VITTORIO DE SICA, LEADING THE NEOREALIST MOVEMENT

Today, The Grandma has been reading about Vittorio de Sica, the Italian film director and actor, who was born on a day like today in 1901.

Vittorio De Sica (7 July 1901-13 November 1974) was an Italian film director and actor, a leading figure in the neorealist movement.

Widely considered one of the most influential filmmakers in the history of cinema, four of the films he directed won Academy Awards: Sciuscià and Bicycle Thieves (honorary), while Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow and Il giardino dei Finzi Contini won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Indeed, the great critical success of Sciuscià (the first foreign film to be so recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) and Bicycle Thieves helped establish the permanent Best Foreign Film Award. These two films are considered part of the canon of classic cinema.

Bicycle Thieves was deemed the greatest film of all time by Sight & Sound magazine's poll of filmmakers and critics in 1958, and was cited by Turner Classic Movies as one of the 15 most influential films in cinema history.

De Sica was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for playing Major Rinaldi in American director Charles Vidor's 1957 adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, a movie that was panned by critics and proved a box office flop. De Sica's acting was considered the highlight of the film.

More information: BFI

De Sica was born on 7 July 1901 in Sora, Lazio.

In 1914, the family moved to Naples. Upon the outbreak of the First World War, they moved to Florence. Eventually, they settled down in Rome. At the age of 15, De Sica started performing as an actor in amateur plays staged in hospitals for the recovering soldiers. He started studying to become an accountant when in 1917 through a family friend Edoardo Bencivenga he got a small part in the Alfredo De Antoni film The Clemenceau Affair.

De Sica laureated in 1923. Described as strikingly handsome, already in the early 1920s he began his career as a theatre actor and joined Tatiana Pavlova's theatre company in 1923.

In 1933, De Sica, Rissone, and Tofano founded their own company. The period of Tofano-Rissone-De Sica was notable also due to De Sica's acquaintance to Aldo De Benedetti and Gherardo Gherardi, the screenwriters with whom he had a long and fruitful collaboration.

In the early years, De Sica combined his theatre and cinema careers: in the summer months he was engaged in filmmaking and spent the winters performing on stage.

In cinema, his first notable role was in 1932 Gli uomini, che mascalzoni directed by Mario Camerini. The song Parlami d'amore Mariù became a hit and remained his signature song for many years.

In the 1930s his credits included many notable performances such as in I'll Give a Million (1935), Il signor Max (1937), Department Store (1939), Manon Lescaut. Overall in 1931-940, he starred in and directed 23 productions.

During 1934 in Verona, De Sica first met screenwriter Cesare Zavattini, for many years they would become the inseparable collaborators and created some of the most celebrated films of the neorealistic age, like Sciuscià and Bicycle Thieves (released as The Bicycle Thief in America), both directed by De Sica.

In 1940, supported by producer Giuseppe Amato, De Sica debuted as a director and created Rose scarlatte.

In 1944, De Sica received an invitation from Goebbels to make a film in Prague, but fortunately managed to refuse, using as an excuse an offer from the Catholic Film Centre in Rome.

De Sica's 1946 drama Sciuscià won the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film in 1947, however, in Italy it failed in the box office as the public craved easier films and mostly went to comedies, and was heavily criticized by the Ministry of Justice and the Department of Correction. This alienation of the authorities resulted in major difficulty with financing following projects. To produce Bicycle Thieves, De Sica had to invest own money and rely on the support of several Italian businessmen. The film brought De Sica his second Oscar as well as multiple other awards and accolades, however, again the success in Italian box office was tepid. The relationship with the government remained bad, after the release of Umberto D. prime minister Giulio Andreotti sent De Sica a letter accusing him of 'rendering bad service for the country'.

In 1951, De Sica co-authored (with Alberto Sordi) and played in Mamma Mia, What an Impression!

In 1952, he played along Gina Lollobrigida in In Olden Days and then again in 1953 in the comedy Bread, Love and Dreams. De Sica's character, Marshal Antonio Carotenuto, immediately became the public's favourite. The film was an enormous success, it was nominated for Academy Awards and won the Silver Bear at Berlinale. It was followed with three sequels: Bread, Love and Jealousy (1954), Scandal in Sorrento (1955), and Bread, Love and Andalusia (1958).

In 1959, De Sica appeared in the British television series The Four Just Men. In 1961, he starred in The Two Marshals alongside Totò.

Vittorio De Sica died at 73 at the Neuilly-sur-Seine hospital in Paris. He was a Roman Catholic and a communist.

More information: The Guardian

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