This insightful new video essay by Tyler Knudsen (AKA Cinema Tyler) shows how great directors like Visconti, De Sica, and Rossellini ushered in the raw, unfiltered reality of Italian Neorealism. The Italian Neorealist movement was a sister to French New Wave, wherein Italian directors were dealing with the political reality of fascism by showing life as it was lived by ordinary working people. They wanted to show these people grappling with large, sometimes unsolvable problems, sometimes coming from their own lives, and sometimes stemming from larger social structures over which they had no control.