de Sica, Vittorio
DE SICA, Vittorio
Nationality: Italian/French (became French citizen in order to marry second wife, 1968. Born: Sora (near Rome), 7 July 1902. Education: Institut Superieur de Commerce, Rome, and University of Rome. Family: Married 1) Giuditta Rissone (divorced 1968); 2) Maria Mercader, 1968, two sons. Career: Actor in Tatiana Pavlova's Stage Company, 1923; formed own stage company with actress-wife, late 1920s; leading film actor, from 1931; directed first film, Rose scarlette, 1940. Died: In Paris, 13 November 1974.
Films as Director:
- 1940
Rose scarlatte (co-d, role as The Engineer)
- 1941
Maddelena zero in condotta (+ dialogue, role as Carlo Hartman); Teresa Venerdi (+ co-sc, role)
- 1942
Un garibaldino al convento (+ co-sc, role as Nino Bixio)
- 1943
I bambini ci guardano (+ co-sc)
- 1946
La porta del cielo (+ co-sc, completed 1944); Sciuscia (Shoeshine) (+ co-sc)
- 1948
Ladri di biciclette (The Bicycle Thief) (+ pr, co-sc)
- 1950
Miracolo a Milano (Miracle in Milan) (+ co-sc)
- 1952
Umberto D (+ pr, co-sc)
- 1953
Stazione Termini (Indiscretion of an American Wife; Indiscretion) (+ co-pr)
- 1954
L'oro di Napoli (Gold of Naples) (+ co-sc, role)
- 1956
Il tetto (The Roof) (+ pr)
- 1960
La ciociara (Two Women)
- 1961
Il giudizio universale (+ role)
- 1962
"La Riffa (The Raffle)" episode of Boccacio '70; I sequestrati di Altona (The Condemned of Altona)
- 1963
Il boom; Ieri, oggi, domani (Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow)
- 1964
Matrimonio all'italiana (Marriage, Italian Style)
- 1965
Un Monde nouveau (Un Monde jeune; Un mondo nuovo; A Young World)
- 1966
Caccia alla volpe (After the Fox) (+ guest role); "Un sera come le altre (A Night like Any Other)" episode of Le streghe (The Witches)
- 1967
Woman Times Seven (Sept fois femmes)
- 1968
Amanti (A Place for Lovers) (+ co-sc)
- 1970
I girasoli (Sunflower); Il giardino dei Finzi Contini (The Garden of the Finzi-Continis); "Il leone" episode of Le coppie (Les Couples)
- 1972
Lo chiameremo Andrea
- 1973
Una breve vacanza (A Brief Vacation)
- 1974
Il viaggio (The Journey; The Voyage)
Other Films:
- 1918
Il processo Clémenceau (L'Affaire Clemenceau) (Bencivenga) (role)
- 1926
La bellezza del mondo (Almirante) (role)
- 1928
La compagnia dei matti (La compagnie des fous) (Almirante) (role)
- 1932
La vecchia signora (Palermi) (role); La segretaria per tutti (Palermi) (role); Due cuori felici (Negroni) (role); Gli uomini che mascalzoni! (Camerini) (role)
- 1933
Un cattivo soggetto (Bragaglia) (role); Il signore desidera? (Righelli) (role); La canzone del sole (German version: Das Lied der Sonne) (Neufeld) (role as The Secretary); Lisetta (Boese) (role)
- 1934
Tempo massimo (Mattoli) (role)
- 1935
Darò un millione (Camerini) (role as The Millionaire); Amo te sola (Mattòli) (role)
- 1936
Lohengrin (Malasomma) (role); Ma non è una cosa seria! (Camerini) (role); Non ti conosco più (Malasomma) (role); L'uomo che sorride (Mattoli) (role)
- 1937
Hanno rapito un uomo (Righelli) (role); Il signor Max (Camerini) (role); Questi ragazzi (Mattoli) (role)
- 1938
