Myth and reality in the work of Italian neorealists

Popova Liana Vladimirovna ORCID: 0000-0002-9766-7535 PhD in Cultural Studies Senior lecturer, State University of Management 109542, Russia, Moscow, Ryazan Avenue, 99, office U-404 pliana@mail.ru Other publications by this author

The work of Italian neorealists was studied within the framework of the general theory of cinema by such researchers as A. Bazin ^[1], J. Deleuze ^[2], N.A. Khrenov ^[3], M. Verdone ^[4], I.N. Solovyova ^[5]. In Soviet times, collections of articles by Italian neorealists were published in Russia ^[6]. Collections dedicated to individual directors were published: C. Dzavattini ^[7], F. Fellini ^[8],[9],[10], L. Visconti ^[11],[12], P. P. Pasolini ^[13], M. Antonioni ^[14]. The work of the director Ch. Dzavattini studied G. D. Bogemsky ^[15]. The works of E. Travi ^[16], E. Siciliano ^[17], N. A. Tsyrkun ^[18] are devoted to the work of P. P. Pasolini. The works of L. Visconti were engaged in by A. S. Plakhov ^[19], V. V. Shitova ^[20]. The work of F. Fellini was studied by T. I. Bachelis ^[21], K. Constantini ^[22]. Nevertheless, there are very few works devoted to the theory of neorealism. There are much more works dedicated to individual directors. Currently, the work of neorealists is almost not studied. The relevance of studying their work lies in the fact that it was the neorealists who revived the principles of D. Vertov, the documentary style of shooting, creating a new film ethics and a new film language. The experience of the Neorealists was used by representatives of the French "new wave" and representatives of the new Italian cinema. The purpose of this study is to consider the features of realism and neorealism, to consider the space created by directors. The novelty of this research lies in the juxtaposition of mythological and real space in the films of Italian directors. This study uses an integrated approach combined with phenomenological, intertextual, and comparative methods.

Neorealism is commonly called the current in Italian cinema of the 1940s and 1950s, and its main representatives are directors Roberto Rossellini, Cesare Zavattini, Giuseppe de Santiza, Vittorio de Sico, Alberto Latuado. Features of neorealism are also inherent in the early works of directors Luchino Visconti ("Obsession" 1943, "The Earth Trembles" 1948), Federico Fellini ("The Road" 1954, "Nights of Cabiria" 1957), Pier Paolo Pasolini ("Accatone" 1961, "Mama Roma" 1962), Michelangelo Antonioni "People from the Po River" 1947). M. Antonioni himself called his film "People from the Po River" neorealistic ^[14]. Italian neorealism was influenced by the poetic realism of Marcel Carne, Jean Renour, Jean Vigo, Julien Duvivier and the poet Jacques Prevert ^{[23],[24, p. 26]}. Representatives of this trend sublimely depicted the lives of ordinary people. M. Antonioni considered M. Carne his teacher, he trained in 1942. he is on the set of the film "Evening Visitors" ^{[23],[24, p. 26]}. Another source of Neorealists was Italian Verism, especially the work of L. Pirandello, which M. Antonioni often mentioned in interviews ^{[14, p. 175]}. No wonder he called his teacher M. Carne a representative of "French Verism" ^{[14, p. 38],[23],[24, p. 26]}. The neorealists focus on the relationship of the individual with the environment ^[23]. According to Ch. Dzavattini, cinema went bankrupt, did not fulfill its task, did not follow the path of Lumiere, where it would have faced the thorns of reality, but chose the path of Melies ^{[6, p. 234]}. Aesthetically, according to the Italians themselves, neorealism is most indebted to A. Dovzhenko ^{[25, p. 4]}.

