun-
terparts,” see Sitney, Vital Crises in Italian Cinema, 41–2. See, too, Tonia
Caterina Riviello, “Rossellini’s Amalgam of Resistance and Religion in
‘Roma, città aperta,’” Italian Culture 14 (1996): 367–84.
68 For a critical response to Vittorini’s appropriation of the partisan
dead, see Giancarlo Vigorelli, “È uscito ‘Il Politecnico,’” Costume 1,
no. 9 (15 Oct. 1945): 4. So far as I am aware, no complete catalogue of
Vittorini’s respondents has yet been produced. At the time, however,
some of the responses provided partial summaries. These can be found,
for instance, in Fortini, “Chiusura di una polemica,” 1; Enzo Forcella,
“Campo della cultura: Una polemica inutile,” Avanti! 3 Nov. 1946, 3; and
Gli Osservatori, “Qualcuno ha risposto a Vittorini,” Il Costume politico e let-
terario 2 (Oct. 1947): 91–3. Some of these contain references that were not
included in the retrospective summaries, such as those found in Raffaele
Crovi, Il lungo viaggio di Vittorini: Una biografia critica (Venice: Marsilio
Editori, 1998), 240; Alfonso Botti, “Politica togliattiana e ‘corrente
Politecnico’: Religione, DC, questione cattolica,” Il Ponte 36, nos. 7–8
(July–Aug., 1980): 709–22 (715n25); and Raffaela Rodondi, in Vittorini,
Letteratura arte società, 236–7, 255–6.
69 Rosario Assunto, “Fedeltà della cultura,” Comunità 2, no. 15 (26 July
1947): 5; Sergio Solmi, “Lettera a Marco Valsecchi,” originally published
in Uomo, Dec. 1945, reprinted in Letteratura e società: Saggi sul fantastico, La
Responsabilità della cultura, Scritti di argomento storico e politico, ed. Giovanni

Pacchiano (Milan: Adelphi, 2000), 432–9 (434). For representative Marxist
attacks on Vittorini’s essay, see Cesare Luporini, “Rigore della cultura,”
Società 2 (Jan.–March 1946): 5–17 (10); Fabrizio Onofri, “Lettera a un
intellettuale del nord,” Risorgimento 1, no. 4 (July 1945): 323–32 (330).
For examples of the criticisms mounted against Vittorini’s proposal
on religious grounds, see also Ferrante Azzali, “Cultura e rivoluzione,”
La Fiera letteraria 1, no. 13 (4 July 1946): 1; Giuseppe Sala, “Comunismo
e cultura,” Il Commento 2, no. 20 (16 Oct. 1945): 444; Augusto Del Noce,
“Di una nuova cultura,” originally published in Il Popolo Nuovo 1, no.
137 (6–7 Oct. 1945), reprinted in Scritti politici 1930–1950, ed. Tommaso
Dell’Era (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino Editore, 2001), 97–9 (97); Bruno
Romani, “Cultura e no,” Domenica 2, no. 42 (21 Oct. 1945): 4; Arrigonio,
“Colloqui,” L’Osservatore Romano, 29 Oct. 1945, 2.
70 Carlo Bo, “Cristo non è cultura,” originally published in Costume 1, no.
9 (15 Oct. 1945), reprinted in Letteratura come vita, ed. Sergio Pautasso
(Milan: Rizzoli, 1994), 1167–73.
71 In addition to Bo, see, for instance, Guglielmo Usellini, “Cultura vecchia e
nuova,” La Lettura 1, no. 14 (15 Nov. 1945): 3; David Maria Turoldo, “Cristo e
cultura,” L’Uomo: Pagine di vita morale 3, no. 14 (8 Dec. 1945): 2, partially repro-
duced in Daniela Saresella, David M. Turoldo, Camillo De Piaz e la Corsia dei
servi di Milano (1943–1963) (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2008), 107; A.B., “Così per
dire...” Il Commento 2, no. 24 (16 Dec. 1945): 535; Enzo Petrini, “Nonvalore del
frontismo culturale,” Humanitas 1, no. 6 (June 1946): 615–16 (615).
72 Bo, “Cristo non è cultura,” 1167.
75 Vittorini, “Polemica e no per una nuova cultura,” 252.
76 Bo, “Cristo non è cultura,” 1172. This statement came from Bo’s second
reply to Vittorini, which has subsequently been republished along with the
first as one essay and is here cited as such. Originally it was published as
Carlo Bo and Giancarlo Vigorelli, “Due risposte chiarificatrici,” Costume 11
(December 1945): 17.
77 Carlo Bo, “Letteratura come vita,” originally published in Frontespizio (Sept.
1939), reprinted in Letteratura come vita, 5–16. For Bo’s essay as “Magna
Carta,” see Massimo Caprara, “Rinascita dell’ermetismo?” Rinascita 5, no. 1
(Jan. 1948): 20. For interpretations of the essay and attestations to its status
as manifesto, see Niva Lorenzini, La poesia italiana del Novecento (Bologna:
Il Mulino, 1999), 108–10; Beatrice Stasi, Ermetismo (Florence: La Nuova
Italia, 2000), 90.
78 On this point, see Donato Valli, Storia degli ermetici (Brescia: Editrice La
Scuola, 1978), 198–203; and Caterina Verbaro, “Il dibattito letterario: Idee,
poetiche, movimenti, gruppi lettarari a confronto dal secondo dopoguerra

ai primi anni Settanta,” in Storia letteraria d’Italia: Il Novecento, ed. Giorgio
Luti (Padua: Piccin Nuova Libraria, 1993), 1309–61 (1318).
79 Siti, Il neorealismo nella poesia italiana, 167; Turconi, La poesia neorealista ita
liana, 165; Anna Dolfi, “Ermetismo e ‘realismo’: Ragioni e modi di una
crisi interna,” in Les Réalismes dans les années 1940, 135–51.
80 As Mario Luzi once put it, “alla base c’è quella insoddisfazione totale della
realtà storica (inclusa la politica, naturalmente, ma vorrei adoperare la
parola ‘storica’ perché è più vasta) [at its foundation there is that total
dissatisfaction with historical reality (including politics, of course, but
I would prefer to use the word ‘historical’ because it is more extensive)].”
“Che cosa è stato l’ermetismo? Dibattito letterario al Gabinetto Vieusseux
tenuto a Firenze il 21 febbraio 1968,” L’approdo letterario 14, no. 42 (1968):
99–120 (103).
81 Bo “Che cos’era l’assenza [1945],” in Letteratura come vita, 76–103; Bo, “Per
la prima ragione,” originally published in Campo di Marte 1, no. 4 (1938),
reprinted in Campo di Marte trent’anni dopo, 105–6 (105).
82 Stefanile, “Lezione di una guerra,” 2; Mario Alinei, “Osservatorio,” La
Strada 1, no. 1 (April–May 1946): 78–81 (81). See, too, Antonio Russi,
“Svolta della poesia,” Mercurio (March–April 1945): 139–41 (140);
Ferdinando Giannesi, “Necrologio dell’ermetismo? (Lettera di un gio-
vane),” Belfagor 1, no. 2 (15 March 1946): 258–62.
83 Maria Poma, “La poesia ‘oscura,’” Agorà 3, no. 1 (1947): 26–9 (26); Mario
Apollonio, Ermetismo (Padua: Cedam, 1945), 97–9; Toti Scialoja, “Appunti
per un primo bilancio ad uno del Nord,” Mercurio 2, no. 9 (May 1945):
145–50 (147).
84 Goffredo Bellonci, “Le vicende del romanzo negli ultimi cinquant’anni,”
Ulisse 10 (1956–7): 918–42 (942, emphasis in the original). Bellonci had
already identified the same literary dichotomy, but at this time in the neg-
ative – “l’io e non il noi [the I and not the we]” – ten years before the publica-
tion of this essay, in Goffredo Bellonci, “Cronaca bianca e nera del 1946
letterario,” Mercurio 3, nos. 27–8 (Nov.–Dec. 1946): 153–65 (155).
85 Brunello Rondi, Il neorealismo italiano (Parma: Ugo Guanda, 1956), 75.
86 Angelo Paoluzzi, La letteratura della Resistenza (Florence: Edizioni 5 Lune,
1956), 56. On the development from “I” to “we” in post-war Italian poetry,
see Siti, Il neorealismo nella poesia italiana, 27–37. For the same development
in Italian prose, see Giancarlo Bertoncini, “‘Scrivere con l’acqua’: Del
romanzo neorealista negli anni ’40,” in Les Réalismes dans les Années 1940,
93–133 (101).
87 Salvatore Quasimodo, “Discorso sulla poesia,” in Poesie e discorsi sulla poesia
(Milan: Mondadori, 1971), 283–93 (291).
88 De Micheli, “Realismo e poesia,” 37.
89 Francesco Jovine, “Le due Italie,” originally published in Domenica,

