Neorealismo, Ernesto de Martino, Arturo Zavattini

The author analyzes the legacy of neorealism in the Italian ethnographic documentary film (1950-1970). An analysis of the documentaries allows the identification of two main rhetorical lines: the first one, rather than linking the documentary to neorealism as "a heterogeneous totality of media", according to the interpretation provided by the Gruppo Cinegramma, seems to fully represent Canudo's idea of cinema as a "synthesis of the arts". The second rhetorical line, by carefully describing daily life, seems to be closer to Zavattini's "poetics of shadowing", in which foreign visual anthropology has recognized a precursor of the cinéma verité and observational cinema.