Word: sica
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Would Italy's best directors surrender to the invaders? Vittorio de Sica (Shoeshine) was negotiating with David O.Selznick. Roberto Rossellini (Open City, Paisan) was reported flirting with representatives of Sam Goldwyn...
Vittirio De Sica has directed so well that nowhere are his efforts obvious; similarly no one in the picture "acts." The realism of "Shoeshine" is as great as that of "Open City" and it even surpasses the latter film by a simplicity of theme that nowhere permits the continuity to become naveled as did the narrative of the Italian underground. De Sica has limited himself to a small canvas in painting the destruction of the two young lives but has produced a masterpiece with deeper meaning. When Pasquale brings about his young friend's death, he does not receive punishment...
...American standards, Shoeshine was made on a shoestring: 31 million lire ($138,000). (Open City cost only $100,000.) But it was a long, hard scrimmage in the making. Neither Producer Paolo W. Tamburella (who thought up the idea), nor Director Vittorio De Sica, nor Sergio Amidei (who wrote Open City) and his three fellow writers are exactly yes-men. Finding the right actors and getting fine performances out of young amateurs-they were all shoeshine boys-was no small job in itself. And there were plenty of subsidiary difficulties. (When Allied authorities forbade G.I.s to act in the film...