Lincoln Plaza Cinema is doing a tribute to Italian cinema of the last eight decades. They are beginning the series with "Italian neorealism". These films were about the poor and the working classes struggling to survive after the devastation of the Second World War. The actors were often non-professionals. The first film in the series was "Rome-Open City" with the wonderful Anna Magnani who has a great moment running after the truck carrying her beloved. Juliet Binoche does the same and does it very well in The "English Patient". "Open City" was filmed just after the Nazis left Rome in the spring of 1944. It is called the first important film of Italy's neorealism era. That is most likely because it won the top award at the Cannes Film Festival and became an international hit. The film considered to be the first is Visconti"s "Ossessione" of 1943. Among the many practitioners were Visconti and Antonioni both of whom worked with Renoir whose film "Toni" is considered a precursor to Italian neorealism.
I took the bus home and made some videos. I like the first one because of the young lady at the end who walks out of a shop and spritzes New York. The others are jumpy but interesting. We get very close to pedestrians at the turn onto Central Park South. I like the last one because it is at Times Square.
