Talk:Ermanno Olmi

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Neorealism?

Olmi did, in fact, claim his movie Il Posto was not an example of neorealism. However, I find his statement unclear:

This is where the novelty of my kind of film lies. Everything you see is authentic. [Il Porto] is not a Neorealist film. Neorealism, from a practical and economic standpoint, had to go out into the streets or use real-life environments because the creators lacked the means to use conventional studios, etc. But they used real actors. "Rome, Open City", for instance, had Aldo Fabrizi, Anna Magnani. At some point Rossellini, and others too, realized that the reality of the street didn't always mix well with the features of well-known actors. So if you shoot in a real factory, with real factory workers, and you add a professional actor with a little grease on his face, it smacks of artificiality. All the lessons learned from Rossellini, the early Visconti, perhaps even from Germi, were later lost, and Neorealism became a trend. Paolini, De Seta, and my film, Il Posto -- is, on the other hand, if you look at these three films -- De Seta and his Sardinian shepherds, Pasolini with his street kids, and me with my employees. Whereas in the case of Neorealism, professional actors were like guests in genuine settings, in our case the real, authentic characters could only be placed in an authentic setting. We could never have used a professional studio.

I think he was speaking of the later trend in neorealism to use professional actors. I don't believe it is accurate to make the distinction between his films with non-actors and the bulk of neorealistic films which did use non-actors in secondary and sometimes primary roles. ∴ Therefore | talk 04:32, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]