Theater into Film, or The Director as Performer: The Acting Career of Vittorio De Sica

Abstract

Vittorio De Sica has been considered one of the major contributors to neorealism, a movement that altered the content and style of international as well as Italian cinema. Despite these contributions and numerous citations of praise for such films as Sciuscià (1946), Ladri di biciclette (1948), Miracolo a Milano (1951), and Umberto D. (1952), De Sica has become a neglected figure in film studies. Perhaps the lack of critical or scholarly attention derives from the fact that he was both the Italian screen's most versatile artist and its greatest paradox. As a star performer in well over a hundred films (and on stage before that), he embodied the escapist show-biz spirit at its most ebullient. Yet De Sica the director aspired to the highest cinematic standards, challenging the audience to respond to his unflinching social insights and psychological portraiture. This essay considers Vittorio De Sica's “extroverted” acting career in light of his self-effacing one as a director―particularly in his neorealist films, where he intervened as unobtrusively as possible to tell the stories of powerless and marginal creatures.