Vittorio De Sica

Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume One, 1890-1945". Pages 229-237. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1987.

By the late 1920s he was a successful matinee idol of the Italian theatre, and repeated that achievement in Italian movies, mostly light comedies.

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.

He turned to directing in 1940, making comedies in a similar vein, but with his fifth film The Children Are Watching Us (1944), he revealed hitherto unsuspected depths and an extraordinarily sensitive touch with actors, especially children.

De Sica lived with his second wife, María Mercader, from 1942 on, but couldn't marry her until 1968 after acquiring French citizenship, which allowed him to finally divorce Giuditta Rissone, his first.

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.

(1952), a relentlessly bleak study of the problems of old age, he returned to directing lighter work, appearing in front of the camera more frequently.

Directed Sophia Loren to an Oscar nomination twice, for Two Women (1960) and for Marriage Italian Style (1964). Loren won an Oscar for the first nomination.

Although Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1963) won him another Oscar, it was generally accepted that his career as one of the great directors was over.

Is portrayed by Edmund Purdom in Sophia Loren: Her Own Story (1980)

He's portrayed by Francesco Foti in Permette? Alberto Sordi (2020).