De Sica. It feels late to finally be adding one of cinema’s great realists. Bicycle Thieves is an all-time film (14th all-time on my top 500) and with Umberto D, Shoeshine and Two Women we have four top 500 films. This is the same amount as Rossellini (and De Sica is the one with a top 100 film— and his in the top 15!) and ahead of the Dardenne brothers and Kiarostami. Satyajit Ray has five films so with a longer proper study he may pass De Sica but for now De Sica remains ahead with Ray’s films all failing to fall in the top 100.
Best film: Bicycle Thieves. If I actually met someone that called Bicycle Thieves “overly sentimental” I might punch them in the face. Haha. I wasn’t surprised to read some of the “sentimental” critiques of De Sica while doing my research for this project but it certainly doesn’t apply to this film in my opinion. Even though it’s 3 years after Rossellini’s Rome, Open City this is the landmark Italian neorealism film. It’s a masterwork and belongs right behind Citizen Kane on the list of the best films of the 1940’s (ahead of Magnificent Ambersons, Casablanca and The Third Man).
total archiveable films: 9
top 100 films: 1
top 500 films: 4 (Bicycle Thieves, Umberto D, Two Women, Shoeshine)
top 100 films of the decade: 4 (Bicycle Thieves, Umberto D, Two Women, Shoeshine)
most overrated: Miracle in Milan is #519 on the TSPDT consensus list and I’d be hundreds of spots below that. I saw it in 2015 for the first time and I was really disappointed (given its reputation). It’s certainly archiveable and I get what De Sica is going for but I wasn’t happy to find this (his #3 ranked film on TSPDT) is almost a pure fantasy film. It’s a solid film but certainly not the great film I had hoped it would be and I think I would’ve preferred a little of a weaker neorealist film than this fantasy film which debunks the dedication he had to neorealism in his oeuvre.
most underrated: Shoeshine. I have no idea why this early neorealist film isn’t in the TSPDT top 1000. It debuted 7 months after open city. I have it as a must-see film (meaning top 5 of its year quality). It’s tragic and brilliant.
gem I want to spotlight: Two Women. Sophia Loren won an Oscar for her work here. She’s fantastic and this is a difficult and depressing neorealist must-see film. This easily could’ve gone in the “underrated” category above- both this and Shoeshine are in my top 500 and outside of the TSPDT top 1000.
stylistic innovations/traits: Just because these films look like just regular dramas in today’s cinema it doesn’t mean they aren’t landmarks in the history of cinema. Yes, Rossellini’s film came first and he’s probably more dogmatic in his approach and dedication to neorealism but Bicycle Thieves is always going to be De Sica’s trump card and while we’re comparing the two founding neorealist masters I think De Sica’s Umberto D is superior to Rossellini’s #2 (Germany Year Zero). Italian neorealism as a whole, in which Rossellini and De sica are the Truffaut and Godard, is unbelievably important to the history of cinema. Both movements are antithetical to Hollywood of sorts, and I’m not sure we have a Satyajit Ray, a Wendy and Lucy, Elephant, the Dardenne brothers, Lars von Trier (the entire Dogme 95 movement actually), Abbas Kiarostami, Blue is the Warmest Color, Boyhood, etc…without De Sica and Rossellini. It’s an important counter-balance to not only Hollywood’s polish but the various expressionistic movements throughout this artform’s history.
top 10
- Bicycle Thieves
- Umberto D
- Two Women
- Shoeshine
- Miracle in Milan
- Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow
- Marriage, Italian Style
- The Gold of Naples
- The Garden of the Finzi-Continis
By year and grades
| 1946- Shoeshine | MS |
| 1948- Bicycle Thieves | MP |
| 1951- Miracle in Milan | HR |
| 1952- Umberto D | MP |
| 1954- The Gold of Naples | R |
| 1960- Two Women | MS |
| 1963- Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow | R |
| 1964- Marriage, Italian Style | R |
| 1970- The Garden of the Finzi-Continis | R |
*MP is Masterpiece- top 1-3 quality of the year film
MS is Must-see- top 5-6 quality of the year film
HR is Highly Recommend- top 10 quality of the year film
R is Recommend- outside the top 10 of the year quality film but still in the archives
[…] 40.Vittorio De Sica […]
Drake, where would you say the transfer happens between MS and HR? Would it be around slot 750? And what about HR and R, slot 1500, slot 2000 or so?
@Zane- yes- that feels about right when you include the films from 2009-2020/21
Working through the De Sica films you have in your Archives (can’t find The Gold of Naples) and quite impressed. My film renaissance started about 3 or 4 years ago and I started mainly with The French New Wave but realized I hadn’t yet covered Italian Neorealism. I saw Bicycle Thieves in a High School film course years ago but otherwise am new to De Sica.
– Shoeshine (1946) definitely has some similarities to “The 400 Blows” and a similarly devastating ending.
– Orson Welles on De Sica: “What De Sica can do, that I can’t do. I ran his Shoeshine again recently and the camera disappeared, the screen disappeared; it was just life.”
– Bicycle Thieves is a straight up masterwork, Bruno watching his father attempt to steal the bicycle is just devastating with everything that leads up to that moment.
– But perhaps the greatest surprise of all for me has been Umberto D. which I’m not entirely convinced isn’t just as great as Bicycle Thieves. The Umberto character is one of the most natural performances and the film in general feels so authentic to the point where like Welles quote above “it was just life”. It’s ending didn’t feel contrived to me (some critics disagreed apparently) but was more of a life goes on ending.
– Just finished Two Women, not an easy watch, but terrific performance from Sophia Loren and doesn’t hold back in depicting the horrors of society during wartime
@James Trapp- great work here. I’m with you on Umberto D! That’s an interesting Welles quote. I haven’t seen that one before. Clearly it is a compliment, and it is accurate- but I also know Welles enough to know the last thing he would want is for his camera to disappear- haha.
@Drake – Maybe that’s the point, Welles knew he wasn’t capable of making a film that doesn’t show off his immaculate work behind the camera. Perhaps Welles was tipping his hat to De Sica’s restraint knowing that it was something that he (Welles) knew himself not capable of. Always interesting to hear great auteurs speaking about one another.
Here is a list of director’s Welles insults, I believe jokingly. It’s tough to tell with him given his man child persona.
https://twitter.com/JFrankensteiner/status/1158570756349071361
@James Trapp- haha yeah you don’t see that these days with the insults between the great auteurs. I’m sure Welles meant his comment on De Sica in that case as a compliment and revered him
That’s the first time you’d seen that Welles quote? I’ve been into cinema for a much shorter time than you and I feel like I’ve seen it a billion times.
@Zane- yep
Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow and Marriage, Italian Style both show off De Sica’s ability to do comedy and dial down the social commentary at times although ultimately they are still within the framework of neorealism and themes related to class. It’s a treat seeing Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni work together, at times you feel like your watching a Howard Hawks screwball comedy. While these films can’t possibly match his masterpieces they are still worth viewing in my opinion and highly enjoyable.
Shoeshine MS
Bicycle Thieves MP
Miracle in Milan MS
Umberto D MP
The Gold of Naples R
Two Women R
Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow —
Marriage, Italian Style —
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis —
What do you think about De Sica as an actor?
He is very far from my top 100 even if I thought he was pretty great in Il Generale Della Rovere and Madame De…
@RujK- agreed with you here
My ranking of De Sica`s films that I`ve seen:
1. Bicycle Thieves MP
2. Umberto D. MP (much closer to Bicycle Thieves than I expected)
3. Two Women MS
4. Shoeshine MS
5. Marriage Italian Style R