Movie Year 0

Maurizio Baroni's trilogy on Italian cinema starts with this number "0". This volume catalogs the stronger and more incisive experiences undergone during the first postwar period. Here are the gaunt images, expressive means, the poor but uncanny intensity,and bold chronicles of humanity still confused, but extremely resolute.

Such were the years of Neorealism. It was a movement that would became a genre. It was a time for personalities of genius, for rich but sober creativity and for atmospheres that tasted of a remote past and to which the new generations would refer to find again, the expressive force, honesty and cleanliness that characterized a unique era.

Composer Ennio Morricone reading Platea in Piedi

There were neither narrative frills nor special effects in those films which were made on shoestring budgets, but were full of enthusiasm and extraordinary imagination. They were works that made the moviegoer meditate on a period in which showing off was better than being and escape better than reflection. Certainly, this sensitivity would appear distant and extraneous to the new generations, and these films, today, cannot be shown but as documents to be studied. Their essentially, their naive and, at times, almost primitive vital power must still express something real to those who suffer, day after day, the pounding of vacuous and empty lives full of dull and tedious stories.

Baroni's work is that of the patient and humble collector who is, at the same time, well aware of his fundamental work of covert archivist. This book, like the others that follow, praise him.

By Valerio Massimo Manfredi, author of: "I Greci in Occidente" (Mondadori 1996) "Le Isole Fortunate" (L'Erma di Bretschneider 1993) "Gli Etruschi in Val Padana" (Il Saggiatore 1993) "Mare Greco" (Mondadori 1992) "La strada dei Diecimila" (Jaca Book 1986)