Conventions of Italian neorealism
Films made in Italy following World War II as part of the Neorealist genre shared certain conventions that appealed to audiences. Due to most production studios being either destroyed or occupied by refugees of war, films were shot outdoors and on the streets, employing a “documentary approach to cinematography” (Ryan, 2012). This captured the genuine societal atmosphere within Italy following the war. Italian Neorealist films also tended to have a “grainy kind of photography,” (A.U., 2015). The most prominent convention of Italian Neorealism films is that directors often employed non-professional actors and avoided scripts (A.U., 2015). In summary, directors of the Italian Neorealism film movement employed these conventions in order to capture the raw emotion of Italian society after World War II.