17 Sept. 1944, reprinted in Scritti critici, 478–81 (480–1).
90 Francesco Jovine, “Rientrare nel circolo,” Il mondo europeo, 15 April 1947.
91 In order, the three quotations come from Luciano Malaspina, “Il dramma
della solitudine,” Libera arte 1, no. 1 (15 May 1946): 1; Mario Alicata,
“Plausi e botte,” in Intellettuali e azione politica (Rome: Editori Riuniti,
1976), 9–10; Apollonio, Ermetismo, 101. On this point, see Re, Calvino and
the Age of Neorealism, 52; Silvio Ramat, L’Ermetismo (Florence: La Nuova
Italia Editrice, 1969), 380; Antonielli, Letteratura del disagio, 53; Antonio
Russi, introduction to Gli anni della Antialienazione (Dall’Ermetismo al
Neorealismo) (Milan: Mursia, 1967), v–xii (vi).
92 Tommaso Giglio, “Momento polemico della poesia,” Sud 1, nos. 3–4
(15 Jan. 1946): 1–2.
93 See, for instance, Marina Zancan, “Tra vero e bello, documento e arte,” in
Cinema e letteratura del neorealismo, 39–77 (46); Steimatsky, Italian Locations,
79–116; Benussi, L’età del neorealismo, 103–4; Corti, Il viaggio testuale,
49–50; Gian Piero Brunetta, “Il lungo viaggio del cinema neorealista,”
in NeoRealismo: La nuova immagine in Italia 1932–1960, ed. Enrica Viganò
(Milan: Admira, 2006), 31–9 (35); Pierre Sorlin, “Ce qu’on a appelé
‘néoréalisme cinématographique,’” Cahiers d’études italiennes 28 (2019):
1–16 (6–9).
94 On “choral” literature, see Goffredo Bellonci, in “Italo Calvino tra i
contemporanei,” 105–6; Bocelli, “Letteratura della resistenza,” 8. On
“choral” theatre, see “Ieri a Forlì: S’è aperto il Convegno del Teatro di
massa,” L’Unità, 21 Dec. 1951: 3; Francesco Jovine, “Malinconico bilan-
cio,” originally published in La Nuova Europa, 26 Aug. 1945, reprinted in
Cronache teatrali: Commedie inedite e cronache teatrali, by Francesco Jovine,
ed. Francesco D’Episcopo (Ravenna: Longo Editore, 1983), 358–60. On
“choral” art, see Salvatore Quasimodo, “Antologia di otto pittori [1950],”
in Il poeta e il politico e altri saggi (Milan: Mondadori, 1967), 257–61 (259).
On “choral” architecture, see G. Michelucci, “Come ho progettato la
chiesa della Vergine,” L’architettura. Cronache e Storia 16 (1957), cited in
Bascherini, Da Pagano al Neorealismo, 51.
95 Carlo Lizzani, “L’apparenza del coro nel cinema italiano,” L’Unità, 11 May
1948, 3
96 Mario Verdone, Il cinema neorealista da Rossellini a Pasolini (Trapani:
Celebes, 1977), 16 (emphasis in the original).
97 This is not to say, however, that chorality was a post-war invention. It was
a descriptor used to define Verga’s nineteenth-century verismo, and was
invoked with relative frequency, as well, to define Fascist cinema. See, for
instance, D’Errico’s description of Forzano’s hagiographical depiction of
Fascism’s triumphant reforms, 1933’s Camicia nera, as “eminentemente
corale [eminently choral],” a judgment that would not have been out of
place had it been applied, just over a decade later, to a neorealist film.
D’Errico, “Camicia nera, il grande film della nuova Italia,” 160. The dif-
ference between Fascist and neorealist chorality, I would argue, was not
technical or formal but ideological, since with neorealism it was most
often the expression of a conversion to the struggle to free Italy from
Fascist influence.
98 Gian Luigi Rondi, “Il cinema italiano realistico,” 5.
99 Gian Luigi Rondi, “Il cinema italiano realistico,” 5.
100 On the neorealist creation of an imagined community, see Restivo, The
Cinema of Economic Miracles, 24–5. On the political function of chorality and
its role in creating such a community, see Joseph Luzzi, A Cinema of Poetry:
Aesthetics of the Italian Art Film (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
2014), 20; and Elizabeth Alsop, “The Imaginary Crowd: Neorealism and
the Uses of Coralità,” The Velvet Light Trap 74 (Fall 2014): 27–41 (28–9).
102 As Guaiana puts it, “in the republican liturgical calendar collective
martyrdom was more relevant than individual martyrdom.” Guaiana, “The
Formation of a Civil Religion in Republican Italy,” 349.
103 See Robert C. Pirro, The Politics of Tragedy and Democratic Citizenship
(New York and London: Continuum, 2011), 69–70; and Charles L. Leavitt
IV, “Notes on the End of Rome Open City,” Journal of Italian Cinema and
Media Studies 6, no. 3 (July 2018): 359–72.
104 Franco Fortini, “Il silenzio d’Italia II,” originally published in Rivista della
Svizzera Italiana 4 (30–31 May 1944), reprinted in Saggi ed epigrammi, ed.
Luca Lenzini (Milan: Mondadori, 2003), 1218–14 (1223, emphasis in the
original).
105 Bandinelli, “L’impegno degli intellettuali,” 577.
106 “Situazione,” Società 1, nos. 1–2 (1945): 3–7 (6). See, too, the call for
culture to become “service” in Igino Giordani, “Servizio della cultura,”
Il Campo 1, nos. 1–2 (Jan.–Feb. 1946): 5–8.
107 Giaime Pintor, “L’ultima lettera [28 Nov. 1943],” in Il sangue d’Europa,
183–8 (187).
108 Vittorini “Una nuova cultura, ” 236.
109 Gian Piero Brunetta, Guida alla storia del cinema italiano 1905–2003 (Turin:
Einaudi, 2003), 151; Wagstaff, Italian Neorealist Cinema, 88–91; Corti, Il viag-
gio testuale, 74–5; Forgacs, “Neorealismo, identità nazionale, modernità,”
42; Lorenzo Marmo, Roma e il cinema del dopoguerra: Neorealismo, melo-
dramma, noir (Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 2018), 58.
110 Erich Auerbach, Literary Language and Its Public in Late Latin Antiquity
and in the Middle Ages, trans. Ralph Manheim (New York: Random House,
1965), 37, 65.
111 Pier Paolo Pasolini, “Nota su Le notti” originally published in Federico Fellini:
Le notti di Cabiria, ed. Lino Del Fra (Bologna: Cappelli, 1957), reprinted
in Saggi sulla letteratura e sull’arte, ed. Walter Siti and Silvia De Laude, 2 vols.
(Milan: Mondadori, 1999), I: 699–707 (702–3).
112 On Pasolini’s debts to Auerbach, in this analysis and throughout his lit-
erary corpus, see Alessandro Cadoni, “‘Mescolanza’ e ‘contaminazione’
degli stili: Pasolini lettore di Auerbach,” Studi pasoliniani 5 (2011): 79–94;
Emanuela Patti, Pasolini after Dante: The ‘Divine Mimesis’ and the Politics of
Representation (Leeds: Legenda, 2015).
113 “Per una poesia nuova,” La Strada 1, no. 1 (April–May 1946): 3–18 (16).
114 Bocelli’s comments were delivered in Bo, Inchiesta sul neorealismo, 24; Assunto,
“Le poetiche dello scriver male,” 5–6. See, too, Giacinto Spagnoletti, “Narratori
allo sbaraglio,” originally published in Il Nuovo Corriere, 11 Aug. 1948, reprinted
in Autobiografia di un giornale, 146–8 (147); Eurialo De Michelis, Novecento e din-
torni: Dal Carducci al neorealismo (Milan: Mursia, 1976), 202–3.
115 Vasco Pratolini, Cronache di poveri amanti [1946], in Romanzi, ed. Francesco
Paolo Memmo, 2 vols. (Milan: Mondadori, 1993), I: 587–1019 (966).
116 “Stile e maniera,” 3; Pietrangeli, “ ‘I Malavoglia’ di Verga sullo schermo,”
110; “Nomi, possibilità del cinema italiano,” 10.
117 Mario Casagrande, “Realismo ed arte,” originally published in Darsena
Nuova 2, no. 1 (March 1946), reprinted in Darsena Nuova: Ristampa ana
statica dei cinque numeri 1945–1946 (Viareggio and Lucca: Mauro Baroni,
1997), 85–7 (87).
119 For a significant attempt by a Catholic critic to lay claim to neorealism’s
Christian humility, see Félix A. Morlion, “Presupposti cristiani nel realismo
italiano,” Sequenze 2, no. 7 (1950): 27–9 (28). On the conflict over neoreal-
ism within Catholic culture, see Tomaso Subini, La doppia vita di ‘Francesco
giullare di Dio’: Giulio Andreotti, Félix Morlion e Roberto Rossellini (Milan:
Libraccio, 2011), 34–44; Daniela Treveri Gennari, Post-War Italian Cinema:
American Intervention, Vatican Interests (New York and London: Routledge,
2009), 113; Elena Dagrada, “A Triple Alliance for a Catholic Neorealism:
Roberto Rossellini According to Félix Morlion, Giulio Andreotti and Gian
Luigi Rondi,” in Moralizing Cinema: Film, Catholicism and Power, ed. Daniel
Biltereyst and Daniela Treveri Gennari (New York and London: Routledge,
2015), 114–34; Mariagrazia Fanchi, “Non censurare, ma educare! L’esercizio
cinematografico cattolico e il suo progetto culturale e sociale,” in Attraverso
lo schermo: Cinema e cultura cattolica in Italia, ed. Ruggero Eugeni and Dario
E. Viganò, 2 vols. (Rome: Ente dello Spettacolo, 2006), II: 103–13.
120 On this law and its impact on the financing of Italian cinema, see Lorenzo
Quaglietti, “Il cinema italiano di Giulio Andreotti,” in Storia economico-po-
litica del cinema italiano 1945–1980 (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1980), 52–73;
Barbara Corsi, Con qualche dollaro in meno: Storia economica del cinema italiano
(Rome: Editori Riuniti, 2001), 49–50; Giovanni Sedita, “Giulio Andreotti e
il Neorealismo: De Sica, Rossellini, Visconti e la guerra fredda al cinema,”
Nuova Storia contemporanea 16, no. 1 (Jan.–Feb. 2012): 51–70.
121 Giulio Andreotti, “I film italiani nella polemica parlamentare,” origi-
nally published in Bianco e nero (Dec. 1948), reprinted in Gobetti et al.,
Neorealismo D.O.C., 166–7.
122 Giulio Andreotti, “Piaghe sociali e necessità di redenzione,” originally pub-
lished in Libertas, 28 Feb. 1952, reprinted in Storia del cinema italiano, vol. 8,
1949/1953, ed Luciano De Giusti (Venice: Marsilio Editori, 2003), 563–4
(563). Brunetta argues that “La lettera a De Sica [...] si può considerare
come l’enciclica cinematografica del pontificato di Andreotti [the letter
to De Sica (...) can be considered Andreotti’s cinematic papal encyclical].”
Brunetta, Storia del cinema italiano, 93.
123 Andreotti’s letter is quoted in Sedita, “Giulio Andreotti e il neorealismo,” 53.
124 See Mario Alicata, “La corrente ‘Politecnico,’” originally published in
Rinascita 3, nos. 5–6 (May–June, 1946), reprinted in Scritti letterari (Milan:
Il Saggiatore, 1968), 243–5. Even at the time, this essay was interpreted
as an official rebuke and a sign of Vittorini’s break with the party. See
the unsigned “La sconfessione,” La Fiera letteraria 1, no. 17 (1 Aug. 1946):
8. On the effect of this rebuke on Vittorini’s fate, and on the fate of his
journal, see Bonsaver, Eltio Vittorini, 156–62; Marina Zancan, Il progetto
‘Politecnico’: Cronaca e strutture di una rivista (Venice: Marsilio Editori, 1984),
104–26; Gian Carlo Ferretti, L’editore Vittorini (Turin: Einaudi, 1992),
99–114; Elisabetta Mondello, L’avventura delle riviste: Periodici e giornali lette
rari del Novecento (Rome: Robin Edizioni, 2012), 242–50.
125 See Elio Vittorini, “Politica e cultura,” originally published in Il Politecnico
31–2 (July–Aug. 1946), reprinted in Letteratura arte società, 303–9; Palmiro
Togliatti, “La battaglia delle idee: Lettera a Elio Vittorini,” Rinascita 3,
no. 10 (Oct. 1946): 284–5. Togliatti’s response “revealed a change in the
PCI’s attitude towards the intelligentsia.” See Aldo Agosti, Palmiro Togliatti:
A Biography (New York and London: I.B. Tauris, 2008), 181. See, too,
Giuseppe Vacca, “Alcuni temi della politica culturale di Togliatti (1945–
1956),” in I corsivi di Roderigo: Interventi politico-culturali dal 1944 al 1964.
ed. Ottavio Cecchi, Giovanni Leone, and Giuseppe Vaca (Bari: De Donato,
1976), 5–122; Ajello, Intellettuali e PCI, 113–38; Luperini, Gli intellettuali di
sinistra, 83–90; Sergio Bertelli, Il gruppo: La formazione del gruppo dirigente del
PCI 1936–1948 (Milan: Rizzoli, 1980), 319–25; Stephen Gundle, Between
Hollywood and Moscow: The Italian Communists and the Challenge of Mass
Culture, 1943–1991 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000), 24–31.
126 Among those who interpret the letter along the lines I have suggested, as
a bid for power, see Matteo Di Giorgio, L’Impegno politico di Elio Vittorini
(Taranto: Edizioni Cressati, 1972), 19–20; Mario Valente, Ideologia e potere:

Da ‘Il Politecnico’ a ‘Contropiano,’ 1945/1972 (Turin: ERI, 1978), 40.
127 Elio Vittorini, “Politica e cultura. Lettera a Togliatti,” originally published
in Il Politecnico 35 (Jan.–March, 1947), reprinted in Letteratura arte società,
394–419 (406). I am far from the first to read this letter in the context of
neorealism’s cultural politics. See especially Adelio Ferrero, “La ‘coscienza
di sé’: Ideologie e verità del neorealismo,” in Il neorealismo cinematografico
italiano, 229–49 (248).
128 Cesare Pavese, Il mestiere di vivere (Diario 1935–1950) (Turin: Einaudi,
1967), 329 (5 March 1948). See, too, two alternative articulations of the
same idea: Cesare Pavese, “Ritorno all’uomo,” originally published in
L’Unità, 20 May 1945, reprinted in La letteratura americana, 197–9 (198);
Cesare Pavese, “Il comunismo e gli intellettuali [14–16 April, 1946],” in
La letteratura americana, 207–16 (214–15).
129 See, on this point, Asor Rosa’s trenchant criticism: “l’intellettuale [del
dopoguerra] va verso il popolo, ma il più delle volte, prima ancora di raggiun-
gerlo concretamente e seriamente lo trasforma in mito, in immagine rovesciata di sé
[the (post-war) intellectual goes towards the people, but most of the time,
before reaching them concretely and seriously, he transforms them into a myth, an
upside-down version of himself ].” Asor Rosa, Scrittori e popolo, 130 (emphasis
in the original). On intellectual appeals to the “popolo,” see too Giulia
Bassi, Non è solo questione di classe: Il “popolo” nel discorso del Partito comunista
italiano (1921–1991) (Rome: Viella, 2019).
130 Antonio Banfi, “Il problema etico-sociale della cultura popolare,” originally
published in Atti del primo Congresso nazionale della cultura popolare (Milan:
Vallardi, 1948), reprinted in Scritti e discorsi politici, vol. I., Scuola e società, ed.
Alberto Burgio (Bologna: Istituto Antonio Banfi, 1987), 58–67 (63).
131 Cesare Zavattini, “L’Associazione culturale cinematografica italiana,” in
Cinema: Diario cinematografico e Neorealismo ecc., 662–6 (663–4). On the con-
ference’s importance for neorealism, see Virgilio Tosi, Quando il cinema
era un circolo: La stagione d’oro dei Cineclub (1945–1956) (Venice: Marsilio
Editori, 2000), 19–20. On the complexities of Zavattini’s adoption of a
popular voice, see Giorgio Bertellini, “Il ‘popolare’ fra immagine e parola:
Note sparse su neorealismo, Gramsci e le belle bugie di Zavattini,” in
“Diviso in due”. Cesare Zavattini: cinema e cultura popolare, ed. Pierluigi Ercole
(Reggio Emilia: Edizioni Diabasis, 1999), 108–19.
132 Alfonso Gatto, “La Resistenza è appena incominciata,” L’Unità, 4 July 1947, 1.
133 La Rosa traces throughout Gatto’s pre-war poetry “l’esigenza di
un’inquadratura che distanzi l’io dalla realtà [the search for a frame that
can distance the I from reality].” Franco Pappalardo La Rosa, Alfonso
Gatto: Dal surrealismo d’idillio alla poetica delle “vittime” (Alessandria: Edizioni
dell’Orso, 2007), 11.
134 On Gatto’s Hermeticist anti-Fascism see Giovanni Sedita, “Scrittori e poli-

zia fascista: Battaglie letterarie sotto il regime,” Strumenti critici 23, no. 2
(May 2008): 271–83 (280–1); Bartolo Pento, Alfonso Gatto (Florence: Il
Castoro, 1972), 11–12. On his subsequent participation in the Resistance,
see Emilio Giordano, “Poesia ‘resistenziale’ di Alfonso Gatto: Un contri
buto,” in Stratigrafia di un poeta: Alfonso Gatto. Atti del Convegno nazionale di
studi su Alfonso Gatto (Salerno–Maiori–Amalfi, 8–9–10 aprile 1978), ed. Pietro
Borraro and Francesco D’Episcopo (Galatina: Congedo Editore, 1980),
299–322 (304).
135 G.P., “Le poesie di Gatto: Un poeta parla di sé e del suo lavoro,” L’Unità,
23 Nov. 1947, 3.
136 Alfonso Gatto, introduction to Il capo sulla neve: Liriche della Resistenza
(Milan: Toffaloni, 1950), 9–12 (9). First published as Alfonso Gatto,
“L’uomo è stato offeso,” Il Settimanale 1, no. 5 (26 Oct. 1946).
137 On the connection with Vittorini, see Anna Modena, Alfonso Gatto a Milano
(Pisa: Pacini Editore, 2010), 73–7.
138 As Benevento puts it, in this collection “[i]l linguaggio lascia cadere ora i
tratti più vistosi dell’ermetismo, acquistando in evidenza e immediatezza e
accostandosi a quello del neorealismo [the language now drops the most
prominent features of Hermeticism, taking on evidence and immediacy
and approaching the language of neorealism].” Aurelio Benevento, “‘Il
capo sulla neve’: La poesia senza rima di Alfonso Gatto,” Critica letteraria
34, no. 4 (2006): 739–49 (748).
139 Alfonso Gatto, “Per i martiri di Piazzale Loreto,” in Tutte le poesie, ed. Silvio
Ramat (Milan: Mondadori, 2005), 242.
140 Alfonso Gatto, “Per i martiri di Piazzale Loreto,” in The Wall Did Not
Answer: Selected Poems 1932–1976, trans. Philip Parisi (New York: Chelsea
Editions, 2011), 70–3 (71).
141 Gatto, “Per i martiri di Piazzale Loreto,” in Tutte le poesie, 242.
142 Gatto, “Per i martiri di Piazzale Loreto,” in The Wall Did Not Answer, 73.
143 Massimo Bontempelli, preface to Il capo sulla neve, 5–7 (5).
144 Italo Calvino, “La letteratura italiana sulla Resistenza,” originally published
in Il movimento di liberazione in Italia 1, no. 1 (July 1949), reprinted in Saggi
1945–1985, I: 1492–500 (1494).
145 Vasco Pratolini, “Alfonso Gatto,” in Stratigrafia di un poeta: Alfonso Gatto,
405–18 (417).
146 Alfonso Gatto, ed., Il coro della guerra: Venti storie parlate raccolte da A. Pacifici
e R. Macrelli (Bari: Editori Laterza, 1963).
147 Aldo Vergano, “Aldo Vergano ci parla del suo film ‘Il sole sorge
ancora,’” Libera arte 1, no. 1 (15 May 1946): 2; Massimo Mida, review of
Il sole sorge ancora, by Aldo Vergano, originally published in La critica cine
matografica 1, nos. 3–4 (Sept. 1946), reprinted in La Resistenza nel cinema
italiano del dopoguerra, 61; Augusto Borselli, “Milano ‘Gira,’” Star 2,