Napoli d'altri tempi (Palermi) (role); L'orologio a cucù (Mastrocinque) (role); Partire (Palermi) (role); Ai vostri ordini, signora! (Mattòli) (role); La mazurka di papà (Biancoli) (role); Le due madri (Palermi) (role); Castelli in aria (German version: Ins blaue Leben, 1939) (Genina) (role)
- 1939
Grandi magazzini (Camerini) (role); Finisce sempre cosí (Susini) (role); Napoli che non muore (Palermi) (role)
- 1940
La peccatrice (Palermi) (role); Pazza di giola (Bragaglia) (role); Manon Lescaut (Gallone) (role)
- 1941
L'avventuriera del piano di sopra (Matarazzo) (role)
- 1942
Se io fossi onesto! (Bragaglia) (role, co-sc); La guardia del corpo (Bragaglia) (role, co-sc)
- 1943
I nostri sogni (Cottafavi) (role, co-sc); Non sono superstizioso, ma. . . ! (Bragaglia) (role, co-sc); L'ippocampo (Rosmino) (role, co-sc); Diece minuti di vita (Longanesi) (unfinished; another version made 1944 with different cast) (role); Nessuno torna indietro (Blasetti) (role)
- 1945
Lo sbaglio di essere vivo (Bragagalia) (role); Il mondo vuole cosi (Bianchi) (role)
- 1946
Roma città libera (co-sc); Il marito povero (Amara) (co-sc); Abbasso la ricchezza! (Righelli) (role, co-sc)
- 1947
Sperduti nel buio (Mastrocinque) (role as Nanzio, co-sc); Natale al campo 119 (Francisci) (supervisor, role as The Noble Neopolitan)
- 1948
Lo sconosciuto di San Marino (Waszinsky) (role as The Proprietor); Cuore (Coletti) (co-sc, role as The Landlord)
- 1950
Domani è troppo tardi (Moguy) (role as Professor Landi)
- 1951
Cameriera bella presenza offresi (Pastina) (role as The Actor); "Il processo di Frine" episode of Altri tempi (Blasetti) (role as the Barrister); Gli uomini non guardano il cielo (Scarpelli) (role)
- 1952
Buongiorno elefante! (Sabú principle ladro) (Franciolini) (co-sc, role as Garetti); "Scena all'aperto" (role as Count) and "Don Corradino" (role as Don Corradino) episodes of Tempi nostri (Blasetti)
- 1953
Madame De . . . (Ophuls) (role as Fabrizio Donati); Pane, amore e fantasia (Comencini) (role as Marshal Carotenuto); "Pendolin" episode of Cento anni d'amore (De Felice) (role); "Incidente a Villa Borghese" episode of Villa Borghese (Franciolini) (role); Il matrimonio (Petrucci) (role); "Il fine dicitore" episode of Gran varietà (Paolella) (role); "Le Divorce (Il divorzio)" episode of Secrets d'alcôve (Il letto) (Franciolini) (role)
- 1954
Vergine moderna (Pagliero) (role as The Banker); L'Allegro Squadrone (Moffa) (role as The General); Pane, amore e gelosia (Comencini) (role); Peccato che sia una canaglia (Blasetti) (role as Mr. Stroppiani)
- 1955
Il segno di Venere (Risi) (role as Alessio Spano, the Poet); Gli ultimi cinque minuti (The Last Five Minutes) (Amato) (role as Carlo); La bella mugnaia (Camerini) (role as The Governor); Pane, amore e . . . (Risi) (role as Carotenuto); Racconti romani (Franciolini) (role); Il bigamo (Emmer) (role as The Barrister)
- 1956
Mio figlio Nerone (Nero's Weekend) (Steno) (role as Sénèquel); Tempo di villegiatura (Racioppi) (role as The Celebrity); The Monte Carlo Story (Montecarlo) (Taylor) (role as Count Dino Giocondo Della Fiaba); I giorni più belli (I nostri anni più belli, Gli anni più belli) (Mattòli) (role as The Banker); Noi siamo le colonne (D'Amico) (role as Celimontani)
- 1957
