Word: sica
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...prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. Although a fine study in nostalgia, its import lies rather in having created an elegant and moving recapitulation of this shameful episode in Italy's history--thirty years too late. Painful though it may be for a man like De Sica to shoulder the burden of his country's guilt in making such an apology, the balance against sentimental but ineffective nostalgia is only preserved by the counter-weight of the triumphant re-emergence of De Sica...
ODDLY LINKED to his Bicycle Thief, because most of Italy seems to move at the slow, wobbly pace produced by riding on two wheels, it is clear, as a sporty group of young people comes swooping by in the opening shot, that De Sica is dealing here with the upper-classes, not the population of Rome's slums. Upon the invitation of the Jewish-aristocrat Finzi-Continis, they are on their way to play tennis on the courts in the family's garden. As they pedal through the gates they leave the real world behind. True to the De Sica...
Realizing that a relationship between them is impossible, Micol flees the tardy growth of Giorgio's passion by going to Venice to finish her studies. De Sica allows Giorgio similar flirtations with escape, when things start to fall to pieces for him. Repeatedly rejected by Micol, he takes refuge both in his work, as well as in his attempt at a physical change of scene by visiting his brother at the politically aware and apprehensive University of Grenoble. No matter. De Sica always keeps his characters emotionally within the confines of the garden. Giorgio cannot avoid the unprecedented implications...
GIORGIO is not blind to the danger of remaining in such a tarnished paradise, but even the warning signals encountered abroad cannot argue with a set of emotions that are still back in the garden. He must follow the lines of action that form the framework of De Sica's subjectifying microcosm. These lines continue to bind his characters to the dual power of ethnic identity and omnipresent past. His young people run away and return, reject and make up, but the two dominant forces always narrow the scope of De Sica's drama to his claustrophobic universe, by holding...
...white-clad clique, only Alberto continues to wear that color. Confining himself to his bedroom he pines away between four walls, clutching a white bathrobe around him, and transforming his retreat into the sterile whiteness of a sick room, and finally a deathbed. Always a master of gestures. De Sica places Alberto's nervous submission in the clasp of his folded hands, a subtle pantomime that will be echoed later in the same gesture by people under arrest...