It is generally believed that neorealism begins with a film by Roberto Rossellini's 1945 "Rome is an open City", but R. Rossellini himself saw the origins of neorealism in earlier films: in feature documentaries about the war and in his earlier films, in particular, in the films "The White Ship" 1941, "The Man with the Cross" 1943, as well as in films for which he wrote screenplays, including the film "Luciano Serra ? pilot" directed by Goffredo Alessandrini. Rossellini also saw the origins of neorealism in such films as "Come on, there are places ahead" in 1942, "Campo dei Fiori" in 1943. (comedies by Mario Bonnard), "The Last Cabman" 1943 (comedy by Mario Mattoli). Rossellini noted that thanks to the play of actors Anna Magnani and Aldo Fabrizi, the "formula of neorealism" is being formed ^{[6, p. 180]}. The variety performances with "strongmen" and "Roman couplets" by Anna Magnani anticipated the films of the neorealist era. According to R. Rossellini, neorealism is emerging as a "dialectal" cinema, gaining self-awareness in the midst of human and social problems of the war and postwar period ^{[6, p. 180]}. "Neorealism" or "realism", as R. Rossellini called it, is not an exit from the pavilions to the street, not an image of human suffering, realism is an "artistic embodiment of truth" ^{[6, p. 181]}. Neorealists turn to the image of an individual. The subject of a realistic film is not a story, not a story, but "the world" ^{[6, p. 181]}. As the principles that R. Rossellini adhered to in his films, he himself defined chorality ^{[6, p. 183]}, while noting the unity of the sailors in the "White Ship", the partisans in the "Payza". R. Rossellini also considered the documentary manner of observation to be a feature of a realistic film ^{[6, pp. 183-184]}. The appeal to fantasy is also, according to R. Rossellini, a feature of a realistic film ^{[6, p. 184]}, which we see in his films "Francis, the minstrel of God" in 1959 and "The Machine that kills the bad" in 1952. In "The Machine that kills the bad" photographer Celestino, outraged by the arbitrariness going on in the city, visits an unknown old man who advises photographing troublemakers. Everyone Celestino shoots dies in the position in which he filmed them. Celestino mistakes the old man for St. Andrew, but eventually breaks his camera as too many people are dying. In R. Rossellini's 1948 film "Love", in the episode "Miracle", blessed Nanina mistakes a random passerby who treats her with wine for St. Joseph. Soon it turns out that Nanina is pregnant, people laugh at her and mock her, and she claims that the father of the child is St. Joseph. Having gone to the mountains, she gives birth to a child in a monastery.

The heroes' hope for a miracle is present in many of F. Fellini's films, especially in the scenes of Catholic folk processions ^[26]. So, in the film "Nights of Cabiria", his heroine, the prostitute Cabiria and her friends go to pray to Madonna with the hope of a better life. In "Sweet Life", a 1960 film, a boy and a girl inform adults that they saw the Madonna at the site of the destroyed temple, but here the procession turns into a show with the presence of television cameras and journalists. Many ordinary people hope for a miracle. Emma, the girlfriend of the main character Marcello, hopes that Madonna will help her save Marcello. Someone wants to be healed, a man is brought here on a stretcher. A miracle does not happen, the Madonna does not appear, the patient dies, but the children see the Madonna, who says that it is necessary to build a new temple on the site of the destroyed one ^[26].

R. Rossellini considered religiosity to be one of the aspects of realism ^{[6, p. 184]}. Priests are often the heroes of his films. In the film "Rome is an Open City", the priest Don Pietro Pelegrini helps the partisans in their struggle and dies in the fight against the German occupiers. The priest-heroes also appear in R. Rossellini's films "Payza" in 1946, even earlier in "The Man with the Cross". R. Rossellini's paintings "Stromboli, the Land of God" in 1950 and "Europa 51" in 1952 are permeated with a religious feeling. Irene, the heroine of "Europa 51", is deeply depressed after the loss of her son. Andrea's communist friend decides to help her, introduces her to social activities. Irene has a need to serve other people. Irene considers herself guilty of her son's death, believes that she did not love him enough. Her love for her neighbor stems from the hatred she harbors for herself. There is no "paradise" for her if there is no son. Her "paradise" exists not only for the living, but for everyone. He is eternal. In a conversation with the priest, Irene admits that she was selfish. Now she wants to be closer to people, "neighbors". The priest reminds her of her duty to her husband, but she feels an inner need to help other people who need her. She helps a woman with six children find a job and even replaces her at the factory when she cannot leave, caring for another woman with tuberculosis. Irene and St. Francis ("Francis, the Minstrel of God" 1950) mirror each other. The life of the hero of neorealism is inseparable from the lives of other people.

