The relationship between cinema and literature had peculiar characterisitcs, also according to the different period of the Neorealist movement.
During the ten-year period taken into consideration, the relatioship between cinema and literature is, according to some people, slender because, apart from the cinema transposition of some literary works like “Cronache di poveri amanti” by Pratolini from Lizzani, “La provinciale” by Moravia from Soldati, “Anni difficili” by Brancati and “La romana” by Moravia on from Zampa, “Le ragazze di S. Frediano by Pratolini from Zurlini, the great season of the neorealist cinema is characterized by cinema original works that don’t refere to novels or previous literary works.
This statement can only be partially shared, on condition to superficially limiting the relationship between cinema and literature to a direct reference of the first to the second one; infact, apart the consideration that Zavattini-De Sica’s cooperation brought to the creation of some of the most meaningful works of Neorealism, the link that unites cinema and literature is more stable and deep, and it is characterized by a common conception of the art, by the same feeling in a creative osmosis that will see cinema activity to direct the fiction one in some moments.
To understand what this strong link consists in, it is necessary to refer to Calvino’s quoted introducion and to some theorical expressions of Zavattini and Rossellini; Zavattini’s assertion that “the cinema language is full of the same possibilities of the literary language” and that “the director uses his camera like the writer uses to write a white paper” already tells us how much strong the link between the two assertions is, at least how it is felt by the greatest directors of that period. But there’s something more. The object of the controversy among film people is tale, and especially it is the one in which the construction and the predisposition come out and, maybe in this sense, cinema has droven literature to break away from its schemes of tale too.
Calvino wrote in the quoted introduction to his first novel: “More than my work, I read it as a book anonymously originated from a general climate of an age, from a moral tension, from a literary mind, the same that our generation recognizes itself in after the end of the Second World War... Especially this thouches us today: the anonymous voice of that period, that was stronger than our still uncertain and personal reflections. And this “anonymous voice of that period” and this idea are in correspondece in cinema with the esigence to overcome every form of mediation in narrating, and, however, in every artistic expression, the utopia of a natural writing and of a camera in the hands of everyone.
Consequently the refusal of the tale is linked to the esigence to directly adhere to reality and to the present “as the sweat of the skin” (Zavattini), even if the theorists of the movement are conscious it is a hypothesis and the tale structure is surmountable with difficulty.
Partly Asor Rosa is right when he says that there was a diffused need of narrating ( here you can see Calvino’s introduction too ) on one side , and that they could note that immediacy often remained in the intention on the other side: the narrative instruments of support are also recoverable in films that puts themselves on the line of “flatess” or of receptive eye only ; to say it with Roland Barthes words “the ways of narrating can change, we can make a daring renewal effort on them [.......] we can continuously think up a new way of telling a story : but the story is always there , the story is the absolute beginning of any narrative art.
The problem remains obviously opened; at the moment it is enogh having recognized this element of anonimity, of the direct examination, of the absence of mediation , of being expression of the voices of that period as a deep bond between the Neorealist literary activity and the cinema production, beyond direct correspondences between film and novel.
They paradoxically return to this direct correspondence at the end of the great season of Ossessione, Open city, Germany, year zero, Sciuscian, The Bicycle thief, Paisan, Umberto D. and Miracolo in Milan and this return is probably linked, of a particularly happy season, to that passage of neorealism to an ideological more conscions idea and to the esthetics of Lukacs and Gramsci and to the cultural directives of PCI.