Vittorio De Sica's films forced Hollywood to invent a foreign-language Oscar
Before neorealism made him a giant, Vittorio De Sica was a matinee idol and half of a hit comedy double act. Then Shoeshine and Bicycle Thieves won honorary Oscars, helping create the permanent award for foreign films, and in 1952 critics voted Bicycle Thieves the greatest film ever made.
The town of Sora, in Lazio, is where De Sica entered the world on 7 July 1901. His father Umberto, a journalist who later worked for the Bank of Italy, sometimes played piano to accompany silent films, and that sparked the boy's interest in cinema. Vittorio later called his childhood one of tragic, aristocratic poverty, and he dedicated Umberto D. to his father. The family moved to Naples in 1914, then Florence, and finally Rome.
At 15 he acted in amateur shows staged in hospitals for wounded soldiers, and while training as an accountant he landed a small screen part in 1917 in The Clemenceau Affair. Through the 1920s he built a stage career, touring South America with Tatiana Pavlova's company. With the Livorno actor Umberto Melnati he formed a comic pairing that became nationally famous through a radio sketch and a popular song De Sica sang. In the 1930s he co-ran theatre companies that performed light comedy and Beaumarchais and worked with Luchino Visconti.
As a director he became a central figure of Italian neorealism. Shoeshine, known in Italian as Sciuscia, was the first foreign film the Academy recognised, and together with Bicycle Thieves it pushed the Academy to set up a standing prize for foreign-language cinema. Two later films, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow and The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, won that prize outright, giving him four Oscar-winning pictures in all. Sight and Sound's 1952 poll put Bicycle Thieves at the top, and Turner Classic Movies lists it among the 15 most influential films.
He never stopped acting. His Major Rinaldi in Charles Vidor's 1957 version of A Farewell to Arms brought a supporting actor nomination, and critics singled out his performance as the best thing in a film that otherwise flopped. De Sica died on 13 November 1974.
Source: Vittorio De Sica
