From the Apennines to the Andes: ‘Global neorealism’ in the intercontinental dialogue between Zavattini and García Márquez

Abstract

This article investigates the fruitful cultural and artistic partnership between Cesare Zavattini and Gabriel García Márquez, starting from the course in directing taught in the 1950s at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia (Experimental School of Cinema) in Rome by the Italian master and attended by the Colombian writer. In this article, I analyse García Márquez’s literary-cinematographic works that best testify to the Zavattinian influence: from the ‘Márquezian’ masterpiece Cien años de soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude) () to the screenplay of Milagro en Roma (Miracle in Rome) (), both indebted to Zavattini’s neorealism of the screenplay of Miracolo a Milano (Miracle in Milan) (), and to the short story ‘La santa’ (‘The saint’) (), in which one of the characters is Zavattini himself. This article also includes the analysis of unpublished materials, such as private letters between the two authors, which reconstruct Zavattini’s crucial role in promoting Italian neorealism in Latin America, as well as the Zavattinian authorship in the birth and development of magic realism. The result of Zavattini’s and García Márquez’s effort and collaboration is represented by the founding of the Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión in in Cuba, an institution that best represents ‘global neorealism’.