no. 48 (22 Dec. 1945): 4.
148 Dario Martinelli Give Peace a Chant: Popular Music, Politics and Social Protest
(New York: Springer, 2017), 169–70.
149 This scene would seem to confirm Lunghi’s assertion that in neorealist
films, “Anche per la musica si tratta di uscire [...] dal particolare al ‘tutti’
[For music, too, it is a question of leaving behind (...) the particular for
the ‘whole’].” Lunghi, “La musica e il neo-realismo,” 58.
150 In Italian the same word, “noi,” refers both to “we” and to “us.” This is the
word Cesare attributes to Beppe.
151 Arturo Lanocita, review of Il sole sorge ancora, by Aldo Vergano, originally
published in Corriere della Sera, 12 Jan. 1947, reprinted in La Resistenza nel
cinema italiano 1945–1995, ed. Mauro Manciotti and Aldo Viganò (Genoa:
Istituto storico della Resistenza in Liguria, 1995), 55.
152 Carlo Lizzani, Il mio lungo viaggio nel secolo breve (Turin: Einaudi, 2007), 66.
153 See especially Béla Balázs, Theory of the Film: Character and Growth of a
New Art, trans. Edith Bone (New York: Dover Publications, 1970), 203;
Canziani, Gli anni del neorealismo, 153–4; and Fernaldo Di Giammatteo, Lo
sguardo inquieto: Storia del cinema italiano (1940–1990) (Florence: La Nuova
Italia Editrice, 1994), 79.
154 On Alessandrini’s removal in favour of Vegano, see the 1945 exchange of
letters between the ANPI and Giorgio Agliani in “Fondo Agliani,” Il Nuovo
Spettatore 7 (2003): 39–112 (esp. 42, 44).
Conclusion
1 “Stile e maniera,” 3.
2 Vittorio Calvino, Guida al cinema, 339. See, too, the essays in Luigi Chiarini,
ed., Il film del dopoguerra, 1945–1949 (Rome: Bianco e Nero, 1949).
3 Venturini, “Origini del neorealismo,” 31–54; Anna Banti, “Neorealismo
nel cinema italiano,” originally published in Paragone 1, no. 8 (1950),
reprinted in Opinioni (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1961), 90–101; Chiarini,
“Discorso sul neorealismo,” 3–25.
4 Blasetti and Gian Luigi Rondi, eds., Cinema italiano oggi; Massimo Mida,
Roberto Rossellini (Parma: Guanda, 1953); Elia Santoro, ed., Realismo del
cinema italiano (Cremona: Pubblitur, 1954); Carlo Lizzani, Il cinema italiano
(Florence: Parenti, 1954); Mario Gromo, Cinema italiano: 1903–1953 (Milan:
Mondadori, 1954); Giulio Cesare Castello, Il cinema neorealistico italiano
(Turin: Edizioni Radio Italiana, 1956); Brunello Rondi, Il neorealismo italiano.
5 Among those who credited foreign critics with the discovery of Italian neore-
alism, see Luigi Comencini, “Che cosa vuole il pubblico?” originally published
in Tempo Nuovo, 21 Dec. 1946, reprinted in Al cinema con cuore: 1938–1974,
ed. Adriano Aprà (Milan: Editrice Il Castoro, 2007), 70–1; Mario Gromo,
“Hollywood contro Venezia: Gli italiani incapaci di giudicare i film di una
libera democrazia?” La Nuova Stampa 4, no. 221 (29 Sept. 1948): 3. This
claim has been repeated in many recent studies, including Alberto Pezzotta,
La critica cinematografica (Rome: Carocci editore, 2007), 30. On the essential
differences between the French and Italian critical receptions of Italian neo-
realism, see especially Alessia Ricciardi, “The Italian Redemption of Cinema:
Neorealism from Bazin to Godard,” Romanic Review 97, nos. 3–4 (May–Nov.
2006): 483–500.
6 Alan O’Leary and Catherine O’Rawe, “Against Realism: On a ‘Certain
Tendency’ in Italian Film Criticism,” Journal of Modern Italian Studies 16,
no. 1 (2011): 107–28 (117, 127).
7 Cesare Zavattini, “Il cinema e l’uomo moderno,” 680.
8 On the shift that took place at this time, see also Parigi, Neorealismo:
Il nuovo cinema del dopoguerra, 56; Vito Zagarrio, “La generazione del neore-
alismo di fronte agli anni cinquanta,” in Il cinema italiano degli anni ’50, ed.
Giorgio Tinazzi (Venice: Marsilio Editori, 1979), 99–116 (101–2).
9 For Aristarco’s proposed program, see the documents contained in the
section entitled “La polemica su ‘Senso,’” which were originally published
in the journal Cinema Nuovo and can now be found in Storia del cinema
italiano, vol. 9, 1954/1959, ed. Sandro Bernardi (Venice: Marsilio Editore,
2004), 549–55. For Salinari’s, see his Preludio e fine del realismo in Italia
(Naples: Morano Editore, 1967), 107–27. For the impact of these two crit-
ics on the institution of neorealism, see Paolo Paolini, “Tra le polemiche
su ‘Metello’ e quelle sul ‘Gattopardo’: La fine del neorealismo,” Otto/
Novecento 26, no. 3 (2002): 47–69.
10 On these diverse genres, see especially Alberto Farassino, “Viraggi del neo-
realismo: Rosa e altri colori,” in Storia del cinema italiano, vol. 8, 1949/1953,
ed. Luciano De Giusti (Venice: Marsilio Editori, 2003), 203–22.
11 Giuseppe De Santis, “È in crisi il neorealismo?” originally published
in Filmcritica 4 (March–April 1951), reprinted in Neorealismo: Poetiche e pole
miche, 136–43; Luigi Chiarini, “La crisi c’è,” originally published in
Filmcritica 5 (1951), reprinted in Sul neorealismo: Testi e documenti (1939–
1955) (Pesaro: Quaderno Informativo 59, 1974), 161–3.
12 See Miccichè, “Il cinema italiano sotto il fascismo,” 38–9.
13 Andreotti, “I film italiani nella polemica parlamentare,” 166–7.
14 “Manifesto del Movimento per la difesa del cinema italiano [22 Feb.
1948],” in Storia del cinema italiano, vol. 7, 1945/1948, ed. Callisto Cosulich.
(Venice: Marsilio Editore), 546–7.
15 Cesare Zavattini, “Tesi sul neorealismo,” originally published in Emilia
17 (Nov. 1953), reprinted in Cinema: Diario cinematografico e Neorealismo ecc.,
741–52 (741).
16 “Più che una bandiera,” originally published in Cinema Nuovo 26 (31 Dec.
1953), reprinted in Sul neorealismo: Testi e documenti (1939–1955), 239.
17 On this “‘patrimonizzazione’ del neorealismo [‘patrimonization’ of
neorealism],” see Michele Guerra, “Introduzione: Ancora di neorealismo e
di cinema italiano,” in Invenzioni dal vero, 11–19 (13).
18 Noto and Pitassio, Il cinema neorealista, vii.
19 Fanara, Pensare il neorealismo, 22–3.
20 Donatella Spinelli Coleman, Filming the Nation: Jung, Film, Neo-realism and
Italian National Identity (London and New York: Routledge, 2011), 69.
21 Falaschi, Realtà e retorica, 7.
22 Wagstaff, Italian Neorealist Cinema, 184.
23 As Sklar succinctly puts it, neorealism is supposed to offer “a template
for filmmaking practices that could succeed apart from or in opposi-
tion to U.S. global market dominance and Hollywood’s industrial style.”
Robert Sklar, “‘The Exalted Spirit of the Actual’: James Agee, Critic and
Filmmaker, and the U.S. Response to Neorealism,” in Global Neorealism,
71–86 (71). For similar claims, see Laura E. Ruberto and Kristi M. Wilson,
“Introduction,” in Italian Neorealism and Global Cinema, 1–24 (10).
24 See Lorenzo Quaglietti, Ecco i nostri: L’invasione del cinema americano in Italia
(Turin: Nuova ERI, 1991), 79; Gian Piero Brunetta, “La lunga marcia del
cinema americano in Italia tra fascismo e guerra fredda,” in Hollywood in
Europa: Industria, politica, pubblico del cinema 1945–1960, ed. David W. Ellwood
and Gian Piero Brunetta (Florence: La Casa Usher, 1991), 75–87 (80–2).
25 Vincent F. Rocchio, “Patriarchy Has Failed Us: The Continuing Legacy
of Neorealism in Contemporary Italian Film,” Quarterly Review of Film and
Video 29, no. 2 (2012): 147–62 (148).
26 This account is repeated, for instance, in Haaland, Italian Neorealist
Cinema, 129.
27 Mario Verdone, “De Sica ‘ladro onorario’: Dalle biciclette ai clowns,” orig-
inally published in Il Progresso d’Italia, 20 Dec. 1948, reprinted in Ladri di
biciclette: Nuove ricerche, 139–41 (141). A detailed archival reconstruction of
these complex negotiations can be found in Steve Eaton, “To Catch a Bicycle
Thief: David O. Selznick’s Failed Attempt to Co-Opt the Neorealist Classic,”
The Italianist 39, no. 2 (2019): 222–30. See, too, Henri Agel, Vittorio De Sica
(Paris: Èditions Universitaires, 1955), 87; Alonge, Vittorio De Sica, 19; David
Forgacs and Stephen Gundle, Mass Culture and Italian Society from Fascism
to the Cold War (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press,
2007), 139; Elisa Baldini, “Ladri di biciclette e l’America: Ovvero l’arte della
realtà e il commercio del reale,” in Ladri di biciclette: Nuove ricerche, 60–6.
28 For noteworthy analyses of aspects of this dialogue, see Jurij Lotman,
Semiotics of Cinema, trans. Mark E. Suino (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 1981), 21; Kristin Thompson, Breaking the Glass Armor:
Neoformalist Film Analysis (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,

