VITTORIO DE SICA
Series through Thursday, October 8
Dashingly handsome Vittorio De Sica (1901-1974): first a stage star as the primo attore giovane brillante of Italian musical comedies; then the ingratiatingly charming movie star — a Meditteranean Cary Grant — of Italian pre-war romantic comedies; then the deeply humanistic titan of neo-realismo, unadorned, no-compromise stories (from the pen of his longtime collaborator Cesare Zavattini), shot on the streets with non-pro casts, that touched and influenced all the world; then the mainstream director who helped create the personas of stars like Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni, while himself incarnating the suave, silver-haired, silver-tongued Older Man. Which was the real Vittorio De Sica? All of them. This series features many rare 35mm prints (some subtitled especially for our screenings) imported from Italy (and going right back), courtesy Istituto Luce Cinecittà, Cineteca di Bologna, and Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia — Cineteca Nazionale.
Programmed by Bruce Goldstein
Presented in collaboration with ISTITUTO LUCE CINECITTÀ
Special thanks to Roberto Cicutto, Camilla Cormanni, Paola Ruggiero, Marco Cicala (Istituto Luce Cinecittà, Rome), Laura Argento, Maria Coletti (Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia – Cineteca Nazionale, Rome), Eric di Bernardo, Adrienne Halpern (Rialto Pictures), Simon Duffy (BFI), James Quandt, Samuel Lafrance (TIFF, Toronto), Emily Woodburne, Brian Belovarac, Lee Kline (Janus films), Mary Tallungan (Disney), Carmen Accaputo, Andrea Meneghelli, Guy Borlee (Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna), Angelo Draicchio, Elisabetta Camillo (Ripley’s Film, Rome), Paola Corvino, Marco Valeria Fusco (Intramovies, Rome), Stefano Curti (Minerva), Barbara Crandall, Caitlin Robertson, Joe Reid (20th Century Fox), Joshua Tager (Ivy Films), John Poole, Jr. (Corinth Films), Giulia D’Agnolo Vallan, Gray Coleman, Fiamma Arditi, Tilde Corsi, and Arthur Cohn.
Reviews
“A VITAL RETRO”
– Time Out New York
“De Sica was originally an actor, and his films are FEASTS OF PERFORMANCE.”
– Richard Brody, New Yorker
Click here to read full article
“Plenty of leading men have parlayed their charms into successful directing careers. But only De Sica, a Clooney-style smoothie in 1930s Italy, has made one of the most influential films of all time.”
– Eric Grode, The New York Times