DE SANTIS, GIUSEPPE

(1917-1997)

Critic, screenwriter, director. Widely acknowledged as one of the founding fathers ofneorealism, De Santis enrolled in directing at theCentro Sperimentale di Cinematografiain 1941 and was soon one of the leading critical voices in the journalCinema, which advocated a greater sense of realism in Italian films. This advocacy was put into practice in 1942 when he collaborated on the script and served as assistant director on the film that is generally regarded as the immediate forebearer of neorealism,Luchino Visconti'sOssessione(Obsession, 1943).

In the immediate postwar period De Santis collaborated withMario Serandrei, Luchino Visconti,Gianni Puccini, and others on the partisandocumentaryGiorni di Gloria(Days of Glory, 1945).He then made his directorial debut withCaccia tragica(Tragic Hunt, 1947), a film about the last days of theResistancemovement financed by the National Partisan Association (ANPI). A year later he achieved what would remain the greatest success of his career withRiso amaro(Bitter Rice, 1949), a film that daringly mixed a neorealist preoccupation with contemporary social conditions with the more popular elements of the American crime film and tragic melodrama. The film broke all box office records, launched the career ofSilvana Mangano, and introduced a new upfront eroticism into Italian cinema. Despite his strongly theoretical background as a critic, De Santis proved to be an extremely eclectic director, making a wide range of films that included pastoral melodramas such asNon c'epace tra gli ulivi(No Peace under the Olive Tree, 1950), urban neorealist chronicles such asRoma ore 11(Rome 11:00, 1952), the romantic rural fable ofGiorni d'amore(Days of Love, 1954), and the epicItaliani brava gente(Attack and Retreat, 1964), a masterful recreation of the disastrous rout of the Italian army in Russia at the end of World War II. After this extraordinary film, and despite a host of projects, De Santis was strangely but consistently marginalized within the film industry. His only subsequent film,Un apprezzato professionista di sicuro avvenire(A Qualified Professional with an Assured Future, 1972), was very poorly received and generally panned. Nevertheless, after a long period of silence and neglect, his significant contribution to Italian cinema was finally recognized in 1995 when he was presented with a Golden Lion at theVenice Festivalfor his lifetime achievement.