1988), 205; Marilyn Fabe, Closely Watched Films: An Introduction to the Art of
Narrative Film Technique (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004),
106; Veronica Pravadelli, “Neorealismo e cinema hollywoodiano: Identità
collettiva, immaginario e stili di regia,” in Incontro al neorealismo, 189–203
(202–3); Ora Gelley, Stardom and the Aesthetics of Neorealism: Ingrid Bergman
in Rossellini’s Italy (New York and London: Routledge, 2012), 85–6;
Giuliana Muscio, Napoli/New York/Hollywood: Film between Italy and the United
States (New York: Fordham University Press, 2018), 256.
29 See Catherine O’Rawe, “‘I padri e i maestri’: Genre, Auteurs, and Absences
in Italian Film Studies,” Italian Studies 63, no. 2 (2008): 173–94 (177–8).
30 Luigi Serravalli, “Presentazione,” in Estetica politica e sociale del neorealismo,
by Camillo Marino (Avellino: Edizioni neorealistiche di avanguardia,
1984), 1–14 (14).
31 Antonio Rossini and Carmela Bernadetta Scala, introduction to New Trends
in Italian Cinema: “New” Neorealism, ed. Antonio Rossini and Carmela
Bernadetta Scala (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing,
2013), 1–9 (1, emphasis mine).
32 See the cogent diagnosis of this trend in Carlo Celli, “The Nostalgia Current
in the Italian Cinema,” in Incontri con il cinema italiano, ed. Antonio Vitti
(Rome and Caltanisetta: Salvatore Sciascia Editore, 2003), 277–87 (286–7).
33 Ferretti, La letteratura del rifiuto, 176.
34 Borelli, “Il futuro ha un cuore antico,” 49.
35 Stefania Parigi, “Le mille e una forma: Il racconto interminabile del neore-
alismo,” in Intorno al neorealismo, 51–6 (51).
36 Kezich, “Hanno fatto pace col nonno fascista,” 251; Carlo Lizzani, “Questi
borghesucci erano prefascisti,” originally published in La Repubblica, 16 Oct.
1976, reprinted in Cinema italiano sotto il fascismo, 254; Lino Micciché, “Fra
due dissolvenze incrociate,” in Il fantasma della realtà, 27–9 (28).
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Index
Alessandrini, Goffredo, 169 Bandinelli, Ranuccio Bianchi, 70–1,

Alicata, Mario: adaptation of I 214n89; on culture, 153
Malavoglia, 47; and De Santis, Banfi, Antonio, 133; on culture, 159
26–7, 47, 191n63; on Verga, Banti, Anna, 171
26–7 Barbaro, Umberto: on French
Andreotti, Giulio: the Andreotti Law, neorealist cinema, 29, 30; on
156–7, 173; vs. De Sica, 157, neorealism, 19–20, 24, 27, 28,
241n122 29, 30, 32, 40
Angioletti, Giovanni Battista, 22–3, Bartolini, Luigi: Ladri di biciclette, 96
40; vs. Trombatore, 67 Bassani, Giorgio: on neorealism, 30–
Antonelli, Giuseppe: art vs. 1, 32; and Ossessione, 29, 30–1, 32
chronicle, 94–6 Battaglia, Roberto, 90
Antonioni, Michelangelo, 26, 79, 87, Battistini, Andrea, 89, 228n10
216n112 Bellonci, Goffredo: on neorealism,
Argentieri, Mino, 216n113 17–18, 21, 24, 26, 36, 148
Aristarco, Guido: and French Benedetti, Arrigo, 90–1
cinematic neorealism, 31; on Benevento, Aurelio, 243n138
neorealism, 111, 172, 223n87; Ben-Ghiat, Ruth, 204n2
on Ossessione, 29, 193n77 Bertè, Pierantonio, 35
Arnold, Matthew, 133 Besani, Luca, 92
Artom, Emanuele, 90 Bigiaretti, Libero, 72, 74, 132
Artom, Eugenio, 64 Bilenchi, Romano, 100–1, 111
Asor Rosa, Alberto, 242n129 Blasetti, Alessandro, 54, 55, 56–7; on
Assunto, Rosario, 91 neorealism, 58–60; on Rossellini,
Auerbach, Erich, 154, 155 59–60
Bo, Carlo
Balbo, Felice, 133 — debate with Vittorini, 144–7,
Baldelli, Pio, 98 150, 151
Baldi, Valentino, 194n83 — and Hermeticism, 146–7, 150
304 Index
— Inchiesta sul neorealismo plot, 76–7; preface, 89; and “the

(Investigation of neorealism), ‘Year Zero,’” 75, 76, 77, 215n100
16–17, 19, 21, 24, 26, 34–5, 39, Calvino, Vittorio, 171
55, 110, 144, 171 Camerini, Mario, 56, 57
— and introspection, 144–6 Carmagnola, Piero, 92
— Letteratura come vita (Literature Carné, Marcel, 29, 30
as life), 146–7, 150 Castellani, Renato, 173
— Primo viene il film (Film came Catholicism, 138, 139, 140, 141;
first), 34 and Communism, 140–2; and
Bocelli, Arnaldo, 20, 117, 155, neorealism, 156–7
186n20, 189n42 Caudana, Mino, 94
Bogi, Julian, 139 Cavalcanti, Alberto, 28
Bolis, Luciano, 91–2 Chiarini, Luigi, 191n63; Discorso
Bonfantini, Mario, 69–70, 93 sul neorealismo (Discourse on
Bontempelli, Massimo, 113; on neorealism), 24, 171; on La terra
Gatto’s poetry, 164–5 trema, 42
Bourdieu, Pierre, 5 Chiaromonte, Nicola, 197n102
Branca, Vittore: on Fascism, 64–5 Christianity: Christian rhetoric, 154–
Brunetta, Gian Piero, 52, 193n73, 6, 169–70; as tradition, 137–8,
207n17, 241n122 139–43, 147, 151, 160, 165. See
Brunette, Peter: on Rossellini, 47 also Catholicism; Jesus Christ
Buonaiuti, Ernesto, 141 Comandante Gracco. See Gracci,
Angiolo
Cain, James M.: and Italian Comencini, Luigi, 132, 173
neorealism, 31; The Postman Contini, Gianfranco, 139
Always Rings Twice, 28 Corti, Maria, 182n20, 217n10
Calamandrei, Franco, 101–2, 103–4, Cosulich, Callisto, 82
112–13 Croce, Benedetto, 22, 25; anti-
Calamandrei, Piero, 83 Fascism of, 108; on the Fascist
Calvino, Italo ventennio, 64, 108; history and
— on Gatto’s poetry, 165 chronicles, 106–7, 111–12,
— and “the literature and society” 113–14, 116, 117, 118, 120, 122;
debate: vs. Sereni, 74–5 influence of, 107–13, 117, 120,
— from the “particular to the 121; Manifesto degli intellettuali
universal,” 116 antifascisti (Manifesto of anti-
— on post-war story-telling, 88–9 Fascist intellectuals), 139;
— Saremo come Omero (We’ll be like opposition to, 64–5; poetry and
Homer!), 74–6, 113 non-poetry, 110; rejection of,
— Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno: 108–11, 112
Fascism and the Resistance, 76;
hope for new beginnings, 77; and debates: Alicata and De Santis, 26–7;
neorealism’s periodization, 12; Antonelli–Falqui, 94–6; Dove
Index 305
va la cultura? (Where is culture chronicle, 86–7, 96; conclusion,

