De Sica was born on 7 July 1901 inSora, Lazio.[5] His father Umberto De Sica was fromGiffoni Valle Piana,Campania; he was a journalist, and in the later years worked for the Bank of Italy.[6] Teresa Manfredi, his mother, hadNeapolitan origins. De Sica was baptised in the church of San Giovanni Battista in Sora under the name Vittorio Domenico Stanislao Gaetano Sorano De Sica. He had a very close relationship with his father and later dedicated to him the filmUmberto D. The first interest in cinema sparked in Vittorio due to his father's occasional performances in silent movies: he filled in for the pianists. As an adult, Vittorio De Sica described their family state in his early years as 'tragic and aristocratic poverty'.[7][6]
In 1914, the family moved to Naples. Upon the outbreak of theFirst World War, they moved toFlorence. 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 recovering soldiers. He started studying to become an accountant when in 1917 through a family friendEdoardo Bencivenga he got a small part in the Alfredo De Antoni filmThe Clemenceau Affair.[8]
De Sica was laureated in 1923. Described as strikingly handsome, already in the early 1920s he began his career as atheatreactor and joinedTatiana Pavlova's theatre company in 1923.[6] With Pavlova he worked for two years and touredSouth America. In 1925, he joined the company ofItalia Almirante Manzini and was soon referred to as the second-best in her troupe. Two years later he joined the company ofLuigi Almirante,Sergio Tofano andGiuditta Rissone. De Sica debuted as a romantic protagonist inFerenc Molnár'sGli occhi azzurri dell'imperatore. During that period he metUmberto Melnati, an actor fromLivorno, with whom formed a successful comic duo and collaborated in many films and theatre plays.[9][10] On 3 October 1930, they premiered inTeatro Manzoni withL'isola meravigliosa based onUgo Betti's play. They were soon spotted byMario Mattoli who was then an impresario in Teatro Mazoni. Mattoli was impressed by the quality of their rehearsals and offered to join his companyZa-Bum. WithZa-Bum, De Sica, Rissone and Melnati played inUna segretaria per tutti,Un cattivo soggetto,Il signore desidera?,Lisetta, and many otherrevues written by Mattoli and Luciano Ramo. The duo became famous on the national level after the success of radio sketchDüra minga, dura no and a popular songLodovico sei dolce come un fico sang by De Sica.[11]
In 1933, De Sica, Rissone, and Tofano founded their own company.[12] The period of Tofano-Rissone-De Sica was notable also due to De Sica's acquaintance toAldo De Benedetti andGherardo Gherardi, the screenwriters with whom he had a long and fruitful collaboration. Tofano-Rissone-De Sica performed mostly lightcomedies, but they also staged plays byBeaumarchais and worked with famous directors likeLuchino Visconti. In 1936, the company was reformed into Rissone-De Sica-Melnati, and eventually disbanded in 1939. The playDue dozzine di rose scarlatte, written by Aldo De Benedetti, premiered on 11 March 1936, in Teatro Argentina. It is considered the best Italian comedy of the 1930s.[13]
In 1937, De Sica married Giuditta Rissone, around that time the duo with Melnati was ended. In 1940, the spouses reconciled with Tofano and founded the mutual company again, where all the management tasks were taken over by Tofano. Together they released a series of successful plays:La scuola della maldicenza (based onRichard Brinsley Sheridan),Ma non è una cosa seria written byLuigi Pirandello,Il paese delle vacanze byUgo Betti,Liolà, etc.[14]
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.[11] In cinema, his first notable role was in 1932Gli uomini, che mascalzoni directed byMario Camerini. The songParlami d'amore Mariù became a hit and remained his signature song for many years.[12][16] In the 1930s his credits included many notable performances such as inI'll Give a Million (1935),Il signor Max (1937),Department Store (1939),Manon Lescaut. Between 1931 and 1940, he starred in and directed 23 productions.[17]
In 1940, supported by producer Giuseppe Amato, De Sica debuted as a director and createdRose scarlatte.[12][18]
In 1944, De Sica received an invitation fromGoebbels to make a film inPrague, but refused, using an offer from the Catholic Film Centre in Rome as an excuse.[19]
