A Culture of Reality

The rebirth of the documentary began only with Flaherty's Nanook. The documentary became a genre, and the masterpieces hold an important place in cinema, almost at the same level as the comedies. The documentary once again fell into neglect for some years, and the dramatic film, in its turn influenced by the documentary form, slowly perfected itself. The chapter aims to repaint the Italian filmic landscape that historically surrounded the neorealist film movement by offering a symptomatic reading of Roberto Rossellini's career. It focuses on two powerful historical moments bookmarking the neorealist movement: the late 1930s to early 1940s, right before World War II, and the mid‐to late‐1950s. The scholarly reluctance to examine the relationship between neorealism and the history of nonfiction filmmaking in Italy can perhaps be traced to the privileged place neorealism has occupied in the history of Italian cinema.