One of the things I've really noticed about all of the Italian Neo-Realist films I've watched is that the endings are very similar, both narratively and stylistically. For example, the first film that I watched was The Bicycle Thief, which ends with the character of the father attempting to steal another bicycle so that he will be able to keep his job and take care of his family. Here is a clip.
The entire time you're watching, you know exactly what is going to happen. The father is going to try to steal the bike, but it's not going to work out. Still, De Sica makes us sit through the entire ordeal, repeatedly cutting back to the son's crying face, and the father's expression of (at first) his conflicted feelings about his actions and then the resignation that he is going to have to resort to theft. Although the man who he tried to steal the bicycle from lets him off the hook, the end of the film is not happy, because we are left wondering how on earth the father will be able to provide for his family when he has no way of doing his job without a bicycle.
The next film I watched, Umberto D, had a very similar ending. In it, an old man is trying to survive in a society where he is no longer considered useful or valuable. He attempts to commit suicide, but is stopped at the last second when his dog runs away from him.
Once again, the ending is bittersweet. Although Umberto is able to win back the affection of his dog (his only friend) and does not decide to end his life, he is left without any options. He is homeless, jobless and friendless. He is alive, but his future is far from bright.
Shoeshine, the next film on the list, wasn't exactly any brighter. I couldn't find a clip of the ending, but basically what happens is two boys, Giuseppe and Pasquale, who were best friends get into a fight because, while they were in jail for a crime that Giuseppe's brother committed, Pasquale told the authorities that it was the brother who committed the crime. As a result, the boys get into a fight which escalates to the point where Pasquale accidentally kills Guiseppe. Once again, during the last 20 minutes or so of the movie, I was able to predict that the fight was going to escalate to that point, and winced during each and every scene the two boys were in together.
The final movie is Germany, Year Zero. In this film, a family living in Germany after the Second World War struggles to get by as their father wastes away from an unidentified illness. The youngest son, Edmund, is eventually persuaded by a former teacher that the best thing for him to do is to put his father out of his misery, and poisons him. When he confesses his crime to the teacher, the man turns on him, saying that he never said that at all, and calling Edmund a monster. Edmund is filled with remorse, and throws himself out the window of a ruined building across the street from where he lives.
In all of these endings, the viewer is completely aware that something terrible is about to happen, but neither De Sica (the director of the first three films) nor Rossellini (the director of the last) allows the audience to look away from the tragedy that is unfolding. The films use long shots that don't look away from the tragedy that is going on. That is, I think, the entire point of these endings. They aren't surprising, just like the ending of Romeo and Juliet isn't surprising. They are long and drawn out, and all the more tragic because of it. The reason the Italian Neorealist movement happened was because filmmakers were tired of the false happy endings that Hollywood was providing, and they wanted to show everyone what the "real world" was actually like. In the real world, children are driven to acts of violence, and suicide is one way that people consider to get out of their horrible life situations. Instead of trying to soften the blow of these tragic events, Italian Neorealist directors seek to show an unblinking account of what happens when people are driven to the ends of their ropes. You can't cut away from tragedy in real life, and so the directors choose not to take that option in their films. And that's the crux of Italian Neorealism.
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