Cinema Italiano

Italian cinema’s central contribution is neorealism: films shot in the streets of a country wrecked by war, using non-professional actors and available light to show ordinary life without studio mediation. It is among the most influential movements in film history, and its methods were adopted by new cinemas across the world.

The auteurs who followed moved in the opposite direction, towards interiority, ambiguity and formal experiment, producing some of the most closely studied films of the twentieth century.

Alongside this ran a vigorous genre industry: westerns, horror and thrillers made quickly and cheaply, whose visual style and scoring were absorbed directly into American filmmaking.