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N.U. (short for Nettezza urbana, Italian urban cleansing service) is a 1948 Italian documentary short film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. The film examines a weekday from morning until evening of Italian road sweepers, captured at work on the streets of post-World War II Rome.

Style

In a 1961 discussion with film students, Antonioni explained that he wanted to achieve a contrast to the then dominating neorealist documentary style with his film by use of a "poetically free montage".

Awards

• 1948 Nastro d'Argento for Best Documentary

Legacy

N.U. has been screened as part of retrospectives on Antonioni at various festivals and institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and the Cinémathèque Française. It has been released on home media as part of The Criterion Collection's release of Antonioni's Red Desert.

References

1. "Nettezza urbana". Collins Dictionary. Retrieved 9 September 2023.
2. "Nettezza urbana". Treccani (in Italian). Retrieved 9 September 2023.
3. Kotulla, Theodor, ed. (1964). "Die Krankheit der Gefühle. Ein Gespräch mit Studenten des Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rom 1961". Der Film. Manifeste, Gespräche, Dokumente. Vol. 2. Munich: Piper.
4. Marrone, Gaetana, ed. (2007). Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies. Vol. 1. Routledge. p. 58. ISBN 978-1-57958-390-3. Retrieved 9 September 2023.
5. "Reinventing Neorealism: Antonioni's Documentaries of the 1940s and '50s". Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved 10 September 2023.
6. "Short Films by Michelangelo Antonioni". BAMPFA. 22 December 2014. Retrieved 10 September 2023.
7. "N.U. (Nettezza urbana)". Cinémathèque Française (in French). Retrieved 10 September 2023.
8. "Red Desert". The Criterion Collection. Retrieved 10 September 2023.

External links

• N.U. at IMDb

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• 1948 films
• Italian black-and-white films
• 1940s Italian-language films
• Films directed by Michelangelo Antonioni
• Italian short documentary films
• 1948 short documentary films
• Black-and-white documentary films
• Films shot in Rome
• Documentary films about cities
• Films scored by Giovanni Fusco
• 1940s Italian films
• 1940s Italian film stubs
• Short documentary film stubs