Padri e figli (Monicelli) (role as the tailor Corallo); I colpevoli (Vasile) (role as the barrister Vasari); Souvenir d'Italie (It Happened in Rome) (Pietrangeli) (role as The Count); La donna che venne del mare (De Robertis) (role as Bordigin); Vacanze a Ischia (Camerini) (role as Occhipinti); I conte Max (Bianchi) (role as Count Max Orsini Baraldo); Amore e chiacchiere (Blasetti) (role as Bonelli); Il medico e lo stregone (Monicelli) (role as Locoratolo); Totò, Vittorio e la dottoressa (Mastrocinque) (role as the sick nobleman); Casino de Paris (Hunebelle) (role as Alexandre Gordy)
- 1958
A Farewell to Arms (Vidor) (role as Count Alessandro Rinaldi); Domenica è sempre domenica (Mastrocinque) (role as Mr. Guastaldi); Ballerina e buon Dio (Leonviola) (roles as the policeman, the taxi driver, and the costume porter); Kanonenserenade (Pezzo, capopezzo e capitano) (Staudte) (role as Count Ernesto De Rossi); Anna di Brooklyn (Denham and Lastricati) (supervisor, co-music, role as Don Luigino); La ragazza di Piazza S. Pietro (Costa) (role as Armando Conforti); Gli zitelloni (Bianchi) (role as Professor Landi); Pane, amore e Andulasia (Setò) (role as Carotenuto); La prima notte (Cavalcanti) (role as Alfredo)
- 1959
Nel blu dipinto di blu (Volare) (Tellini) (role as Spartaco); Il nemico di mia moglie (Puccini) (role as The Husband); Vacanze d'inverno (Mastrocinque) (role as Manrizie); Il moralista (Bianchi) (role as The President); Il Generale Della Rovere (Rossellini) (role as Giovanni Bertone); Il mondo dei miracoli (Capuano) (role as Pietro Giordani); Uomini e nobiluomini (Bianchi) (role as Marquis Nicolas Peccoli); Ferdinando I, re di Napoli (Franciolini) (role as Ceccano); Gastone (Bonnard) (role as The Prince); Les trois etc . . . du colonel (Le tre eccetera del colonello) (Boissol) (role as Colonel Belalcazar)
- 1960
Il vigile (Zampa) (role as The Trustee); Le pillole di Ercole (Salce) (role as Colonel Pietro Cuocolo); Austerlitz (Gance) (role as Pope Pius VII); The Angel Wore Red (La sposa bella) (Johnson) (role as General Clave); The Millionairess (Asquith) (role as Joe); It Started in Naples (Shavelson) (role as Mario Vitale); Gli incensurati (Giaculli) (role as comic actor); Un amore a Roma (Risi) (role)
- 1961
Gli attendenti (Bianchi) (role as Colonel Bitossi); I due marescialli (Corbucci) (role as Antonio Cotone); Le meraviglie di Aladino (The Wonders of Aladdin) (Bava and Levin) (role as The Genie); L'onorata società (Pazzaglia) (role as The Chef); La Fayette (La Fayette, una spada per due bandiere) (Dréville) (role as Bancroft)
- 1962
Vive Henry IV, vive l'amour (Autant-Lara) (role as Don Pedro)
- 1965
The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders (T. Young) (role as The Count)
- 1966
Io, io, io . . . e gli altri (Blasetti) (role as Count Trepossi)
- 1967
Gli altri, gli altri e noi (Arena) (role as man on pension); Un italiano in America (Sordi) (role as Giuseppe's Father); The Biggest Bundle of Them All (Annakin) (role as Cesare Celli); Caroline Cherie (de la Patelliere) (role as Count de Bièvres)
- 1968
The Shoes of the Fisherman (Les Souliers de Saint-Pierre) (M. Anderson) (role as Cardinal Rinaldi)
- 1969
If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium (M. Stuart) (role as The Shoemaker); Una su tredici (12 + 1) (Gessner and Lucignani) (role as Di Seta)
