What Is Neorealism in Film

Sat, 30 May 2026 06:00:00 -0500

In the winter of 1945, Roberto Rossellini was making a film about the Nazi occupation of Rome in a city that had only recently stopped being occupied. The bombed buildings in “Rome, Open City” are real bombed buildings. The neighborhood of Pigneto, where much of the film was shot, was a working-class district where people had actually lived under German control. Some of the people in the crowd scenes were not actors. They were the crowd. Rossellini had almost no money, almost no film stock, and no studio behind him. He shot on the streets because the streets were where the story was.

World Cinema on Sunday Evening Review

What Is Neorealism in Film