Best Italian Neorealism Films, Ranked by IQ Score

Italian Neorealism is the postwar movement (roughly 1945-1952) that reshaped what cinema could be. The structural commitments — non-professional actors, on-location filming with available light, working-class subject matter, narrative refusal of melodrama — defined a generation of postwar European cinema and directly influenced the French New Wave, American independent cinema, and global art-cinema for the next half century.

Anchor picks: Bicycle Thieves (1948) is the canonical De Sica entry. Rome, Open City (1945) is the canonical founding text. La Strada (1954) marks Fellini's transition out of Neorealism into his own register. Umberto D. (1952) is the catalog's most-emotionally-direct entry.