Bicycle Thieves and Trastevere

Vittorio De Sica is the greatest. I’ll write the same about Roberto Rossellini, or Federico Fellini…well, Italy has had a lot of greatest film directors.
Born in 1902, he started his acting career playing often the role of a charming dongiovanni. In 1943 he met the never-praised-enough Cesare Zavattini who introduced him to directing and to neorealist approach to filmmaking.

Masterpieces such as Sciuscià (1946) and Ladri di Biciclette (Bycicle Thieves, 1948) followed. American Academy Awards had to introduce a special Oscar to award De Sica’s Ladri di Biciclette because at that time there wasn’t any “best foreign movie” category. De Sica continued to act in order to finance his works as director, mainly in light comedies such as “Pane, Amore e fantasia (Bread, Love and Dreams)” together with partners like Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida. (When I talk about Sophia I don’t mean that genetically modified mummy we have seen in Sydney last year, I’m talking about this)

De Sica was born in Frosinone, which is the epithome of redneckness for the Romans, that’s why he has always said he was Neapolitan like his mother. Anyway, he lived and worked mainly in the Eternal City where Bycicle Thieves was shot.