Hilary Neroni is Professor of Film and Television Studies at the University of Vermont, USA. She is the author of Feminist Film Theory and Cléo from 5 to 7 (Bloomsbury, 2016), The Subject of Torture (2015), and The Violent Woman (2005) and has also published numerous essays on film and theory.
Neroni's Realist Film Theory and Bicycle Thieves brilliantly distils the conceptual moves and political stakes of Neorealism, while making an original and compelling case for the contemporary revitalization of realist film theory. By emphasizing realism's dependence on mediation, Neroni eloquently argues for the radical power of the realist form to reveal the ways in which our reality is structured. Her novel reading of Bicycle Thieves powerfully demonstrates how filmic realism's vital relationship to melodrama enables viewers to forge new relationships to the social order. * Jennifer Friedlander, Edgar E. and Elizabeth S. Pankey Professor of Media Studies, Pomona College, USA, and author of Real Deceptions: The Contemporary Reinvention of Realism (2017) *