Italian neorealist cinema / Torunn Haaland.

Includes filmography (pages 219-221), bibliographical references (pages 222-232) and index.

A moment and a country -- Realism and neorealism -- Literary neorealism : narration and testimony -- Rossellini's cities of war and resistance -- Wandering among De Sica's urbanites : shoeshiners, bicycle thieves, miraculous outcasts and a man with a dog -- Visconti's worlds of aestheticism and ideology : between tradition and invention, from country to city -- Faces and spaces of neorealism : from dystopian cities to utopian countries -- The journey beyond neorealism : streetwalkers, political rebels, anti-mafia resisters, stolen children and unwanted citizens.

"In this new study, Torunn Haaland argues that neorealism was a cultural moment based on individual optiques. She accounts for the tradition's coherence in terms of its moral commitment to creating critical viewing experiences around underrepresented realities and marginalised people. By examining both acclaimed masterpieces and lesser known works, parallels are drawn to realist theories and to past and present cinematic traditions. The ways in which successive generations of directors have readopted, negotiated and broken with the themes and aesthetics of neorealist film are discussed and evaluated, along with neorealist tendencies in other arts, such as literature."--Back cover.