Neorealism and Transmediality: A Migrating Narration

In rethinking transmediality as a concept we are forced to address semiotics rather than linguistics, and therefore incorporate written, oral and, most of all, visual texts in a new conjuncture. This contribution explores how the Neorealist decade (1945-1956) in Italy can be assimilated to what Thomas Pavel in 1975 theorized as a “possible world” where written and visual expressions are assembled in an unprecedented form of storytelling. W.J.T. Mitchell’s concept of ‘the image as agent’ illustrates how Neorealist cinema has an emotional impact capable of transcending written forms of signification, thus making new venues viable for a participated forms of reception, which are still present in later works such as Tornatore’s Cinema Paradiso (1990) and Costanzo’s My Brilliant Friend (2018).