headed?), 132; “literature and 126; De Sica’s interview on,
the people,” 67–8; “literature 86, 87, 124, 156; and the
and society,” 72–5, 77, 79; Il masses, 123, 126, 127; as minor
Politecnico–Società, 101–5, 111– chronicle, 125, 126–7; plot,
13; Vittorini–Bo, 143–6, 150; 85–6, 123–4; reception of, 96,
Vittorini–Togliatti, 157–8 125; system of values in, 86; and
Debenedetti, Giacomo, 109 Selznick, 175–6
decadentism, 30, 154, 194n83. See also — and neorealism: imagined
modernism conversation, 3–4, 5, 7; and
De Caro, Gasparo, 206n16 Guida al cinema, 171
De Gasperi, Alcide, 230n33 — Sciuscià, 111; review of, 118
Del Bo, Giuseppe, 65 — Umberto D, 157
De Micheli, Mario: Realismo e poesia Dionisotti, Carlo, 110
(Realism and poetry), 24, 149 Duvivier, Julien, 28, 30, 31
De Michelis, Eurialo, 26, 45
De Mitri, Leonardo, 121 Emanuelli, Enrico, 25, 63
De Robertis, Francesco, 55–6, 57
De Santis, Giuseppe Fabbri, Lorenzo, 212n69
— and Alicata, 26–7, 47, 191n63 Falaschi, Giovanni, 174–5
— Caccia tragica: as chronicle, Falqui, Enrico: art vs. chronicle, 94–6
97; Fascism and partisans, Farassino, Alberto, 9–10, 53
78–80; film promotion, 83–4; Fascism: anti-Fascism, 49–50, 67, 78,
and history, 78–81, 82–3; 104, 108–9, 117, 128, 135–6,
hope for new beginnings, 78, 138–9, 140–1, 142, 143, 148, 162,
79–80, 82, 83; and neorealism’s 163, 167, 169, 174; anti-Fascist
periodization, 12; and religious rhetoric, 138–43; and
Ossessione, 81–2; plot, 49, 78–81; artists, 66–7; and Croce, 108;
and reconciliation, 80; and and culture, 67–9, 131; defeat of,
redemption, 81–2, 83; review of, 46, 61, 72, 131; Fascist chorality,
118 238n97; Fascist cinema, 53,
— Giorni di gloria, 78; Fosse 55–60, 66, 169; evils of, 46, 132,
Ardeatine massacre, 139 147; mockery of, 166; and Nazis,
— and neorealism, 26–7, 28, 29, 38, 128; and neorealism, 50,
31, 78, 167; on chronicles, 97; 71; post-Fascist period, 12, 49,
crisis of, 173 51, 69, 70, 73, 75–8, 79–80, 103,
— Non c’è pace tra gli ulivi, 116 108, 109, 130, 144, 152, 159,
De Sica, Vittorio 170, 175; and the religiosity of
— Ladri di biciclette, 12, 96; the Resistance, 164–5; and the
Antonio’s individuality, 123, Resistance, 36–7, 38, 52, 78,
124–5, 126–7; Christian-Marxist 139–43, 166, 167, 169, 234n63;
ethos in, 141–2; and the rise of, 135–6; Il tamburo della
306 Index
banda d’Affori (The drum of the Greenblatt, Stephen, 132

Affori band), 166; ventennio, the, Greppi, Antonio, 141
12, 26, 28, 36, 49, 50, 52–3, 54, Guaiana, Yuri, 239n102
64–5, 66, 67, 68, 74, 83, 84, 129, Guttuso, Renato, 35, 41, 70, 116–17
154, 163, 166; and “the ‘Year
Zero’ fable,” 51, 52, 53, 54, 58, Hermeticism, 146–7, 148–9, 150,
66, 83 237n80, 243n138; Hermetic
Ferrara, Giuseppe, 19 journal Campo di Marte, 165
Ferrata, Giansiro, 23 Hollywood cinema, 33, 115, 171,
Ferretti, Gian Carlo, 177 175–6, 178, 246n23
Ferroni, Giorgio, 33 Homer, 44, 45, 46, 74, 76, 202n145
Flora, Francesco, 110 Hûret, Jules, 19, 34, 35, 39
Fonda, Henry, 176
Fortini, Franco, 102–3, 133–4, 153; Isnenghi, Mario, 204n2
on Ladri di biciclette, 141–2 Italy
Forzano, Giovacchino: Camicia nera, — Action Party, 139; Giustizia e
54, 238n97 libertà (Justice and liberty), 140
Freddi, Luigi, 54 — Associazione culturale
cinematografica Italiana (ACCI),
Gadda, Carlo Emilio, 110 159–60
Gallo, Niccolò, 94 — Associazione Nazionale dei
Gatto, Alfonso: and anti-Fascism, 162; Partigiani d’Italia (ANPI), 83,
Il capo sulla neve (The head on 139
the snow), 162, 163–5, 243n138; — Christian Democrats, 138, 156–
civic poetry of, 165; and cultural 7, 230n33
renewal, 162–3, 169; Debiti e — cinema: continuities between
crediti (Debts and credits), 73–4, pre-war and post-war period, 53–
79; as hermetic, 161; Per i martiri 60; and Croce, 110–11; post-war,
di Piazzale Loreto (For the martyrs 82, 83; post-war chronicle, 86–7
of Piazzale Loreto), 13, 163–4; — chorality: in culture, 149–53;
and Il sole sorge ancora, 165–6 neorealist choral poetry,
Genette, Gerard, 115 148–9, 162–5, 166, 168, 169;
Genina, Augusto, 56, 57 and popular art, 159; role of
Germans: and Milan, 163–4; in Il sole intellectuals, 153–4; transition
sorge ancora, 167. See also Nazism from I to we, 148, 150–1, 162–5
Germi, Pietro, 110, 118 — the chronicle (cronaca), 87,
Giambone, Eusebio, 140 91–6; 99–101, 104, 110–13,
Giglio, Tommaso, 150 116, 117–20; art vs. chronicle,
Ginzburg, Natalia, 8 94–6, 113; author-writers vs.
Girotti, Massimo, 81–2 witness-writers, 89–96, 217n10;
Gracci, Angiolo, 89 chronicles as theatre, 120–1;
Grant, Cary, 175–6 history and chronicle, 106–13,
Index 307
118–22; and the Italian literary 69, 79, 83, 204n2, 206n16;
language, 90; literature vs. reconstruction of, 61, 66, 69, 83,
chronicle, 90–6, 105; literature 108, 129, 131, 141, 142, 152–3,
and the novel, 93, 148–50; 174; reform, 68, 69, 71, 72, 82–3,
narrative vs. chronicle, 101–5, 130, 144, 161; and renewal, 50,
112–13, 118; testimony vs. art, 51, 60, 61, 62, 63–4, 65, 66, 68,
90–3, 102–4 69–71, 72, 75, 76, 77–8, 83, 138,
— culture: and Christianity, 139, 141, 148; society, 123–5,
139–41, 147, 154–6, 157, 160, 126, 129, 161–3, 162, 169–70;
165, 169, 170; and Croce’s the “‘Year Zero’ fable,” 53, 54,
influence on, 107–12; cultural 60, 66, 69, 77, 82, 83
conversation, 8, 12, 149; cultural
politics, 130, 131, 146, 152–60; Jacobbi, Ruggero, 165
culture’s ethics, 135–7, 145–6; Jesus Christ, 137, 142, 144. See also
culture’s social role, 133–6, 143, Catholicism; Christianity
152–3, 159, 169–70; definition journals
of culture, 132–4; and the — Ambrosiano, L’, 20
experience of war, 113–14, 122; — Avanti!, 58, 68, 91, 94, 138
a new culture and society, 61, — Bianco e nero, 171, 172
63, 65, 67–71, 72–8, 109, 119, — Campo di Marte, 165
131–8, 140, 144, 147, 148, 152–3, — Cinema, 165; and European
159, 160, 165–6; and religious modernism, 27; and neorealism,
rhetoric, 138–43, 151, 152, 28; rereading of Verga, 26–7
167–9 — Cinema Nuovo, 174
— Italian Communist Party (PCI), — Costume, 63
72, 77, 83, 138, 140; Communists — Fiera letteraria, La, 67, 93, 94
and Catholics, 140–2; in Il sole — Filmcritica, 173
sorge ancora, 167, 169; Togliatti — Mercurio, 69
vs. Vittorini, 157–8 — Politecnico, Il, 101–3, 104–5, 109,
— Movimento per la difesa del 112–13, 133, 143, 157; demise of,
cinema italiano (Movement for 158; launch of, 131
the Defence of Italian Cinema), — Ponte, Il, 83
173 — Popolo, Il, 138
— political crises of the 1960s and — Quarta parete, 55, 120–1
1970s, 51 — Rinascita, 70
— post-war period: and crisis, — Risorgimento liberale, 63–4
61–4, 65–6, 68, 78, 83, 132; — Società, 99, 100–2, 104–5,
and national recovery, 69, 73, 111–13, 138, 153
79, 80, 83, 99, 124, 153, 174; — Società Nuova, 69–70
a “new Italy,” 66, 71, 83, 142, — Solaria, 23, 25
152, 159; pre-war and post- — Strada, La, 155
war continuities, 51–2, 61, 66, — Sud, 55, 118
308 Index
— Ultima, L’, 138 Massolo, Arturo, 24

— Unità, L’, 72, 77 Miccichè, Lino, 177, 205n3; and
— Via, La 63 “ethics of aesthetics,” 129–30,
— Vie nuove, 68, 72 136, 169, 228n10; “Vittorini’s
Jovine, Francesco, 11, 72, 149–50 question,” 143, 169
Joyce, James, 18, 20, 21–4; Italian Micheli, Silvio, 91
reception of, 21–3, 40; and Milan: San Vittore massacre, 163–4
realism, 22–4; and Verga, 26; Milanini, Claudio, 198n108
and verismo, 25 Minghelli, Giuliana, 210n51
— Ulysses, 24; influence on La terra modernism, 18–19, 26, 39, 45, 47, 48;
trema, 45–6; Italian translation European, 27; Italian, 187n24,
of, 203n148 194n83; Italian reception of
21, 23, 30; and Joyce, 21–3; and
Kezich, Tullio, 5, 52, 177 neorealism, 30–1, 34, 148; and
Kinder, Marsha: singulative and Proust, 21–3; and realism, 23–4,
iterative narratives, 115–16 25, 28
Kolker, Robert Phillip, 227n6 Moravia, Alberto
— vs. chroniclers, 92–3
Labriola, Antonio, 138 — on culture, 133
La Penna, Antonio, 108 — Gli indifferenti: as neorealist,
Lattuada, Alberto, 79; Senza pietà, 20–1, 40, 186n21
110, 116 — Omaggio a Joyce (Homage to
Levi, Carlo: Crisi di civiltà (Crisis of Joyce), 23, 25
civilization), 62–3; on Croce, Morin, Edgar, 51
107 Mussolini, Benito, 4, 12, 46, 53, 55,
Lewis, Wyndham, 24 108, 166. See also Fascism
Lizzani, Carlo, 141, 151, 177; and Il
sole sorge ancora, 166, 167–8, 169 Nazism: collaboration with, 49, 53,
Lo Gatto, Ettore, 19 128; concentration camps, 49,
Longanesi, Leo, 191n63 81, 91, 119, 122; in Germany,
Lunghi, Fernando Ludovico, 51; in Italy, 37–8, 49, 53, 90, 131,
244n149 163–4. See also Fascism; partisans;
Luperini, Romano, 214n89 Resistance, the
Luzi, Mario, 147, 237n80 Necco, Giovanni, 20
Nicolai, Renato, 68
Macrì, Oreste, 139 neorealism (American), 28, 31, 33
Mafai, Mario, 68 neorealism (British), 28, 33
Maggiorani, Lamberto, 176 neorealism (French): Carnè,
Mancino, Antonio Giulio, 234n64 Duvivier, and Renoir, 29, 30,
Marcus, Millicent, 191n63 31, 32; influence on Italian
Margadonna, Ettore Maria, 28 neorealist cinema, 29–30; in
Marino, Camillo, 176 literature, 20
Index 309
neorealism (Italian) — European modernism, 18–21,