F. Fellini considered loneliness, "monadism" to be the misfortune of modern society, but he considered this phenomenon temporary ^{[9, pp. 66-67]}. F. Fellini did not agree with the generally accepted concepts of neorealism, considering himself to belong to this trend since the release of R. Rossellini's film "Rome ? an open city" ^{[9, p. 68]}. In his opinion, what unites the various currents in neorealism is love for a person, for his life, for his social duty. This problem is ethical, religious, social and in no way abstract. According to F. Fellini, Neorealism is the movement of a social person, that is, a person who, in relations with other people, proceeds from a sense of duty to society ^{[9, p. 78]}. Neorealism, F. Fellini believed, is a truly new movement, a new poetics that overcomes the old and brings renewal ^{[9, p. 79]}. The real enemy of neorealism is the one who is in a hurry to label "an unreal, fictional world" on those works that offer new ways and make discoveries ^{[9, p. 81]}.

According to A. Bazin, F. Fellini is the director who penetrated the aesthetics of neorealism the furthest, crossed it and found himself on the other side of it ^{[9, p. 104]}. F. Fellini does not contradict realism and neorealism. He reaches completeness, surpassing the Neorealists in the poetic reorganization of the world ^{[9, p. 105]}. F. Fellini completed the neorealist revolution by introducing a script without a dramatic connection of episodes, based only on a phenomenological description of the characters ^{[9, p. 106]}. Indeed, F. Fellini in 1963 in the film "Eight and a Half" forms a new film language and a new film aesthetics, in 1965 in the film "Juliet and the Spirits" approaches surrealism. F. Fellini himself considered his film "Juliet and the Spirits" to be neorealistic, since, in his opinion, he took a lesson from the neorealists ? an honest approach, the desire to approach things without ideological conventions, without sentimentality, the way Rossellini did" ^{[9, p. 266]}.

M. Antonioni wrote in 1960: "It is not true that neorealism has ended. It evolves because the direction, the current in art is not interrupted until it is replaced by the next one. There are no breaks" ^{[14, p. 106]}. Recalling V. De Sica's "Bicycle Thieves", he noted that it was no longer necessary to make a film about a man who had a bicycle stolen, that is, about a character of interest only because of the fact. "The feelings and soul of this robbed man come to the fore, the way he adapted to life, settled into it, what remained in him from his military past, from the post-war years, from everything that happened in our country" ^{[14, p. 107]}.

According to P. P. Pasolini, the formation of the style of R. Rossellini only partially coincides with the history of neorealism, at the same moments as the work of F. Fellini. These two directors are not similar to each other, but what brings them together makes them related to each other ^{[13, p. 320]}. Pasolini called this "creative realism", that is, a quality inherent in neorealism ("Francis, the minstrel of God") and expressed in the fact that the common man is depicted with a degree of irony and humor ^{[13, p. 321]}. There are many comical moments in "Francis...", especially the episode in which Brother Juniper appeased the tyrant Nicolai. Pasolini appreciated Rossellini's work, and it is not for nothing that in his 1966 film "Birds Large and Small" he introduces an episode where St. Francis sends monks to preach to falcons and sparrows. This episode takes the form of a grotesque: after the birds have heeded the instruction, the falcon eats the sparrow. The monks are wondering why this is happening. Francis appears to be a reformer who inspires his followers with the idea of the need to change the world. P. P. Pasolini considered his films realistic, although he could not give an exact definition of the concept of "realism". Realism, in his opinion, is a confusing concept and complicated by various shades, which is difficult to come to a common interpretation. He believed that the neorealists depicted everyday life rather aloof, sympathy for the characters was mixed with irony, while noting that there were no such colors in his palette ^{[13, p. 321]}. Both directors ? Rossellini and Pasolini  ? they turn to the history of St. Francis and the history of Jesus Christ.