- 1970
Cose di Cosa Nostra (Steno) (role as The Lawyer); L'Odeur des fauves (Balducci) (role as Milord)
- 1971
Trastevere (Tozzi) (role as Enrico Formichi); Io non vedo, tu non parli, lui non sente (Camerini) (role as Count at the Casino)
- 1972
Pinocchio (Comencini) (for TV) (role as The Judge); Snow Job (The Ski Raiders) (Englund) (role as Dolphi); Ettore lo fusto (Castellari) (role as Giove); Siamo tutti in libertà provvisoria (Scarpelli) (role)
- 1973
Storia de fratelli e de cortelli (Amendola) (role as The Marshal); Il delitto Matteotti (Vancini) (role as Mauro del Giudice)
- 1974
Andy Warhol's Dracula (Dracula cerca sangue di vergine e . . . morì di sete!!, Blood for Dracula) (Morrissey) (role as Marquis di Fiori); C'eravamo tanto amati (Scola) (role as himself); Vittorio De Sica, il Regista, l'attore, l'uomo (Gragadze) (role)
Publications
By DE SICA: books—
Umberto D., with Cesare Zavattini, Rome, 1954.
The Bicycle Thief, with Cesare Zavattini, New York, 1968.
Miracle in Milan, with Cesare Zavattini and others, New York, 1968.
By DE SICA: articles—
Interview with F. Koval, in Sight and Sound (London), April 1950.
"The Most Wonderful Years of My Life," in Films and Filming (London), December 1955.
"Money, the Public, and Umberto D," in Films and Filming (London), January 1956.
"Illiberal Censorship," in Film (London), January/February 1956.
"Hollywood Shocked Me," in Films and Filming (London), February 1956.
"I Must Act to Pay My Debts," in Films and Filming (London), March 1956.
"British Humor? It's the Same in Italy," in Films and Filming (London), April 1959.
"What's Right with Hollywood," in Films and Filming (London), November 1963.
Interview in Encountering Directors, edited by Charles Thomas Samuels, New York, 1972.
Interview with D. Lyons, in Interview (New York), February 1972.
"Le Jardin des Finzi-Contini," interview with G. Braucourt, in Ecran (Paris), February 1972.
On DE SICA: books—
Ferrara, Giuseppe, Il nuovo cinema italiano, Florence, 1957.
Agel, Henri, Vittorio De Sica, second edition, Paris, 1964.
Leprohon, Pierre, Vittorio De Sica, Paris, 1966.
Bazin, André, Qu'est-ce que le cinéma, second edition, Paris, 1975.
Caldiron, Orio, Vittorio De Sica, Rome, 1975.
Mercader, Maria, La mia vita con Vittorio De Sica, Milan, Italy, 1978.
Anthologie du cinéma, vol. 10, Paris, 1979.
Darreta, John, Vittorio De Sica: A Guide to References and Resources, Boston, 1983.
Bolzoni, Francesco, Quando De Sica era Mister Brown, Turin, 1984.
Governi, Giancarlo, with Anna Maria Bianchi, Vittorio De Sica:Parlami d'amore Mariù, Rome, 1993.
On DE SICA: articles—
Jacobson, H.L., "De Sica's Bicycle Thieves and Italian Humanism," in Hollywood Quarterly, Fall 1949.
Hawkins, R.F., "De Sica Dissected," in Films in Review (New York), May 1951.
Lambert, Gavin, "The Case of De Sica," in Sight and Sound (London), June 1951.
Sargeant, W., "Bread, Love, and Neo-Realism," in New Yorker, 29 June and 6 July 1957.
Rhode, Eric, "Why Neo-Realism Failed," in Sight and Sound (London), Winter 1960/61.
Lane, J.F., "A Case of Artistic Inflation," in Sight and Sound (London), Summer 1963.
McVay, D., "Poet of Poverty," in Films and Filming (London), November 1964.