— across the arts, 16, 32–3, 35–6, 23, 34; Neue Sachlichkeit, 20–1
39, 48, 143–4, 148, 198n108; — and the experience of the war,
beyond Italy, 34–5, 171–2 114–15
— canon of: 4, 6, 7, 33, 174, 178 — and Fascism, 50, 71, 73, 74,
— and chorality, 150–2, 155, 164, 78–80, 83–4, 210n51; anti-
238n97 Fascism, 50; complicity with,
— and Christian rhetoric, 164, 170 129; continuities with 52–3,
— and the chronicle, 87–8, 54; reform after, 130; and the
114, 118; and definition of, Resistance, 78, 164
87–8; neoverismo of, 110; sub specie — genealogy of, 16, 28–30, 34, 78,
aeternitatis, 122 129, 187n25
— and cinema, 28–31; as category — vs. Hermeticism, 147, 150, 155,
of filmmaking, 32, 33, 34, 41; 243n138
and cinematic calligrafismo, 57 — and history: as category, 16; as
— and common climate, 5, 35, historical signifier, 175; as “a
182n22 moment,” 47
— and Croce, 111 — and humble rhetoric (sermo
— as cultural conversation: 3–4, humilis), 154–6, 159; as cultural
5–6, 7–8, 10, 11–12, 13, 16, strategy, 156; and new mass
32, 33, 42, 50, 84, 132, 151, politics, 159, 242n129; and
154, 156, 170, 178; and end of reformist agenda, 161
conversation, 171, 172 — ideology of, 6–7
— as cultural discourse, 10–11, — as label, 32
48, 55, 83, 107, 172, 173, 178, — and literature, 23, 24, 27, 28,
183n31 30, 31, 33, 34, 45, 47, 67–8, 103,
— cultural politics of, 146, 159–60, 146, 147, 149–50, 165, 176–7,
167–70 197n102; and “literature and
— and debates, 5–6, 16, 47, 52, society” debate, 72–5, 77, 79
58, 71–2, 96, 106, 110, 112, 121, — as movement: 3, 4–5, 7–8, 10,
131; Alicata and De Santis, 26–7; 17
Vittorini–Bo, 143–6, 150, 172, — periodization of, 4, 10–11, 16,
174, 178 50; pre-war and post-war, 12,
— definition of: 4, 7, 8–10, 12, 16, 39–40, 58, 60–1; pre-war, 55; and
17–18, 39, 50, 53–4, 78, 114–15, Second World War, 60–1
129, 130, 148, 154–5, 170, 174–5, — politics of, 129–30, 146, 147,
178 152–4, 159, 227n6
— as eschatological program, 170 — the post-war period: and
— ethics of: 45, 94, 129–30, 144, ambitions, 84; continuities
145–6, 147, 170; “ethics of and renewal in, 61, 206n16;
aesthetics,” 129–30, 136, 160, contraction of, 40–1; “the ‘Year
169, 228n10 Zero’ fable,” 50, 58, 59
310 Index
— and realism, 17–20, 22–3, — and cultural authority, 143, 157,

26–7, 36, 43, 47; as experimental 159, 169–70
realism, 20–3, 39; vs. naturalism, — and cultural engagement,
18–9, 24, 30; as new modernist 143–4, 168, 169–70
hyper-realism, 18, 21, 22–3, — as cultural patrimony, 173–4
24, 25; vs. nineteenth-century — definitions of, 9, 87, 117–18,
realism, 24, 25 151, 170, 174–5, 178
— and representation of history, — and documentarism, 27, 191n63
12–13, 114–16 — end of, 171, 173
— scholarship on, 6–7, 171 — ethics of: 45, 170; “ethics of
— from singular I to plural we, aesthetics,” 129–30, 160, 169,
148, 150–1, 164 228n10
— as a term, 19, 28, 31, 32–3, — and Fascism, 52–60, 79–84; anti-
35, 38–9, 40, 50, 55, 146, 178, Fascism, 174; and fictionalized
185n12; beyond Italy, 33; as documentaries, 54; “the ‘Year
label, 40–1 Zero’ fable,” 58, 59, 82, 207n17;
— and verismo, 24–5; rereading of war documentaries, 57
Verga, 25–7 — and French neorealism, 29–31,
neorealism (Soviet), 19, 20, 28, 30, 48
32, 33 — and genre cinema, 173
neorealist cinema (Italian) — goal of, 115, 156, 170
— vs. Andreotti, 156–7, 173, 174 — and Hollywood, 171, 175–6, 178
— as brand identity, 177 — and humble rhetoric (sermo
— canon of, 7, 11, 174, 178 humilis), 154–7, 159, 168
— as category, 31, 33, 34, 41 — as idol, 177–8
— and chorality in, 150–2; as — from the individual to the
community of faithful, 151; in Il collective, 115–16, 117–18,
sole sorge ancora, 166–9 125–7, 151, 167, 170, 244n149;
— and Christian rhetoric, 141–2, from singular I to plural we, 148,
167–70, 235n66 167, 244n149
— and the chronicle, 87, 97, 110– — beyond Italy, 171–2
11; vs. art, 97–8; as history, 118; — as iterative, 115–16
as minor chronicle, 125 — and literature, 27, 28–9, 30–1,
— and Cinema, 26, 27–8, 47 34, 45, 47, 48, 197n102
— and contemporary Italian — as MacGuffin, 175
cinema, 176–7 — and modernist hyper-realism,
— as conversation, 3–4, 5–6, 27
7–8, 84, 170, 173, 178; end of — as movement, 28, 129, 160, 173,
conversation, 171, 172 176
— and creating a new audience, — narrative techniques of, 115–16
159–60 — as national mythology, 174, 178
— crisis of, 173 — and neo-neorealism, 176–7
Index 311
— origins of, 56, 57, 59, 78, Pepe, Gabriele: La crisi dell’uomo, 63,
172; arrival of, 30, 31; as 65–6, 68
conversation, 3–4; cultural Perry, Alan R., 235n66
history of, 28–30; 1945 as “year Petronio, Giuseppe, 68
Zero,” 82, 216n113 Piazzesi, Gianfranco, 111; on the
— as orthodoxy, 172–4 chronicle, 99–100, 104–5,
— Pesaro Film Festivals, 52 111–13
— politics of, 129, 227n6, 170 Pietrangeli, Antonio, 35, 47, 182n22;
— vs. popular culture, 176 on neorealism, 56, 115; and
— popularity, 5, 171–2 Ossessione, 32, 47
— and Quarta parete, 55 Pintor, Giaime, 64, 153–4
— scholarship on, 171, 172, 174 Pitassio, Francesco, 174
— standard criteria of, 14 Pontecorvo, Gillo, 166
— and Sud, 55 Pound, Ezra, 24
— as a term, 28, 30–1, 32, 33, 34, Pratolini, Vasco, 155; on Gatto’s
39–40, 41–2, 54, 171, 178 poetry, 165
neorealist directors (Italian). See Proust, Marcel, 18, 20, 21–2; Italian
Blasetti, Alessandro; Castellani, reception, 21–3; and realism,
Renato; De Santis, Giuseppe; De 22–3; and verismo, 25
Sica, Vittorio; Ferroni, Giorgio; Prunas, Pasquale, 118
Germi, Pietro; Lattuada, Alberto; Puccini, Gianni, 35; on the neorealist
Lizzani, Carlo; Rossellini, chronicle, 98–9
Roberto; Vergano, Aldo; Purificato, Domenico, 41
Visconti, Luchino; Zampa, Luigi
Noto, Paolo, 174 Quaglietti, Lorenzo, 118
Quaresima, Leonardo, 6, 7
Olivetti, Adriano, 35 Quasimodo, Salvatore, 149
Orlando, Vittorio Emanuele, 139
RAI (Italian broadcasting company),
Pagliero, Marcello, 110 16
Paoluzzi, Angelo, 148–9 Raimondi, Giuseppe, 138
Parigi, Stefania, 177 Rancière, Jacques, 235n66
partisans, 37, 38, 49, 76, 78–9, 82, 83, Reed, John: Ten Days That Shook the
89, 90, 91, 92, 110, 117, 139–40, World, 104–5, 112
141, 142, 143, 152, 153, 154, Renoir, Jean, 28, 30, 31, 48
163–4, 166, 167, 169. See also Resistance, the, 37–8, 52, 57, 66,
Fascism; Resistance, the 76, 78, 88–90, 91–2, 128,
Pasolini, Pier Paolo: on neorealism, 138–43, 152, 161, 166, 167, 169,
154–5 174, 234n63; and Resistance
Pavese, Cesare: vs. chroniclers, 93; literature, 110, 117, 162–5;
and the masses, 159, 242n129; Resistance paintings, 116–17. See
on neorealism, 31, 41 also Fascism; partisans
312 Index
Ronchi, Walter, 29 Solaroli, Libero, 28, 30, 31

