Nonprofessional Actors Give European Films a New Realism

Posted on December 5, 2008 in Directing | No Comments

Tobias Grey examines the trend in Europe of using everyday people in films to achieve realism.

…When the Italian film director Matteo Garrone began formulating how he wanted to make “Gomorrah,” his unflinching portrait of the Neapolitan Mafia, his inspiration came from a movie made more than 60 years earlier. It was the 1946 neorealist classic “Paisan” by Roberto Rossellini — an episodic masterpiece about the Allied invasion of Italy during World War II in which the Italian director cast actual U.S. soldiers, local citizens, resistance fighters, German POWs and even some Franciscan monks instead of professional actors.

— WSJ.com | Read The Full Article