Magical History Tour – Forms of Realism

"For me, Realism is nothing but the artistic form of truth!" (Roberto Rossellini) Alluding this quote, the Magical Mystery Tour in April addresses two trends in the cinematic treatment of Realism before and after the Second World War: French "Poetic Realism" of the 1930s and, often directly associated with this style, "Neorealism", which had a shaping influence on Italian films of the postwar period. Both trends evolved in times of dramatic political and social crises: Authors, filmmakers, cameramen, and set designers formulated a personal and, in the case of French cinema of the 1930s and 40s, highly poetic relationship to reality in film. Their "Realism of style" (André Bazin) established radically new directions in European cinema. The poetic works created in France, by Jean Vigo, Marcel Carné, Jean Renoir, and others, predominantly focused on stories set in a proletarian milieu, not seldom narrated with a pessimistic worldview. The feeling of being lost and damned, imbuing many of these films, was often regarded as expressing the gloomy mood of the pre-war years. The special look of many Poetic Realistic films was created by the set constructions and decors of the Hungarian emigrant Alexander Trauner.