Rondi, Brunello, 148 Squarotti, Giorgio Bàrberi, 52
Rondi, Gian Luigi, 6, 141, 151; Steimatsky, Noa, 187n25
Cinema italiano oggi, 51, 55, 58,
59 Taddei, Ezio, 91
Rosa, Giovanni Titta, 93–4 Terra, Stefano, 103–4, 165
Rossellini, Roberto, 47, 98 Tinazzi, Giorgio, 182n19
— Fascist trilogy of, 60 Tofanelli, Arturo, 132
— Germania anno zero 51; as Togliatti, Palmiro: vs. Vittorini, 157–8
chronicle, 97 Trieste, Leopoldo, 118–19; chronicle
— La nave bianca, 54, 57–8 and history, 121–2; Cronaca, 12,
— on neorealism, 57–8 119–20, 122; Cronaca e tragedia
— Paisà: as chronicle, 97 (Chronicle and tragedy),
— Roma città aperta: Catholic- 119–20; and “theatre of the
Communist ethos, 142–3, chronicle,” 120–1
235n66; chorality in, 152; as Trombadori, Antonello, 47; on
chronicle, 96–7; as neorealist, 7; Guttuso’s paintings, 116–17
plot, 142, 152; and the post-war Trombatore, Gaetano: and “a new
period, 142, 234n64; reception poetry,” 67–8
of, 53–4, 59–60, 96
Russo, Luigi, 108 Valesio, Paolo, 21
Venturini, Franco, 57, 171
Salinari, Carlo, 87, 172 Verdone, Mario, 151
Sansone, Mario, 109–10 Verga, Giovanni: and neorealism,
Sapegno, Natalino, 108 25, 190n49; I Malavoglia, 44;
Sassu, Aligi, 139 rereading of, 25–7; verismo,
Savinio, Alberto, 138 24–5, 238n97. See also Visconti,
Schuster, Ildefonso, 139 Luchino
Schwarz, Guri, 234n63 Vergano, Aldo
Second World War, 4, 12, 44, 49, 88, — role in the Resistance, 169
90, 128, 131, 132, 140, 149 — Il sole sorge ancora: amateur
Selznick, David. O, 175–6 actors in, 165–6; authority of,
Serandrei, Mario: and the term 166, 169; choral anti-Fascism in,
“neorealism,” 30, 32, 47–8; 167–9; first and final scenes, 166;
treatment of Ulysses, 45, 48; and and neorealism, 13, 166; plot,
Visconti, 30, 32, 45 128, 166–8; the public execution
Sereni, Emilio, 72–3, 74 scene, 167–9; reception of, 167
Serravalli, Luigi, 176 Viazzi, Glauco, 165
Settimana Incom (Italian newsreel), 33 Vicari, Giambattista, 93
Sipala, Mario, 60 Vincent, Carl, 30
Sitney, P. Adams, 235n77 Visconti, Luchino
Sklar, Robert, 246n23 — as anti-Fascist, 57
Index 313
— influence on Vittorini, 35–6 — debate with Bo, 143–7, 150;

— and I Malavoglia, 47, 48 ethics of culture, 145–6
— and modernism, 45 — human vulnerability, 38
— and neorealism, 7, 15, 30, 41, — influence on Visconti, 35–6
42, 47 — and neorealism, 39
— Ossessione : and Caccia tragica, — and the post-war “new culture,”
81–2; location of, 81, 216n112; 131–2, 134–8, 143, 150, 151,
plot, 81–2; as neorealist, 7, 28–9, 152, 154, 157, 160, 162, 169; and
30–2, 40, 47, 57, 193n77; and Christ, 137; critical responses to,
The Postman Always Rings Twice, 143–4, 235n68; and culture and
28–9; as proto-neorealist, 16, 48; religion, 137–8, 143; vs. the “old
and reworking of, 81–2 culture,” 137, 152, 160, 230n33;
— Pietrangeli’s influence on, 47 and social transformation, 145,
— La terra trema: anti-Fascism 151, 169
in, 46; conclusion of, 46; as — and realism, 36; and reality, 37
chronicle, 97; emphasis on — religious apostasy of, 144
eyes in, 45, 46; and Homeric — vs. Togliatti, 157–8; vs. the
mythology, 43–5, 46–7; initial Communist Party, 158
rolling text, 14, 43, 47, 116; and — vs. traditional cultural criticism,
Joyce’s Ulysses, 45–6, 203n148; 135, 137, 160, 162, 230n33
Marxism of, 141; as neorealist, 7, — Uomini e no: and anti-Fascist
11, 14–6, 42–3, 47, 48; ’Ntoni/ Resistance, 37–8; as neorealist,
Odysseus vs. wholesalers/ 11, 36, 38–9, 40; on the title,
Cyclopes, 44–5, 45–7; and post- 36–7
war exploitation in, 44–5; and
Serandrei’s collaboration, 45; Wagstaff, Christopher, 223n100
and Verga, 35, 43–4, 45 Weiss, Benno, 215n104
— Tradizione e invenzione (Tradition
and invention): and Verga, 35, Zagarrio, Vito, 191n60
43–4 Zàggia, Giuseppe, 91
— and Verga, 192n70 Zampa, Luigi, 11
Visentini, Gino, 125–6 Zavattini, Cesare, 40; and Ladri
Vittorini, Elio di biciclette, 86, 87, 96; on
— and artists’ political authority, neorealism, 41–2, 115, 172; on
158 post-war cinema’s socio-political
— Conversazione in Sicilia: role, 159–60; Tesi sul neorealismo
collaboration with Guttuso, 35 (Theses on neorealism), 173–4;
— and Croce, 108–9, 112 on the tragedy of war, 114

Italian Neorealism

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Italian Neorealism

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ITALIAN NEOREALISM

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS

ISBN 978-1-4875-0710-7 (cloth)

Toronto Italian Studies

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Italian neorealism : a cultural history / Charles L. Leavitt IV.

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its

cultural history helped me to situate my discoveries, and whose fervent

neorealist movement, it was not because these three celebrated directors

and with it a neorealist movement: “a vast, collective movement, of

conversation was Italian neorealism. “La storia del neorealismo è [...]

Scholarship on neorealism has often taken the opposite tack, aspiring

Proviamo a isolare la nozione [del neorealismo] sottraendola alle incrostazi-

There is something admirable in Quaresima’s stance, in his refusal indis-

different forms of expression, different modes of discourse, or different

Era, il dopoguerra, un tempo in cui tutti pensavano d’essere dei poeti, e

The post-war period was a time in which we all believed ourselves to be

In Ginzburg’s telling, post-war Italy was reshaped by the interaction – some

fair amount of misunderstanding]” – there have been repeated attempts

Considereremo quindi per ora come “opera neorealista” un tipo di film

Tellingly, while such lists are sometimes treated authoritatively, as if they

la definizione più adeguata [del neorealismo] sarebbe quella tautologica

the most appropriate definition [of neorealism] would be tautological and

By this standard, neorealism was something both more significant and

“A Vast, Collective Movement, of All of Us”

In the chapters that follow I attempt to provide the most expansive

through the 1950s. Employing a critical semantics, I follow the develop-

comparatively little critical or scholarly attention, and examining those

reshaped Italian cultural politics in its image. Reconsidering the political

I fatti rappresentati in questo film accadono in Italia e precisamente in

Through a series of declarative statements, the text makes evident the

to be “confezionato secondo il più rigoroso dettato neorealistico [manu-

che cosa vuol dire neorealismo? In cinema è servito a definire i concetti

It seems difficult to reconcile Visconti’s declaration and his critical can-

has become a historical category, indeed a milestone in the history of cin-

With Italy’s post-war cinema attracting increased international attention,

artists and intellectuals, participants who sought, in their responses to

bisogni definirlo, questo neorealismo, diverso come mostra il prefisso

neorealism needs to be distinguished from the realism of the nineteenth

il Simbolismo, il Futurismo e il Neo-realismo, che pur rifacendosi alla let-

Symbolism, futurism, and neorealism, which despite referring back to

Here Barbaro’s “neorealism,” in essence, is an Italian rendering of the

Joyce’s contemporary Wyndham Lewis, for instance, identified in Ulysses

Neorealism and Verismo

What neorealism was not, as Bellonci vigorously asserted in his response

to emphasize the nineteenth-century provenance of Italy’s post-war cin-

are often alleged ingenuously to have returned to his notions of realism

went beyond indexicality, capturing but also supplementing fact and

Italian Cinema Becomes Neorealist

Bassani, at the time a virtual unknown, later a celebrated novelist, who

è improntato ad un crudo realismo che ricorda in qualche battuta S ­ teinbeck

is marked by a raw realism that in certain instances recalls Steinbeck and

In keeping with the cinematic conventions of the day, Aristarco, Ronchi,

realist. Bassani undoubtedly used the term in this way, commenting in a

Neorealism Becomes Italian Cinema

As a category of Italian cinema production, neorealism was thus know-

those innovations as neorealist. Indicative, in this regard, is the work

descriptor for the latest developments in Italian film, therefore, it was

Nevertheless, for many neorealism had become, and perhaps

[p]roprio un anno fa un critico anonimo mi accusò di aver adoperato per

One decade after the release of Ossessione, many of Bo’s contemporaries

Neorealism across the Arts

currents in the European arts, was central to this enterprise. Many of

Conversazione in Sicilia as a key influence on his thinking.111 The lines of

è improntato ad un crudo realismo che ricorda in qualche battuta S teinbeck

nessuno osa scrivere che Blasetti, Alessandrini, Gallone, Vergano, Rossellini,