Vittorio De Sica’s Ladri di Biciclette (1948)

In Ladri di Biciclette, Vittorio De Sica uses the realistic style in his cast, scenery and themes to depict the real-life struggle of his characters. De Sica highlights the disparity of class, in the pizzeria scene, using visual cues. Unlike the more wealthy diners, Antonio and Bruno do not have a table cloth or cutlery at their table emphasising their lack of materialistic possessions and position in poverty. The waiter assumes that they would want half a cup of wine instead of a whole cup, further reinforcing the low class system they are defined and restricted by. By cutting between shots, Bruno is directly juxtaposed with another young boy who is clearly of a higher class. The camera moves from Bruno as central on the screen, to the other young boy as central on screen. This presents a direct comparison. However, it is their backgrounds that differ largely and identify them undeniably in opposing class systems. Bruno is situated at a blank wooden table  with little surrounding him. The other boy, however, is surrounded by food  and well dressed people. There are clear differences in clothing, food, social surrounding, possessions and general quality of life. This visual contrast shows, on a realistic level, how class disparity is evident in all areas of life; on a social, political and domestic level. De Sica uses the changing relationship between Antonio and his son to parallel the changes in Italy’s political structure at that time. The “disintegration of trust”² between Antonio and Bruno parallels the breakdown of political structure. At the beginning of the film, paternal love is evident, but, as the film develops, Antonio takes his aggression and frustration out on his son. Visually, also, the two characters become more distanced on screen with wide street shots emphasising the space between them. Their inability to break out of the class system also emphasises Antonio’s desperation and struggle to survive. As his desperation deepens and his hope wanes, Antonio is forced further and further from civilization and resorts to violence and theft of his own. In this way the use of a bicycle, as opposed to another vehicle, is highly symbolic in representing the cyclic pattern of events.

The representation of institutions, in Ladri di Biciclette, is significant in showing the changing social conditions and lack of stability and support in Italy at that time. Antonio turns to many different institutions – the church, the police etc. – in an attempt to find his bicycle, his attempts, however, are in vain. This merely emphasises further the failure of social institutions and reinforces disparity in the class system.  Godfrey Cheshire states that “neorealism served as a chastening, disillusioning rejection of Fascism and fantasy”³, however, Ladri di Biciclette serves as much more than that. It does signify the rejection of fascism and fantasy, but, through the eyes of its sufferers. As a result, the force of the films message is found in its realism – a message of desperation and, thus, essentiality for change and cultural renewal.

¹ Ladri di biciclette. Dir. Vittorio De Sica. Ente Nazionale Industrie Cinematografiche, 1948

² Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell, Film History an Introduction, (USA: McGraw-Hill Inc, 1994)

Shallow Focus and the Aura of Authenticity in Gamorra

Gamorra/Gamorrah(2008)

 

Gamorra the film selects several stories from investigative journalist Roberto Saviano’s best seller of the same name. All set in or around the Camorra’s (Mafia of Napoli and its surrounding towns) territories and business interests. Gamorra includes several interesting formal features in which the film communicates the violence, despair, and seemingly unavoidable fate of the central character’s struggle to survive in Europe’s most violent neighbourhoods. The technique of shallow focus is important in Gamorra in communicating this poisoned atmosphere.

 

Shallow focus is the cinematographic technique which shows one plane of field clearly while the deeper plane of field is blurred or out of focus. The shallow focus technique would show a face close up in perfect detail but the background or location out of focus. Deep focus, shallow focus’s antithesis, is the technique which shows an entire image in focus. In exposition shots we see the use of deep focus to clearly identify depth and position. Gamorra uses the shallow focus technique to foreground certain elements important in the communication of the toxic heritage that living in the Camorra dominated south entails.

 

The shallow focus technique is used to indicate, in part, the attempt in the characters to ignore and distance themselves from the violence they are surrounded by. This is indicated in a scene where a money-carrier walks suspicious and fearful of his well-being after he has a gun pointed at his head. As he walks away hastily the background moves out of focus, he attempts to block out the violence he just saw, yet a voice shouts out his name and follows him until he reluctantly stops and engages with the voice that has been stalking him. As he does the film returns to a deep focus. This indicates the futile attempt that is ignoring the context or situation the character’s find themselves in; one cannot step out of Camorra controlled life. The aesthetic of the shallow focus communicates a sense of a constant, ungraspable, unknowable violence which envelops and blurs clear and distinctive perception. The use of shallow focus reminds the viewer that the violent acts and characters are borne out of the poisonous toxic context. The sense of the unknowable and paranoid, added to by the style of death of Maria, also alludes to the actual feelings of the author of Gomorra who lives under protective custody; the truth comes with a terrible price.

 

[[[SPOILER: At the end of the film as these boys are killed the Camorra boss commented that it was a waste of youth but it had to be done. The Camorra blunt and destroy youth and the very little of it that Italy has left are being chewed up and spat out. Gamorra seems to say that unless corruption is destroyed then every generation, in this region, will continue to have a large waste of youth.]]]

 

Gomorra has been linked to, and commented, to be in the Italian Neo-realist style [I have decided to create a full article concerning this statement however one element of the Neo-realist style is relevant enough here to merit bringing it up now; the use of non-actors in significant roles]. Andre Bazin commented concerning Italian Neo-realism ‘It is not the absence of professional actors that is, historically, the hallmark of social realism nor of the Italian film. Rather, it is specifically the rejection of the star concept and casual mixing of the professional’ and amateur. (1.) Bazin argues that this ensures the audience brings with it no pre-conceptions concerning character – the opposite to what Jean-Luc Godard did in Alphaville (1965); that is play with those pre-conceptions. Bazin explains ‘the result is… that extraordinary feeling of truth that one gets from [Italian Neo-realism]’. (2.) In Gomorra several significant, or rather nearly all, roles are played by amateurs and non-actors and this attributes to a sense of authenticity and realism. Skinny young men, fat overweight looking men litter the film; average-looking people, as opposed to the stylised look of Hollywood, imbues the aesthetic of Gamorra with an ‘atmosphere of authenticity’. (3.) This is added to outside of the film by the film’s official website which doesn’t list the actors beside pictures unlike Hollywood film where actor recognition is important.

 

Staying outside of the films’ digesis the aura of authenticity of Gomorra has been further added to by events outside of the film. One of the central messages of the film, and book, is the infectious dominating control the Camorra has in everyday life from the most basic domestic sphere to the world of industrial waste and fashion design. Recently Bernardino Terracciano, who plays a boss, has been ‘arrested on suspicion of extorting protection money and having ties to the Casalesi clan, part of the Camorra Mafia’. (4.) Two other actors, one a boss and the other a hitman in the film, have also been detained by the police. These facts add to the sense that the non-actors are just playing-out their day to day lives but in front of the camera just this once but it also rams home the central message of the film that you cannot escape the touch of the Camorra.

 

 

 

(1.) Andre Bazin ‘An Aesthetic of Reality: Neo-Realism’ in Andre Bazin, What is Cinema?, California: University of California Press, (1971), pp. 16-40 p. 23.

(2.) Andre Bazin ‘An Aesthetic of Reality: Neo-Realism’ p. 24.

(3.) Andre Bazin ‘An Aesthetic of Reality: Neo-Realism’ p. 24.

(4.) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/3186186/Italian-mafia-film-Gomorrah-heads-for-Oscars–as-cast-members-are-arrested.html