Comuzio, E., "De Sica o della doppia costante: il sorriso e il tarlo segreto," in Cineforum (Bergamo), January 1975.
Bachmann, Gideon, "Vittorio de Sica: Always a True Window," in Sight and Sound (London), Spring 1975.
"De Sica Issue" of Bianco e Nero (Rome), Fall 1975.
Passalacqua, J., "Vittorio De Sica," in Films in Review (New York), April 1978.
"Vittorio de Sica Issue" of Avant-Scène du Cinéma (Paris), 15 October 1978.
Carcassonne, P., "Dossier: le neo-realisme: De Sica 'le menteur,"' in Cinématographe (Paris), January 1979.
Shipman, David, "Directors of the Decade: Forties," in Films andFilming (London), June 1983.
"Vittorio De Sica," in Cinema Nuovo (Bari), February 1985.
On DE SICA: films—
De Reisner, Bika, Meet De Sica.
Dragadze, Peter, Vittorio De Sica: Il regista, l'attore, l'uomo (for TV), 1974.
* * *
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. De Sica began acting on stage as a teenager and played his first film role in 1918. In the 1920s his handsome features and talent made him something of a matinee idol, and from the mid-1930s he appeared in a number of films by Mario Camerini, including Gliuomini che mascalzoni!, Darò un milione, and Grandi magazzine.
During his lifetime, De Sica acted in over one hundred films in Italy and abroad, using this means to finance his own directorial efforts. He specialized in breezy comic heroes, men of great self-assurance or confidence men (as in Rossellini's Generale della Rovere). 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.
De Sica's directorial debuts, Rose scarlatte and Maddalena, zero in condotta, were both attempts to bring theater pieces to the screen with suitable roles for himself. In 1943, with I bambini ci guardano, De Sica teamed with Cesare Zavattini, who was to become his major collaborator for the next three decades. Together they began to demonstrate elements of the post-war realist aesthetic which, more than any other director except Visconti and Rossellini, De Sica helped shape and determine. Despite the overt melodrama of the misogynistic story (a young mother destroys her family by deserting them), the filmmaker refused to narrow the perspective through an overwrought Hollywoodian mise-en-scène, preferring instead a refreshing simplicity of composition and a subdued editing style. Much of the film's original flavor can be traced to the clear, subjective mediation of a child, as promised in the title.
De Sica's intense feeling for children's sensibilities led him to imagine how children viewed the failing adult reconstruction of society after the war. Sciuscia, a realistic look at the street and prison life of poor, abandoned children, was the result. It is the story of how the lasting friendship of two homeless boys, who make their living shining shoes for the American G.I.'s, is betrayed by their contact with adults. At the end of the film one boy inadvertently causes the other's death. Although Zavattini insists that his creative role was minimal in this instance, the presence of his poetic imagination is evident in the figure of a beautiful white horse. This horse serves to cement the boys' mutual bond and their hope for a future. Though a miserable failure in Italy, Sciuscia marked De Sica's entry into international prominence; the film won a special Oscar in 1947.
For the balance of the neorealist period De Sica fought an uphill battle to finance his films through friends and acting salaries. Ladri di biciclette anchors searching social documentation in metaphor and a non-traditional but highly structured narrative. Workman Ricci's desperate search for his bicycle is an odyssey that enables us to witness a varied collection of characters and situations among the poor and working class of Rome. Each episode propels the narrative toward a sublimely Chaplinesque but insufficiently socially critical ending in which Ricci is defeated in his search and therefore in his attempts to provide for his family. Reduced to thievery himself, he takes his son's hand and disappears into the crowd. Like De Sica's other neorealist films, Ladri di biciclette gives the impression of technical nonchalance only to the indiscriminate eye, for De Sica planned his work with attention to minute details of characterization, mise-en-scène, and camera technique. During this period he preferred the non-professional actor for his or her ability to accept direction without the mediation of learned acting technique.
