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Vittorio De Sica
Director / Screenwriter / Actor
1902 - 1974
Born July 7, Sora, Latium, Italy
Key Production Country: Italy
Key Genres: Drama, Melodrama, War Drama, Family Drama
Key Collaborators: Cesare Zavattini (Screenwriter), Alessandro Cicognini (Composer), Eraldo Da Roma (Editor), Adolfo Franci (Screenwriter), Sophia Loren (Leading Player), Paolo Stoppa (Leading Player), Carlo Ponti (Producer), Aldo Graziati (Cinematographer), Adriana Novelli (Editor), Memmo Carotenuto (Character Player)

Highly Recommended: The Children Are Watching Us (1944), Bicycle Thieves (1948)*, Umberto D. (1952)*
Recommended: Shoeshine (1946)*, Two Women (1960)
Worth a Look: Miracle in Milan (1951)*, The Gold of Naples (1954), The Condemned of Altona (1962), The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1971)
Duds: Indiscretion of an American Wife (1953)
* Listed in TSPDT's 1,000 Greatest Films section.

 
 
 
Links: [ Amazon ] [ IMDB ] [ TCMDB ] [ All-Movie Guide ] [ Film Reference ] [ Strictly Film School ] [ Sony Pictures Biography ] [ Nextpix Biography ]
Books: [ Vittorio De Sica: Director, Actor, Screenwriter ] [ Vittorio De Sica: Contemporary Perspectives ] [ The Films of Vittorio De Sica ]
 
The Bicycle Thief (1948)Umberto D. (1952)Shoeshine (1946)Two Women (1960)
 
     
  "In retrospect, even De Sica's neo-realist work was marred by melodrama; the authenticity of location-shooting is undermined by schematic plots and excessive heart-on-the-sleeve sentimentality. The superbly naturalistic, non-professional performances in his best work, however, do convey an overwhelming emotional power." - Geoff Andrew (The Film Handbook, 1989)  
     
  "Although his detractors have argued that shallowness was never far away, it still seems unbelievable that the man who produced four consecutive masterpieces, which told us more about the plight and conditions of postwar Italians than any other films, could later have turned out such vapid and dispiriting stuff as Boccaccio 70, Marriage Italian Style, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow and Woman Times Seven." - David Quinlan (Quinlan's Film Directors, 1999)  
     
  "Like many would-be documentarists, De Sica is actually uneasy about feeling. When it arises, he shuts it off brusquely, as if he mistrusted an over-sentimental reaction from his innate coldness. I do not mean that he was callous, but that his films skirt round feelings and prefer not to investigate character... He stands now as a minor director. But the films from 1943-1952, and The Gold of Naples, are still worth seeing." - David Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, 2002)  
     
  "The great humanist of Italian neo-realism, De Sica directed with an emphasis on truth, simple humanity, the goodness of man, comedy and faith." - William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978)  
     
  "I've lost all my money on these films. They are not commercial. But I'm glad to lose it this way. To have for a souvenir of my life pictures like Umberto D. and The Bicycle Thief." - Vittorio De Sica  
     
 
Please note that the rating given for this director (see top-right) is based only on the films we have seen (listed above). Films by this director that we haven't seen include The Roof (1956), Boccaccio '70 (1962), Marriage Italian-Style (1964), Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1964), After the Fox (1966), Woman Times Seven (1967), A Place for Lovers (1969), Sunflower (1970), A Brief Vacation (1973), and The Voyage (1973).
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"The films of Vittorio De Sica are among the most enduring of the Italian post-war period. His career suggests an openness to form and a versatility uncommon among Italian directors… During his lifetime, De Sica acted in over one hundred films in Italy and abroad, using this means to finance his own directorial efforts… The influence of his tenure as actor cannot be overestimated in his directorial work, where the expressivity of the actor in carefully written roles was one of his foremost technical implements. In this vein De Sica has continually mentioned the influence on his work of Charlie Chaplin. The tensive continuity between tragic and comic, the deployment of a detailed yet poetic gestural language, and a humanist philosophy without recourse to the politically radical are all elements of De Sica’s work that are paralleled in the silent star’s films." - Joel Kanoff, International Dictionary of Film and Filmmakers

 
 
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See Also
Luigi Comencini
Giuseppe De Santis
Federico Fellini
Pietro Germi
Ken Loach
Mario Monicelli
Ermanno Olmi
Roberto Rossellini
Ettore Scola
Martin Scorsese
Paolo & Vittorio Taviani
Luchino Visconti
View video clips relating to this director at YouTube.com
 
Vittorio De Sica's Favourites
L'Atalante (1934) Jean Vigo, Battleship Potemkin (1925) Sergei Eisenstein, Carnival in Flanders (1935) Jacques Feyder, La Chienne (1931) Jean Renoir, Hallelujah! (1929) King Vidor, Kameradschaft (1931) G.W. Pabst, The Kid (1921) Charles Chaplin, Man of Aran (1934) Robert Flaherty, Le Million (1931) René Clair, Storm Over Asia (1928) Vsevolod Pudovkin. Source: Cinematheque Belgique (1952)
 
         
         

 

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