De Sica had first met screenwriterCesare Zavattini in Verona in 1934. For many years they would become inseparable collaborators and created some of the most celebrated films of the post-warneorealistic age, likeSciuscià (Shoeshine) andBicycle Thieves (released asThe Bicycle Thief in America), both directed by De Sica.[20][21]
De Sica's 1946 dramaSciuscià won theAcademy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film in 1947. Despite the film's critical success, it failed in the Italian box office because the public craved easier films and mostly went to comedies.[citation needed] It was also heavily criticized by the Ministry of Justice and the Department of Correction. This alienation by the Italian authorities made it difficult for De Sica to finance his subsequent projects. To produceBicycle 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 ofUmberto D. prime ministerGiulio Andreotti sent De Sica a letter accusing him of 'rendering bad service for the country'.[22]
His passion for gambling was well known and because of it, he often lost large sums of money and accepted work that might not otherwise have interested him. He never kept his gambling a secret from anyone; in fact, he projected it on characters in his own movies, likeCount Max (which he acted in but did not direct) andThe Gold of Naples,[26] as well as inGeneral Della Rovere, a film directed by Rossellini in which De Sica played the title role.[29]
In 1937 Vittorio De Sica married the actressGiuditta Rissone, who gave birth to their daughter, Emilia (10 February 1938 – 23 March 2021).[30] In 1942, on the set ofUn garibaldino al convento, he met Spanish actressMaría Mercader (cousin ofRamon Mercader,Leon Trotsky's assassin), with whom he started a relationship. De Sica never parted from his first family: he led a double family life, with double celebrations on holidays. It is said that, at Christmas and on New Year's Eve, he used to put back the clocks by two hours in Mercader's house so that he could make a toast at midnight with both families. Rissone agreed to keep up the facade of a marriage so as not to leave her daughter without a father. After finally divorcing Rissone in France in 1954, he married Mercader in 1959 in Mexico, but this union was not considered valid under Italian law. In 1968 he obtained French citizenship and married Mercader in Paris. Meanwhile, he had already had two sons with her:Manuel (1949-2014), a musician and composer, andChristian (b. 1951), who would follow his father's path as an actor and director. Only when Christian was 18 would the brothers find out they had a half-sister and started communication.[31][18][32] Christian's son and Vittorio's grandsonBrando De Sica continued the dynasty and became an actor and film director.[33]
WhenShoeshine opened in 1947, I went to see it alone after one of those terrible lovers' quarrels that leave one in a state of incomprehensible despair. I came out of the theater, tears streaming, and overheard the petulant voice of a college girl complaining to her boyfriend, "Well I don't see what was so special about that movie." I walked up the street, crying blindly, no longer certain whether my tears were for the tragedy on the screen, the hopelessness I felt for myself, or the alienation I felt from those who could not experience the radiance ofShoeshine. For if people cannot feelShoeshine, whatcan they feel? ... Later I learned that the man with whom I had quarreled had gone the same night and had also emerged in tears. Yet our tears for each other, and forShoeshine, did not bring us together. Life, asShoeshine demonstrates, is too complex for facile endings.
Kael quotesOrson Welles as saying: "In handling a camera I feel that I have no peer. But what De Sica can do, that I can't do. I ran hisShoeshine again recently and the camera disappeared, the screen disappeared, it was just life..."[38]
Andre Bazin wrote "the Neapolitan charm of De Sicca becomes, thanks to the cinema, the most sweeping message of love that our times have heard since Chaplin."[39]
^"Famous Catholics".www.adherents.com. Archived from the original on 14 February 2012. Retrieved21 February 2012.
^Ariela Bankier (22 April 2010)."All About My Father".Haaretz. Haaretz Daily Newspaper Ltd. Retrieved26 June 2021."They were both communists, both Cesare and De Sica," his son says.
^Gino Moliterno (2000).Encyclopedia of Contemporary Italian Culture. Routledge. p. 409.ISBN9780415145848.
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