Oscar Profile #401: Vittorio De Sica

Born July 7, 1901 in Lazio, Italy, Vittorio de Sica grew up in Sicily where his first job was as an office clerk in support of his poor family. Drawn to acting, he made his film debut as the title character as a boy in The Clemenceau Affair in 1917. He did not make another film for ten years, becoming in the interim one of Italy’s most popular matinee idols on stage.

De Sica married actress Giuditta Rissone in 1937 with whom he had a daughter. She was also his business partner with whom he produced and directed comedies for the stage in the late 1930s. He became a film director in 1940 while still acting. On the set of a film in 1942, he met Spanish actress Maria Mercader who was the sister of Trotsky’s assassin, Ramon Mercader. From then on, he kept up a double life, married to Rissone but living with Mercader with the full knowledge and approval of the two women. On Christmas and New Year’s, he would celebrate the holidays with Rissone and their daughter at Rissone’s home and then celebrate all over again with Mercader and their eventual two sons at the home he shared with her. He was not able to divorce Rissone until 1954. His marriage to Mercader in France in 1959 was not recognized in Italy.

De Sica was a gambler all his life. Although his fame as a director would eclipse his fame as an actor, De Scia kept up a steady career as an actor in-order-to maintain his gambling habit as well as the cost of his two households. His most famous role as an actor was in David O. Selznick’s 1957 production of A Farewell to Arms for which he received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Other roles of note as an actor were in such films as 1960’s It Started in Naples and The Millionairess and 1968’s The Shoes of the Fisherman and If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium.

Although he started out as a director of light comedies, De Sica made his reputation as a director with his nerealist social commentary films beginning with 1944’s The Children Are Among Us. 1946’s Shoeshine and 1948’s Bicycle Thieves both earned special foreign film awards at the Oscars before foreign films were given their regular award. They both received nominations for their screenplays as well. 1952’s Umberto D. was also nominated for an Oscar for its screenplay. 1954’s Gold of Naples was his first film with Sophia Loren who he would direct to an Oscar in 1960’s Two Women. 1963’s Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, starring Loren opposite Marcello Mastroianni, would win the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film and 1964’s Marriage Italian Style, again starring Loren and Mastroianni, would be nominated in that category. 1971’s The Garden of the Finzi-Continis would become De Sica’s second film to win a Foreign Film Oscar in competition and his fourth overall.

De Sica’s last two films, 1973’s A Brief Vacation and 1974’s The Voyage were both released in the U.S. after his death, A Brief Vacation in 1975 and The Voyage in 1977.

Vittorio De Sica died in Paris after the removal of a cyst from his lungs on November 13, 1974. He was 73.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

BICYCLE THIEVES (1948), directed by Vittorio De Sica

Opening in Italy in late 1948 and the rest of the world in 1949, this was the most sentimental of Italy’s post-war neorealist films. While it deals as unflinchingly with the harsh realities of the times as other films of the era – Rossellini’s Open City, Paisan and Germany Year Zero and De Sica’s own Shoeshine – there are no major deaths in this one. It’s easy to see why it won so many awards at the time including an honorary Oscar for Best Foreign Film, De Sica’s second, coming two years after Shoeshine was given the same honor. It still ranks as one of the greatest films ever made.

UMBERTO D. (1952), directed by Vittorio De Sica

Lacking the sentiment of Bicycle Thieves, De Sica’s film about the struggles of an old man on a government pension and his dog, this was a big flop when it opened in Italy in early 1952. It wasn’t until it was embraced by U.S. critics when it opened in New York in November 1955 that it was greeted with the acclaim it has since held. It tied for that year’s New York Film Critics award for Best Foreign Film with Diabolique and followed its New York success in Los Angeles when it opened there in 1956, earning an Oscar nomination for its writing in the category of Best Original Story.

TWO WOMEN (1960), directed by Vittorio De Sica

Anna Magnani was originally supposed to play the mother of an adolescent girl in a Hollywood version of this war film set in 1943. Hollywood wanted to make it with Sophia Loren as the daughter but Magnani balked at the casting and the project was dropped De Sica then planned to make it in Italian with Magnani, but when she had to withdraw due to illness, she suggested Loren for the part of the mother. She accepted, and 12-year-old Eleanora Brown was cast as the daughter. Released in Italy in December 1960, it was released in the rest of the world in 1961 earning Loren the first acting Oscar given for a foreign language performance.

THE GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS (1970), directed by Vittorio De Sica

In the wake of Shoeshine, Bicycle Thieves and Yesterday and Tomorrow, this became the fourth De Sica film to win an Oscar for Best Foreign Film. Set in Mussolini’s Italy in the late 1930s, this idyllic study of a well-to-do Italian Jewish family in its days before the forces of evil close in was De Sica’s first hit since 1964’s Marriage Italian Style. Released in Israel and Italy in December 1960, it was released in the rest of the world in 1971. Dominique Sanda, Lino Capolicchio, Fabio Testi and Helmut Berger were among the beautiful young people.

A BRIEF VACATION (1973), directed by Vittorio De Sica

Released in Italy in 1973, De Sica’s penultimate film was released in the U.S. in 1975, the year after he died. Brazilian actress Florinda Bolkan is an Italian housewife who lives in a basement apartment in her in-law’s Milan home with her husband (Renato Salvatori) and three sons. Diagnosed with a bout of tuberculosis, she is sent to a sanitorium in the Italian alps where she has an affair with a young mechanic (Daniel Quenaud). Bolkan won the Los Angeles Film Critics award for her performance and was a runner-up to Isabelle Adjani in The Story of Adele H. for the New York Film Critics award.