One of the greatest actors and director of the Italian and world cinema. Complete name was Vittorio Domenico Stanislao Gaetano Sorano De Sica. He was born in Sora, Frosinone in July 7th, 1901 by Umberto De Sica (Cagliari, employed in the branch of the Banca d’Italia in Sora) and Teresa Manfredi (Neapolitan housewife). He moved to Napoli with the family in 1914 and to Florence at the beginning of the First World War. He studied bookkeeping and in 1917 is an extra in Il processo Clemenceau of Giancarlo Saccon.
He get in the acting company of Tatiana Pavlova in 1923 until 1925. In 1930 the director Mario Mattioli pulled him in the acting company Za-Bum working in pair with Umbero Melnati. Soon they became well-known for gags in theatre and tv e.g. the famous Dura minga, dura no. He found an acting company in 1933 with Sergio Tofano (the creator of Signor Bonaventura) and Giuditta Rissone and the theatre stayed in his life until the end of the forties. He filmed two silent pictures with Mario Almirante and got a public hit and critical success with Gli uomini che mascalzoni in 1932 directed by Mario Camerini. Vittorio sang a song in the film “Parlami d’amore Mariù” that became a big success. He acted with extreme spontaneity nonetheless with elegance, he conveyed hues of melancholy and nobility at the same time and it’s this blend that makes him a star and a charmer of the audience.
In 1935 during the shooting of Darò un milione again directed by Camerini, he met Cesare Zavattini, who became a friend and the writer of many of the films he then directed. Still Mario Camerini directed him in two more pictures in the thirties which are Il signor Max and Grandi Magazzini . As an actor he played in about a hundred or so of films, including the famous trilogy whose first issue was Pane, amore e fantasia (that led to success Gina Lollobrigida and Sophia Loren), the drama movie Il generale della Rovere by Roberto Rossellini, I gioielli di Madame de.. by Max Ophuls and few other films with Alberto Sordi. Among his last films as an actor: Il delitto Matteotti by Florestano Vancini, C’eravamo tanto amati by Ettore Scola and Dracula by Paul Morrissey, produced by Andy Warhol between 1973 and 1974.
Vittorio De Sica became unexpectedly world-famous with his activity as a director.