The story of Toto the Good in Miracolo a Milano remains one of the outstanding stylistic contradictions of the neorealist period (there are many), yet one which sheds an enormous amount of light on the intentions and future of the De Sica-Zavattini team. The cinematography and setting, markedly neorealist in this fable about the struggle to found a shanty town for the homeless, is undercut at every moment with unabashed clowning both in performance and in cinematic technique. Moreover, the film moves toward a problematic fairy tale ending in which the poor, no longer able to defend their happy, makeshift village from the voracious appetite of capitalist entrepreneurs, take to the skies on magic broomsticks. (The film has more special effects than anyone would ever associate with neorealism; could De Sica have left his mark on Steven Spielberg?) Still, Zavattini, who had wanted to make the film for a number of years, and De Sica defend it as the natural burlesque transformation of themes evident in their earlier work together.
By this time De Sica's films were the subject of a good deal of controversy in Italy, and generally the lines were drawn between Catholic and Communist critics. The latter had an especially acute fear (one which surfaced again with Fellini's La Strada) that the hard-won traits of neorealism had begun to backslide into those of the socalled "calligraphic" films of the Fascist era. These were based on an ahistorical, formal concern for aesthetic, compositional qualities and the nuances of clever storytelling. However, it was their next film, Umberto D, that comes closest to realizing Zavattini's ideas on the absolute responsibility of the camera eye to observe life as it is lived without the traditional compromises of entertaining narratives. The sequence of the film in which the maid wakes up and makes the morning coffee has been praised many times for its day-in-the-life directness and simplicity. Il Tetto, about a curious attempt to erect a small house on municipal property, is generally recognized as the last neorealist film of this original period.
Continually wooed by Hollywood, De Sica finally acquiesced to make Stazione termini in 1953, produced by Selznick and filmed in Rome with Jennifer Jones and Montgomery Clift. Unfortunately, neorealist representation formed only an insignificant background to this typically American star vehicle. A similar style is employed in La ciociara, which was created from a Moravia story about the relationship of a mother and daughter uprooted by the war. De Sica attempted to reconstruct reality in the studio during the making of this work, making use of a somewhat unsuccessful stylized lighting technique. But as usual, he obtains excellent performances in an engaging dramatic vehicle (Sophia Loren won an Oscar).
The filmmakers returned to comedic vehicles in 1954 in L'oro di Napoli. Human comedy emerges from the rich diversity and liveliness of Neapolitan life. Though still within the confines of realism, the film foreshadows the director's entrance into the popular Italian market for sexual satire and farce. The exactitude with which he sculpts his characters and his reluctance to reduce the scenario to a mere bunch of gags demonstrates his intention to fuse comedy and drama, putting De Sica at the top of his class in this respect—among Risi, Comencini, and Monicelli. Often with Zavattini but also with Eduardo De Filippo, Tonino Guerra, and even Neil Simon (After the Fox), De Sica turned out about eight such films for the lucrative international market between 1961 and 1968, the best of which are: Il giudizio universale, which featured an all-star cast of international comedians; Ieri, oggi, domani and Matrimonio all'Italiana, both with Loren and Mastroianni; and Sette volte donna. Il giardino dei Finzi Contini, based on a Bassani novel about the incarceration of Italian Jews during the war, shows a strong Viscontian influence in its lavish setting and thematics (the film deals with the dissolution of the bourgeois family). Una breve vacanza, an examination of a woman who has managed to break out of the confines of an oppressive marriage during a sanitorium stay, reinstitutes the tensive relationship between comedy and tragedy of the earlier films. De Sica's last film, Il viaggio, is from a Pirandello novel.
—Joel Kanoff
Vittorio De Sica
Vittorio De Sica
The films of Vittorio De Sica (1902-1974) 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.
De Sica was born in Sora, Italy on July 7, 1902. He attended the Institut Superieur de Commerce and University of Rome. De Sica began acting on stage as a teen-ager and played his first film role in 1918. In the 1920s his handsome features and talent made him something of a matinee idol. He performed in Tatiana Pavlova's stage company in 1923. De Sica married the Italian actress Giuditta Rissone, with whom he formed his own stage company in the late 1920s. By 1931, De Sica had become a leading film actor. He appeared in a number of films by Mario Camerini, including Gliuomini che mascalzoni!, Daro un milione, and Grandi magazzine.