The film by P. P. Pasolini "The Gospel of Matthew" was shot in 1964. Pasolini admitted in an interview with Oswald Stack that he tends to "mythologize everything in the world" ^{[13, p. 268]}. He wanted to recreate not the life of Christ as it was, but the history of Christ plus two millennia of its interpretation ^{[13, p. 268]}. The history of Christ, in his opinion, has been sufficiently mythologized during this time. Pasolini did not want to make a religious film, as he considered himself an unbeliever. The contradictions of the Holy Scriptures, he believed, are of an existential and everyday nature in his film ^{[13, p. 268]}. In addition to all this, Pasolini's film provides a reference to the history of modern Italy. King Herod looks like Mussolini, and his soldiers who kill babies are "blackshirts". It is impossible not to agree with N. A. Khrenov that Jesus P. P. Pasolini is not just a wanderer, but a prophet and a revolutionary ^{[3, p. 218]}. Pasolini himself spoke about his film, he believed that with its help he helped establish a dialogue between communists and Catholics. Thus, the Catholic wing appeared on the left flank, a very important phenomenon for Italy, in his opinion ^{[13, p. 269]}.

R. Rossellini turned to the history of Christ only in 1975, but retains some features of neorealism. He attaches importance to the ritual by reproducing it exactly. Little Jesus and Father Joseph go to the feast, to the place of the lamb sacrifice. Christ is to become a lamb to be slaughtered to atone for human sins.

P. P. Pasolini in "The Gospel of Matthew" changes the manner of shooting. Instead of following the principle of frame symmetry, combining small camera movements with a panorama, as in Akkaton, he uses different lenses, mounts close-ups shot with short-focus and long-focus optics, and uses a zoom lens. The trial of Christ, the scenes with Pilate and Caiaphas were filmed in the cinema-verite technique, Pasolini also used a hand-held camera ^{[13, p. 264]}. The term "Cinema-believe", introduced by Edgar Moreno, is associated with the experience of the Italian neorealists, and then the French documentarians of the 1950s and 1960s, for whom Dziga Vertov was a model ^{[23],[24, p. 26]}. M. Antonioni understood "cinema-believe" as the experience of Russian cinema. In his opinion, this is just a translation into French of the term "cinema truth". "Kinopravda is a cinematic edition of the Pravda newspaper. The expression itself seems to me rather inaccurate, because even the famous "kinoglaz" by Dziga Vertov was too "wonderful" for his cinematography to be called down-to-earth realistic..." ^{[14, p. 184],[23],[24, p. 26]}.

P. P. Pasolini did not think that his film was related to Catholicism at all, he believed that this film was his own film, since it was religious, like his vision of the world, although the religion he professed had nothing to do with the official religion. To work on the "Gospel" meant, for him, to plunge into mythology, into the epic ^{[13, p. 266]}.

P. P. Pasolini, according to E. Siciliano, his friend and researcher of his work, changed after coming from the "Christian" north to "pagan" Rome ^{[17, p. 268]}. Pasolini himself believed that Rome had made a pagan out of him, he stopped believing in some of the virtues that are typical of the inhabitants of the North, and in the southern climate of Rome they seemed meaningless. In Rome, in his opinion, people live more by passions, irrational. ^{[17, pp. 268-269]}. P. P. Pasolini turns to a special reality ? the ancient myth. The reason was the memories of a difficult relationship with his father. Pasolini turns to the story of Chronos devouring his offspring. According to E. Siciliano, the embodiment of these ideas was "Oedipus the King", filmed in 1967. Pasolini claimed that now that he was forty-five years old, he had finally freed himself from both Freud and Marx.  Maybe he was inspired by the tragedy of Sophocles to explain to himself what violence against a mother is? ^{[17, pp. 478-479]}. Pasolini himself admitted that he had never thought about making love to his mother.

P. P. himself. Pasolini noted that the main difference between his "Oedipus Rex" and his other films is that it is autobiographical. In Oedipus, he talked about his own oedipal complex. The kid in the prologue ? this is himself, the father of the baby, an infantry officer, is his father, and his mother, a teacher, is his mother ^{[13, p. 349]}. In the first shots, Pasolini reproduces a clearing similar to the one where his mother took him as a child. Some of the costumes in the modern part are recreated from old photographs, such as, for example, the mother's dress and a yellow hat, the officer is wearing a 1930s uniform ^{[13, p. 350]}.

