The neorealist style was developed by a circle of film critics that revolved around the magazine Cinema, including: Largely prevented from writing about politics (the editor-in-chief of the magazine was Vittorio Mussolini, son of Benito Mussolini), the critics attacked the Telefoni Bianchi ("white telephone") films that dominated the industry at the time.

Italian cinema went from utilizing elaborate studio sets to shooting on location in the countryside and city streets in a realist style.

[5] Although the true beginning of neorealism has been widely contested by theorists and filmmakers, the first neorealist film is generally thought to be Visconti's Ossessione, released in 1943, during the occupation.

The vision of the existing poverty and despair, presented by neorealist cinema, was demoralizing a nation anxious for prosperity and change.

Additionally, the first positive effects of the Italian economic miracle period—such as gradual rises in income levels—caused the themes of neorealism to lose their relevance.

[6] Italy's move from individual concern with neorealism to the tragic frailty of the human condition can be seen through Federico Fellini's films.

Similarly, Antonioni's Red Desert (1964) and Blow-up (1966) take the neorealist trappings and internalise them in the suffering and search for knowledge brought out by Italy's post-war economic and political climate.

In the early 1950s the neorealist torch was picked up by artists like Sicily's Bruno Caruso, whose work focused on the warehouses, shipyards and psychiatric wards of his native Palermo.

Vittorio De Sica's 1948 film Bicycle Thieves is also representative of the genre, with non-professional actors, and a story that details the hardships of working-class life after the war.

[10] The light portrayal of events reveals the indifference, dirtiness, and violence of society, showcasing the conflict between public and private perspectives.

It was also the time period when a more upbeat neorealism emerged, which produced films that melded working-class characters with 1930s-style populist comedy, as seen in de Sica's Umberto D.[12] At the height of neorealism, in 1948, Visconti adapted I Malavoglia, a novel by Giovanni Verga, written during the 19th century realist verismo movement, bringing the story to a modern setting, which resulted in remarkably little change in either the plot or the tone.

More contemporary theorists of Italian neorealism characterize it less as a consistent set of stylistic characteristics and more as the relationship between film practice and the social reality of post-war Italy.

It produces a new world in which the main elements have not so many narrative functions as they have their own aesthetic value, related with the eye that is watching them and not with the action they are coming from.