Word: sica
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...Generale brought the festival to life. The story of a wartime swindler named Giuseppe Bertoni (played by Vittorio De Sica), who was forced to become a Nazi spy but eventually gave his life for his country, the Rossellini effort was an almost unanimous critical success. "Comeback!" cried the critics, and talked of the old Rossellini of Paisan and Open City. "Finally a good film," beamed Rome's Tempo. "With this picture all hopes are rekindled. The old, glorious banner of the first Rossellinian neorealism flies again...
...audiences who associate De Sica with some of Italy's greatest postwar protest films (The Bicycle Thief, Shoeshine, Umberto D. and The Roof), his participation in this featherweight import may come as something of a surprise. But since the films that earned him a place in cinema history have all been box-office laggards in Italy, De Sica is forced to direct and act in cream-puff romances in order to scrape up the financing for an occasional picture of his choice. In The Maid he almost seems to be describing his own professional plight-and that...
...Tailor's Maid (Royal; Trans-Lux) presents Italy's suave Vittorio De Sica as a rich tailor who loves to wrap his charms around female customers. "A tailor," he suggestively tells a pretty matron, "is like a doctor, dear lady...
...other hand, De Sica is unable to accept the fact that his 16-year-old daughter has, since her last fitting, developed a 35-inch bust herself, and is holding furtive assignations with a school chum in the ruins of ancient Rome. "We teach our children how to be children," reflects one of the characters in The Maid. "But has anyone taught us how to be fathers? We have to play it by ear." And that is how they play the whole picture...
...Roof (Italian). A story of love and squalor in equal measure, directed and written by two of Italy's most formidable neorealists, Vittorio De Sica and Cesare Zavattini...