pedinamento
A highly influential ideologue of neorealism, scriptwriter and director Cesare Zavattini suggested “pedinare,” the Italian word for stalking or shadowing, as a technique for filmmaking. Pedinare in cinema entailed “tailing someone like a detective, not determining what the character does but seeking to find out what is about to ensue.” The etymology of the word in Italian suggests “legwork” as it is derived from the Italian word for foot, “piede.” It is possible to suggest that the proliferation of images of walking in Italian Neorealism is closely linked to the technique of pedinamento, not because all neorealist filmmakers were followers of Zavattini, but because going out onto the street to encounter the everyday life of post-war Italian cities and creating cinematic tools to articulate these encounters were major concerns for the filmmakers of that era.
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