Postwar European Realism

After 1945, directors across Europe turned their cameras on ruined cities, refugees and the moral wreckage of war. Swiss director Leopold Lindtberg's The Last Chance (1945) used real refugees to tell the story of escape, René Clément's Forbidden Games (1952) showed war through children's eyes, and Renato Castellani worked in the Italian manner. Bodil Ipsen and Lau Lauritzen Jr. in Denmark, and František Čáp in Czechoslovakia, made films of occupation and resistance. These were mostly modest productions, shot on location with plain, honest means, and they form part of the wider climate that Italian Neorealism had made possible.

Where

Switzerland, France, Italy, Denmark, Czechoslovakia and elsewhere in Europe

When

1945 to the 1960s

Key figures

Leopold Lindtberg, René Clément, Renato Castellani, Bodil Ipsen, Lau Lauritzen Jr., František Čáp

Landmark films

The Last Chance (1945), Forbidden Games (1952), Two Cents Worth of Hope (1952)

Legacy

Part of a postwar turn to honest, location-based storytelling about ordinary people

What to look for

• Ruins, refugees and occupation as settings
• Real locations and often non-professional casts
• A sober, humane tone without heroic glamour