Portrayed Comic Heroes
During his lifetime, De Sica acted in over one hundred films in Italy and abroad, using this means to finance his own directorial efforts. He specialized in breezy comic heroes, men of great self-assurance or confidence men (as in Rossellini's Generale della Rovere ). 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.
Early Directorial Work
De Sica's directorial debuts, Rose scarlatte (1940) and Maddalena, zero in condotta, were both attempts to bring theater pieces to the screen with suitable roles for himself. In 1943, with I bambini ci guardano, De Sica teamed with Cesare Zavattini, who was to become his major collaborator for the next three decades. Together they began to demonstrate elements of the post-war realist aesthetic which, more than any other director except Visconti and Rossellini, De Sica helped shape and determine. Despite the overt melodrama of the misogynistic story (a young mother destroys her family by deserting them), the filmmaker refused to narrow the perspective through an overwrought Holly-woodian mise-en-scene, preferring instead a refreshing simplicity of composition and a subdued editing style. Much of the film's original flavor can be traced to the clear, subjective mediation of a child, as promised in the title.
De Sica's intense feeling for children's sensibilities led him to imagine how children viewed the failing adult reconstruction of society after the war. Sciuscia, a realistic look at the street and prison life of poor, abandoned children, was the result. It is the story of how the lasting friendship of two homeless boys, who make their living shining shoes for the American GIs, is betrayed by their contact with adults. At the end of the film one boy inadvertently causes the other's death. Although Zavattini insists that his creative role was minimal in this instance, the presence of his poetic imagination is evident in the figure of a beautiful white horse. This horse serves to cement the boys' mutual bond and their hope for a future. Though a miserable failure in Italy, Sciuscia marked De Sica's entry into international prominence; the film won a special Oscar in 1947.
The Bicycle Thief
For the balance of the neo-realist period De Sica fought an uphill battle to finance his films through friends and acting salaries. Ladri di biciclette (The Bicycle Thief) anchors searching social documentation in metaphor and a non-traditional but highly structured narrative. Workman Ricci's desperate search for his bicycle is an odyssey that enables us to witness a varied collection of characters and situations among the poor and working class of Rome. Each episode propels the narrative toward a sublimely Chaplinesque but insufficiently socially critical ending in which Ricci is defeated in his search and therefore in his attempts to provide for his family. Reduced to thievery himself, he takes his son's hand and disappears into the crowd. Like De Sica's other neo-realist films, Ladri di biciclette gives the impression of technical nonchalance only to the indiscriminate eye, for De Sica planned his work with attention to minute details of characterization, miseen-scene, and camera technique. During this period he preferred the non-professional actor for his or her ability to accept direction without the mediation of learned acting technique.
The story of Toto the Good in Miracolo a Milano remains one of the outstanding stylistic contradictions of the neo-realist period (there are many), yet one which sheds an enormous amount of light on the intentions and future of the De Sica-Zavattini team. The cinematography and setting, markedly neo-realist in this fable about the struggle to found a shanty town for the homeless, is undercut at every moment with unabashed clowning both in performance and in cinematic technique. Moreover, the film moves toward a problematic fairy tale ending in which the poor, no longer able to defend their happy, makeshift village from the voracious appetite of capitalist entrepreneurs, take to the skies on magic broomsticks. (The film has more special effects than anyone would ever associate with neo-realism; could De Sica have left his mark on Steven Spielberg?) Still, Zavattini, who had wanted to make the film for a number of years, and De Sica defend it as the natural burlesque transformation of themes evident in their earlier work together.
