?????? ??? ??/?? ????? ??? ?? (The Observing Eyes and Expressions, Traversing Urban/insular Spaces in Neo-realism)

The Neo-realism films of Italy presented ¡°an original and unprecedented view¡± in the film history concerning phenomenological records of ¡®cities¡¯ and ¡®rural areas.¡¯ This film trend is assumed to have existed 1942-1954 to take its longest possible duration. Typically, the theme that the neo-realists with diverse tendencies dealt with was a liberation movement, which soon got involved with phenomenon of immigration and eventually became a journey in pursuit of identity and existential truth. In this study, I focused on the three most important film makers, Rosselini, De Sica, and Visconti.
De Sica showed the quintessence of neo-realism by raising the problems of poverty as ¡®social exclusion,¡¯ immigration, and unemployment in the big cities, closely observing the everyday lives of the people. Visconti went to a fishing village in Sicily, a symbol of the ¡®southern problems(Questione meridionale)¡¯ and did an on-site survey to make La Terra trema casting the local fishers. This is an anthropologically and esthetically noteworthy work. Sicily was for him the space where he could experiment with ideological reforms of the society and try to make another type of unconventional cinema. In Roma, citt¨¤ aperta (1945), Rosselini vividly evoked the resistance in solidarity, aiming for openmindedness that may break through the restrictive border and life. Then he began to contemplate the freedom and dignity of human beings. A few years after the tense atmosphere of Sicilian sea presented in Pais¨¤, he shot Stromboli (1951), a volcanic island near Sicily. Stromboli treated the problems of diaspora, modern civilization, the ¡°inhuman solitude¡± of human existence, and the relations between the human and the divine and the cosmic. Despite its seemingly banal form of drama, Stromboli is not an ordinary drama but in fact a semi-documentary with the camerawork that waits with patience to improvisationally ¡®discover¡¯ the actual world and human presence.
Above all, the neo-realism that puts an emphasis on the social context and roles of cinematic images includes real aspects of the big cities like Rome and Milan and, on the other hand, the spaces relegated as ¡°the others,¡± namely the southern cities and islands. To neo-realists, what matters most was to observe, ¡®excavate¡¯ and record the daily lives of the people in obscurity in the alienated urban and insular spaces just based on verismo. While dramas stood for the popular preference and Hollywood values coerced by the despotic governments, it was a significant transbordering attempt to have an deep insight into the reality of cities and islands and to express their visions.

The Neo-realism films of Italy presented ¡°an original and unprecedented view¡± in the film history concerning phenomenological records of ¡®cities¡¯ and ¡®rural areas.¡¯ This film trend is assumed to have existed 1942-1954 to take its longest possible duration. Typically, the theme that the neo-realists with diverse tendencies dealt with was a liberation movement, which soon got involved with phenomenon of immigration and eventually became a journey in pursuit of identity and existential truth. In this study, I focused on the three most important film makers, Rosselini, De Sica, and Visconti.
De Sica showed the quintessence of neo-realism by raising the problems of poverty as ¡®social exclusion,¡¯ immigration, and unemployment in the big cities, closely observing the everyday lives of the people. Visconti went to a fishing village in Sicily, a symbol of the ¡®southern problems(Questione meridionale)¡¯ and did an on-site survey to make La Terra trema casting the local fishers. This is an anthropologically and esthetically noteworthy work. Sicily was for him the space where he could experiment with ideological reforms of the society and try to make another type of unconventional cinema. In Roma, citt¨¤ aperta (1945), Rosselini vividly evoked the resistance in solidarity, aiming for openmindedness that may break through the restrictive border and life. Then he began to contemplate the freedom and dignity of human beings. A few years after the tense atmosphere of Sicilian sea presented in Pais¨¤, he shot Stromboli (1951), a volcanic island near Sicily. Stromboli treated the problems of diaspora, modern civilization, the ¡°inhuman solitude¡± of human existence, and the relations between the human and the divine and the cosmic. Despite its seemingly banal form of drama, Stromboli is not an ordinary drama but in fact a semi-documentary with the camerawork that waits with patience to improvisationally ¡®discover¡¯ the actual world and human presence.
Above all, the neo-realism that puts an emphasis on the social context and roles of cinematic images includes real aspects of the big cities like Rome and Milan and, on the other hand, the spaces relegated as ¡°the others,¡± namely the southern cities and islands. To neo-realists, what matters most was to observe, ¡®excavate¡¯ and record the daily lives of the people in obscurity in the alienated urban and insular spaces just based on verismo. While dramas stood for the popular preference and Hollywood values coerced by the despotic governments, it was a significant transbordering attempt to have an deep insight into the reality of cities and islands and to express their visions.