What does neorealism mean?
Neorealism describes artistic and intellectual movements that renewed the idea of realism by focusing closely on immediate lived experience. In Italian cinema, it developed during the 1940s and is associated with location shooting, nonprofessional performers, everyday settings, and subjects such as war, poverty, and social displacement. Films associated with directors including Vittorio De Sica and Roberto Rossellini helped make neorealism internationally influential. In postwar France, neorealism described a related literary movement that emphasized close observation, ordinary situations, and less conventional narrative structures. The term also has a specialized use in international-relations theory, where neorealist accounts explain state behavior through interests, power, security, and actors' perceptions rather than abstract ideals. Across these fields, neorealism is more historically specific than realism: it usually signals a deliberate modern revival of realism rather than the broader tradition of representing the world as it is.
nounNeorealism is a 20th-century artistic and intellectual approach that seeks to represent people, circumstances, or international relations with particular attention to immediate reality rather than idealization or abstraction. In its best-known artistic uses, it refers to movements in Italian cinema and postwar French literature.
- A postwar movement in Italian cinema that depicted contemporary life, especially the experiences of ordinary people and the consequences of war and social hardship, through location shooting, understated performances, and often nonprofessional actors.
- A postwar French literary movement associated especially with writers such as Alain Robbe-Grillet, Michel Butor, and Nathalie Sarraute, characterized by attention to everyday experience, precise observation, and the breakdown of conventional plotting.
- A broadly realist approach in international-relations scholarship that emphasizes the interests, capabilities, and perceptions of states and other actors rather than idealized or purely legalistic accounts of world politics.
"The film's austere setting and use of nonprofessional actors exemplify the influence of Italian neorealism on the director's work."
"Italian neorealism emerged during the 1940s and profoundly influenced filmmakers around the world."
"The novel's attention to ordinary domestic routines aligns it with postwar French neorealism."
The plural is grammatically regular but rarely needed because the word normally names a defined movement or intellectual approach.
"The study compares several neorealisms produced in different national cinemas."
Italian neorealism made ordinary streets, nonprofessional actors, and imperfect light into powerful cinematic material, helping redefine what a realistic film could be.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Where does neorealism come from?
Neorealism was formed in English through the combining form neo-, meaning new, and realism, which comes through French réalisme from Latin realis, meaning real or pertaining to things. The term emerged in French cultural discussion during the 1950s and was used in relation both to new French writing and to the recently developed cinema of Italian neorealism. Its literal sense, a new or renewed realism, reflects its connection to the older English tradition of realism and the cognate forms realist and realistic.
How neorealism is actually used
In artistic discussion, the term usually refers specifically to Italian cinema or postwar French literature; in political science, it is a qualified form of realism. The spelling "neo-realism" is also encountered, but "neorealism" is the more usual modern form.
Easily confused with neorealism
Realism is the broad tradition of representing things as they are, while neorealism usually identifies a specific postwar artistic movement or a consciously modern realist approach.