By this time De Sica's films were the subject of a good deal of controversy in Italy, and generally the lines were drawn between Catholic and Communist critics. The latter had an especially acute fear (one which surfaced again with Fellini's La Strada ) that the hard-won traits of neo-realism had begun to backslide into those of the so-called "calligraphic" films of the Fascist era. These were based on an a-historical, formal concern for aesthetic, compositional qualities and the nuances of clever storytelling. However, it was their next film, Umberto D, that comes closest to realizing Zavattini's ideas on the absolute responsibility of the camera eye to observe life as it is lived without the traditional compromises of entertaining narratives. The sequence of the film in which the maid wakes up and makes the morning coffee has been praised many times for its dayin-the-life directness and simplicity. Il Tetto, about a curious attempt to erect a small house on municipal property, is generally recognized as the last neo-realist film of this original period.
Continually wooed by Hollywood, De Sica finally acquiesced to make Stazione termini in 1953, produced by David Selznick and filmed in Rome with Jennifer Jones and Montgomery Clift. Unfortunately, neo-realist representation formed only an insignificant background to this typically American star vehicle. A similar style is employed in La ciociara, which was created from a Moravia story about the relationship of a mother and daughter uprooted by the war.De Sica attempted to reconstruct reality in the studio during the making of this work, making use of a somewhat unsuccessful stylized lighting technique. But as usual, he obtains excellent performances in an engaging dramatic vehicle (Sophia Loren won an Oscar).
The filmmakers returned to comedic vehicles in 1954 in L'oro di Napoli . Human comedy emerges from the rich diversity and liveliness of Neapolitan life. Though still within the confines of realism, the film foreshadows the director's entrance into the popular Italian market for sexual satire and farce. The exactitude with which he sculpts his characters and his reluctance to reduce the scenario to a mere bunch of gags demonstrates his intention to fuse comedy and drama, putting De Sica at the top of his class in this respect—among Risi, Comencini, and Monicelli. Often with Zavattini but also with Eduardo De Filippo, Tonino Guerra, and even Neil Simon ( After the Fox ), De Sica turned out about eight such films for the lucrative international market between 1961 and 1968. The best of these are: Il giudizio universale, which featured an all-star cast of international comedians; Ieri, oggi, domani and Matrimonio all'Italiana, both with Loren and Mastroianni; and Sette volte donna.
In 1968, De Sica divorced his first wife and married Maria Mercader. He became a French citizen in order to marry Mercader. The couple had two sons.
Il giardino dei Finzi Contini, based on a Bassani novel about the incarceration of Italian Jews during the war, shows a strong Viscontian influence in its lavish setting and thematics (the film deals with the dissolution of the bourgeois family). Una breve vacanza, an examination of a woman who has managed to break out of the confines of an oppressive marriage during a sanitorium stay, reinstitutes the tensive relationship between comedy and tragedy of the earlier films. De Sica's last film, Il viaggio, is from a Pirandello novel. De Sica died in Paris on November 13, 1974.
Books
Agel, Henri, Vittorio De Sica, second edition, Paris, 1964.
Anthologie du cinema, vol. 10, Paris, 1979.
Bazin, Andre, Qu'est-ce que le cinema, second edition, Paris, 1975.
Bolzoni, Francesco, Quando De Sica era Mister Brown, Turin, 1984.
Darreta, John, Vittorio De Sica: A Guide to References and Resources, Boston, 1983.
Ferrara, Giuseppe, Il nuovo cinema italiano, Florence, 1957.
Leprohon, Pierre, Vittorio De Sica, Paris, 1966.
Mercader, Maria, La mia vita con Vittorio De Sica, Milan, 1978.
Periodicals
Avant-Scene du Cinema (Paris), October 15, 1978.
Bianco e Nero (Rome), Fall 1975.
Cineforum (Bergamo), January 1975.
Cinema Nuovo (Bari), February 1985.
Cinematographe (Paris), January 1979.
Films and Filming November 1964; June 1983.
Films in Review, May 1951; April 1978.
Hollywood Quarterly, Fall 1949.
New Yorker, June 29, 1957; July 6, 1957.
Sight and Sound June 1951; Winter 1960/61; Summer 1963;Spring 1975. □