In Oedipus Rex, myth and reality interact with each other. In the first part, the action takes place in the XX century, and the film ends with Oedipus returning to everyday life, to the real world. The film begins with the birth of a baby, with his relationship with his father and mother. We see the "Oedipus complex" in action. A child at an unconscious age experiences jealousy for the first time, as punishment, his father hangs him by his legs. Through the feet, the "symbol" of the penis, performs a kind of castration. The second part of the film projects this psychoanalytic fact into a myth; as if it were a long deep dream in which a mythical plot unfolds ^{[13, p. 345]}. For the filming of the modern part, P. P. Pasolini used short-focus lenses in order to stylistically link both parts. He believed that by shooting the modern part realistically, he would get too simple and boring contrast. Therefore, I showed it as a dream through a deforming lens. It was necessary to create the impression of a dream ^{[13, p. 348]}. The color scheme of some episodes of the film by P. P. Pasolini was inspired by his dreams: these are episodes of the plague and the burning of the dead in colorful clothes ^{[13, p. 346]}.

In the modern part, some phrases are given in captions: these are the thoughts of the characters. Instead of a voiceover, a technique of modern cinema, P. P. Pasolini used insert credits ? a technique of silent cinema ^{[13, p. 346]}, which is seen as a reference to cinema-verita and Dziga Vertov.

Pasolini creates the antique part of the painting rather conventionally. A desert appears before us. The costumes of the heroes are arbitrarily invented attire. Pasolini got acquainted with the works on the culture of the Aztecs, the Sumerians, and the culture of Black Africa. Ancient history, according to Pasolini, is "the same everywhere" ^{[13, p. 348]}. He wanted to make the costumes even more arbitrary and prehistoric, but there was not enough time for a more in-depth study of the problem ^{[13, p. 348]}.

The image of the Sphinx is given very conditionally: a man in rags, whose face is not visible. As P. P. Pasolini himself noted, there are no words of the Sphinx in the tragedy of Sophocles, the Sphinx is related to mythology, not to the text of the tragedy. Thus, he made a change in Greek mythology, and not in the text of Sophocles, making the Sphinx the "subconscious of Oedipus": he can make love to his mother only by throwing the Sphinx into the abyss, that is, displacing it from the sphere of his consciousness ^{[13, p. 346]}.

The scene of Oedipus' meeting with his real father, Lai, looks comical in many ways. The conflict is over the road that Oedipus refuses to give up. Both opponents are afraid of each other, nevertheless, they begin to fight. Oedipus kills Laius out of fear. According to Jean-Andre Fieschi, in "Oedipus Rex" the feeling of death is stronger and more palpable in the modern part than in the ancient one, it is much more in the green meadow or the yellow hat of the mother than in the text of the tragedy itself ^{[13, p. 346]}. P. P. Pasolini confirmed his guess: the ancient part is fear before life, not before death. The tragedy, in his opinion, touches on the themes of life, whereas all the images of childhood are permeated by the feeling of death, which in fact ends the film ^{[13, p. 349]}.

Pasolini himself played the role of the priest in the second part of the film, in the plague scene. Firstly, there was no suitable actor for this role. Secondly, in the text of Sophocles, the priest appears at the very beginning of the text. Pasolini liked the idea of introducing Sophocles himself into his film ^{[13, p. 349]}. Equally important is a character like Tiresias, a soothsayer and seer, who is the first to learn that the plague is the punishment of the gods for the crimes of Oedipus. The blind Tiresias and the self-blinding Oedipus mirror each other. Pasolini wanted to give the role of Tiresias to Orson Welles, who starred in his film novella "Sheep's Cheese" and was close to Pasolini in political views, but he failed. Pasolini believed that O. Wells would have added a moral dimension to this character with his inherent intelligence and cruelty. It would be Tiresias the accuser ^{[13, p. 349]}. The film ends with the return of the blind Oedipus to the modern world. Pasolini called it sublimation, using Freud's term. In another version of the myth, Oedipus happened  the same as with Teresius. Having punished himself with blindness, that is, having gone through a kind of purification, he rises to the height of heroes and poets ^{[13, p. 345]}. Oedipus, who has returned to the modern world for a reason, begins to play music, play the pipe, like Tiresias in the mythological part. When Oedipus meets Tiresias playing the pipe in the mythological part, he dreams: "I wish I could be you, singing, because you are beyond the reach of Fate." The guide of Oedipus in modern times is an Angel who performs the role of a messenger in the mythological part. The messenger, by P.P. Pasolini, is a kind of bridge connecting the "otherworldly" space with the "hereafter", the space of myth and the space of the real world.

