Italian neorealist cinema in postage stamps.
This set of four 1988 Italian stamps commemorated four films associated with the neo-realist era in Italian cinema after World War II. Luchino Visconti's wartime-made Ossessione was a relentless and gritty film-noir about lust and murder that attempted to unshackle the cinematic conventions of the fascist era. Roberto Rossellini's Open City, about partisan fighters and resistance to the Nazis in occupied Rome, was an overwhelming groundbreaker. The Bicycle Thief of Vittorio De Sica poignantly pitted a desperate man and his son against the injustices of an indifferent society. Giuseppe De Santis' Bitter Rice mixed sex, violence, and social struggle and found audience appeal. To discuss the period in terms of only these four films is to trivialize it and omit some of the Italian cinema's vaster breadth and scope during that time, but each is indeed a worthwhile film. The first three of this group are also genuine cinematic masterpeices of enormous import and influence.