To understand the birth of what was to be called the Italian Neo-realist movement, one must understand the social and political backdrop the surrounded its beginnings. During the period of fascist rule under Mussolini the type of cinema that was being produced was divorced from reality and concerned only with promoting a good image of Italy. The government had decreed that crime and immorality should not be put on screen. However some good did come from the fascist control of Cinema in Italy as the famous Cinecitta studios (Italy's answer to Hollywood) were built and the Italian Film School was established. And, perhaps more significantly, some filmmakers took a moral and aesthetic stance against fascism. By 1943 fascist rule in Italy was coming to an end and in 1944 Italy was occupied by the Allies. The fall of fascism allowed for the truth to be told about the impoverished conditions of the working classes and of urban life. And this is precisely what a small group of filmmakers did. They rejected the old cinema and its codes and conventions and went for the gritty reality. The basic tenets of this movement were that cinema should focus its own nature and its role in society and that it should confront audiences with their own reality. These principles had implications for the style of this cinema and not only of its content. So some principles were devided in order for the films to make people look at them as reflections of their own lives and social conditions. Poverty and unemploymant were rampant so filmmakers wanted their films to be seen as an almost fictional documentary of reality. To achieve this a number of modernist methods were established.
1. Dialogue and language should be neutral , even going as far as sticking to regional dialects.
2. Non-professional actors were preferable to professional.
3. Location was preferable to studio work ( this was plausable as the topics focused on were poverty and unemployment which was evident on the post-war streets of Italy).