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| Category: | 
Cinema |
| Name: |   Vittorio de Sica |
| Birth Year: | 1901 |
| Death Year: | 1974
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| Representative Image: |  |
| Biography, Lectures, and Research Links: |
Malaspina Great Books -
Vittorio De Sica (1901-1974)
Biography
Blog Vittorio de Sica
Vittorio De Sica grew up in Naples, and started out as an office clerk in order to raise money to support his poor family. He was increasingly drawn towards acting, and made his screen debut while still in his teens, joining a stage company in 1923. By the late 1920s he was a successful matinee idol of the Italian theatre, and repeated that achievement in Italian films, mostly light comedies. He turned to directing in 1940, making comedies in a similar vein, but with his fifth film The Children Are Watching Us (1942), he revealed hitherto unsuspected depths and an extraordinarily sensitive touch with actors, especially children. It was also the first film he made with the writer Cesare Zavattini with whom he would subsequently make Shoeshine (1946) and Bicycle Thieves (1948), heartbreaking studies of poverty in postwar Italy which won special Oscars before the foreign film category was officially established.
After the box-office disaster of Umberto D. (1951), a relentlessly bleak study of the problems of old age, he returned to directing lighter work, appearing in front of the camera more frequently. Although Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow won him another Oscar, it was generally accepted that his career as one of the great directors was over. However, just before he died he made The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1971), a powerful study of anti-Semitism in Fascist Italy, which won him yet another Oscar, and his final film A Brief Vacation (1973). He died following the removal of a cyst from his lungs. [Adapted from IMDb]
The Great Books: Vittorio De Sica
Please browse our Amazon list of titles about Vittorio De Sica. For rare and hard to find works we recommend our Alibris list of titles about Vittorio De Sica. Post Comments, Questions or Suggestions! This database is maintained by Malaspina Great Books.
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Books, Music, Art: | Book: Vittorio de Sica: Director, Actor, Screenwriter
DVD: Umberto D. - Criterion Collection (1955)
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| Library Catalogs: | COPAC UK: Vittorio de Sica
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| External Links: | Representative Image
Research Links: Vittorio de Sica
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| Records from Related Period and Category: | Modern Cinema
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 About
this Database:
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This web page is part of a biographical database on Great Ideas. These are living ideas that have shaped, defined and directed world culture for over 2,500 years. By definition the Great Ideas are radical. As such they are sometimes misread, or distorted by popular simplifications. Understanding a Great Idea demands personal engagement. Our selection of Great Ideas is drawn from literature and philosophy, science, art, music, theatre, and cinema. We also include biographies of pivotal historical and religious figures, as well as contributions from women and other historically under-represented minorities. The result is an integrated multi-cultural and multi-disciplinary database built upon the framework of the always controversial Great Books Core List published in 1940 by the late Great Books Pioneer Mortimer Adler (1902-2001). Most of the works on that list are available in the 60 volume Great Books of the Western World.
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