Even in the Gospel of Matthew, the role of an Angel, who is a messenger, is strengthened. The angel turns to Joseph, informs him that Mary's son will be born of the Holy Spirit, warns about the massacre of infants and tells Joseph and his family to flee to Egypt and then return back to Israel. The angel also announces the resurrection of Jesus.

The angel is also present in "Theorem", a film shot in 1968. The film presents a bourgeois family living a boring, measured life. A stranger appears, who gradually seduces every member of the family: the maid, the son, the daughter, the mother, the father. Soon the stranger disappears, a commotion begins in the family: the daughter suffers from a mental disorder, the mother is looking for young lovers, the son paints abstract paintings. The maid falls into asceticism, ascends upwards, then orders herself to be buried alive. The father, arriving at his factory, takes off his clothes and gives the factory to the workers. Here we see a reference to the Gospel of Matthew: "And whoever wants to sue you and take your shirt from you, give him also your outer garment" (Matthew 5:40) and "... if you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor; and you will have treasure in heaven; and come and follow Me" (Matthew 19:21). P.P. Pasolini himself said that his film is about how something religious suddenly breaks into the irreligious orderly life of a Milanese family ^{[13, p. 463]}. How does Pasolini manage to combine religion and eroticism? Eroticism, for him, is an element of culture, in the "Theorem" he expresses it as a system of signs. This eros is not the eros of antiquity, not a manifestation of natural power ? it's all together. Eroticism for him, in this case, is the "language of the film." An emerging stranger, God or angel, communicates with others using a system of special signs different from the language system ^{[13, p. 463]}. The stranger does not talk, only occasionally reads Rimbaud's poetry. The angel-stranger represents the sacred, different from the sacred in the Christian sense, the "undivine sacred", according to the terminology of S. N. Zenkin ^[27].

The messenger in the film appears in the image of the postman Angelino (from the word "Angel"), who brings a telegram about the arrival of an otherworldly guest. It is noteworthy that the role of the messenger in "Oedipus Rex" and in "Theorem" is performed by the same actor - Ninetto Davoli. Pasolini was accused of profanity in connection with the "Theorem". On September 13, 1968, the newspaper "Osservatore Romana" wrote that the mysterious guest is not at all an image of a being who frees a person from his existential torments, limitations and sinfulness, it is almost a demon ^{[17, p. 498]}. P. P. Pasolini rejected these accusations, he believed that he protects the sacred in man, so how it is least able to resist the vilification of the authorities and it is most threatened by church institutions ^{[13, p. 464]}.

P. P. Pasolini was familiar with the works of M. Eliade ^[28], where the "sacred" and the "mundane" are contrasted. In "Medea", a 1969 film, the world tree appears as the center of the universe, repeating in miniature the original archetype of the creation of the world. Women under the guidance of Medea chant a prayer in chorus ^{[13, p. 356]}. It is to this tree that the golden fleece is suspended in Colchis, the kingdom of Medea.

On the one hand, the inhabitants of Colchis appear as barbarians, the opposite of the Greeks. In Colchis, people are sacrificed to the Sun, dismembering them. Medea is a priestess of the Sun. On the other hand, myths and rituals are a way of their constant daily existence. The Greeks appear in the film as our contemporaries, the inhabitants of Colchis are archaic. Medea flees with Jason, fleeing from the chase, she kills her brother, thus sacrificing him. When the Argonauts land off the coast, she is horrified that they do not offer prayers to God to bless their tents. Medea accuses them of not repeating the first act of the supreme creation, not looking for the center (tree, pillar, stone) ^{[13, p. 386]}. Medea's world is collapsing, she is losing her strength, her faith. Jason's betrayal makes her remember that she is a priestess of the Sun. She puts on her priestess outfit again, punishes Glaucus, and takes revenge on Jason by sacrificing her sons.

