Vittorio De Sica's Birthday
On July 7, 1901 in the town of Sora, Italian province of Terra di Lavoro (later annexed to the province of Lazio), in the family of a small bank clerk Umberto De Sica and his wife, Teresa Manfredi, a housewife, a son was born, who was named Vittorio Domenico Stanisao Gaetano Sorano. In 1914, the De Sica family moved to Naples, and from there soon to Florence. However, it was in Naples that the street was named after Vittorio De Sica.
Vittorio's creative biography began at age 16, when he played his first role in the film adaptation of the novel by Alexandre Dumas-son (1866) “The Clemenceau’s Case”. Totally, Vittorio De Sica played in 161 films, including Silent and Television. However, Vittorio De Sica got the greatest fame for his directorial activity which began in 1940 when De Sica was already 39 years old. For 34 years of directorial activity Vittorio De Sica has shot 30 feature-length feature films plus 3 segments for movie almanacs.
In total, acting and, in particular, directing brought Vittorio De Sica 26 prestigious film awards and 12 nominations. 5 films made by Vittorio De Sica are included in the FilmGourmand's Golden Thousand. Based on this indicator, De Sica is included in the list of 100 greatest world film directors compiled by FilmGourmand.
However, Vittorio De Sica "became famous" not only for his cinematic achievements. For all lovers of Italian cinema, De Sica is known as a gambler. A passion for the game often led him to the appearance of large debts, for the repayment of which he had to accept very doubtful offers.
However, there was another reason to agree to participate in films that brought not so much fame and honor as financial income. Most of his life Vittorio De Sica lived in fact on two families. Vittorio's first wife, Juditta Rissone, had French citizenship. Marriage with Judith in 1937 and divorce from her in 1954 were formalized in France. The second wife, Maria Mercader, with whom Vittorio had been in a relationship since 1942, was Spanish. Marriage with Mary was concluded in Mexico. But in Italy, whose citizen was De Sica, the second marriage was not recognized. In short, discrepancies in the family laws of different countries doomed De Sica to live in two families. However, De Sica cared equally for both families and for all three of his children, so that no one suffered from his “polygamy”. By the way, Maria Mercader was the cousin of Ramon Mercader, an NKVD agent famous for the murder of Leon Trotsky. And for the children of Vittorio De Sica, he was beloved uncle Ramon.
Today, on the day when the great Master could have turned 119 years old, we want to remind fans of his work footage from his best films included in the Golden Thousand.