As noted by P. P. Pasolini, he took only a few quotations from the text of Euripides, and the theoretical basis of the film is the history of religions, the works of M. Eliade, D. Fraser, L. Levy-Bruhl ^{[13, p. 391]}. If "Oedipus Rex" is a reflection of his relationship with his father, then "Medea" is a tragedy of his mother, this film is dedicated to Susanna Pasolini. Pasolini filmed his mother as the mother of Jesus in The Gospel of Matthew and as a nun in The Theorem. The centaur in the film is an image of a parental couple. A symbol of a bisexual being, paternal power and motherhood (he is like a mother carrying a child, since in ancient times mothers carried children on their backs) ^{[13, p. 391]}.

Pasolini's films were often a reflection of his experiences and bitter experiences, sometimes a violation of the norm. He himself admitted that he really has the psychology of a wounded animal that drags behind the pack ^{[13, p. 391]}. After Medea, Pasolini directed The Trilogy of Life, combining The Decameron (1971), The Canterbury Tales (1972), and The Flower of the Thousand and One Nights (1974). The Decameron and The Canterbury Tales are a tribute to the Renaissance, about which Pasolini said: "I constantly see in front of me, as a general outline, frescoes by Masaccio and Giotto, these are the artists I love more than anyone else, as well as paintings by Mannerist artists (for example, Pontorno). I cannot imagine an image, a landscape, a composition outside of this original passion of mine for painting of the fourteenth century, which put a person at the center of any perspective image. Then, when my images begin to move, I also begin to move, as if I point the lens at them, and they are on the background of a painting or fresco, as on a stage. Therefore, I always take them off frontally ^{[17, pp. 368-369]}. Jacopo Pontorno's painting "The Descent from the Cross" inspired Pasolini to stage the film novella "Sheep's Cheese" even before the Gospel of Matthew, in 1963 in the film almanac "RoGoPaG" (separate film novellas directed by R. Rossellini, J. L. Godard, P. P. Pasolini, U. Gregoretti). The appearance of film almanacs, which feature film novels by various directors, was also not without the influence of the Renaissance novel. According to the plot of "Sheep's Cheese", the action takes place on the set, where the scene of the crucifixion of Christ is being filmed. The poor man in the film, who plays the second thief, who is crucified with Christ, gives food to the family. The provisions he has hidden are stolen by a tramp, he manages to fortify himself only with sheep's cheese and bread. The film crew, for the sake of laughter, begins to feed him strenuously to such an extent that when he is "crucified", he actually dies. Pasolini denounced sanctimonious morality, seemingly Christian, in fact hypocritical. Pasolini dreamed of staging Dante's Divine Comedy. He even offered to arrange a competition for the best arrangement of Dante's masterpiece. He worked on this idea in 1963-1965, then returned to it more than once until 1967. He finished only the first two songs, picked up several photos for an application called "Yellowed Iconography". A book entitled "Divine Imitation" was supposed to be published a few weeks after his death, in December 1975, but these plans were not destined to come true ^{[17, pp. 453-454]}. Dante's "Divine Comedy" was offered several times to film F. Fellini, but he refused each time, but he was not spared by Dante's influence ^[26]. F. Fellini and M. Antonioni open a new chapter in the history of Italian cinema.

Italian cinema, since the 1940s, has entered a new period of its development, called neorealism. The concept of "neorealism" is quite complex, many of its representatives called themselves realists. Realism focuses on a person in interaction with society and the environment. Chorality, that is, the interaction of people, can be distinguished as the principles of neorealism. A separate feature of neorealism is the appeal to fantasy. Despite the documentary approach to filming, neorealists create their own, special reality, turn to history and myth. Myth and reality interact with each other.