MAJOR FIGURES OF ITALIAN NEO REALISM Vittorio De Sica (Italian pronunciation: [vitˈtɔːrjo de ˈsiːka]; 7 July 1901 – 13 November 1974) was an Italian director and actor, a leading figure in the neorealist movement. Four of the films he directed won Academy Awards: Sciuscià and Bicycle Thieves were awarded honorary Oscars, while Ieri, oggi, domani and Il giardino dei Finzi Contini won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. Indeed, the great critical success of Sciuscià (the first foreign film to be so recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) and Bicycle Thieves helped establish the permanent Best Foreign Film Oscar. These two films generally are considered part of the canon of classic cinema. Bicycle Thieves was cited by Turner Classic Movies as one of the 15 most influential films in cinema history. Federico Fellini (Italian: [fedeˈriːko felˈliːni]; 20 January 1920 – 31 October 1993) was an Italian film director and screenwriter. Known for his distinct style that blends fantasy and baroque images with earthiness, he is recognized as one of the most influential filmmakers of all time. Some of his films are placed in polls such as in Cahiers du cinéma and Sight & Sound as some of the greatest films of all time, with his 1963 film 8½ being listed as the 10th greatest film of all time by Sight & Sound. In a career spanning almost fifty years, Fellini won the Palme d'Or for La Dolce Vita, was nominated for twelve Academy Awards, and directed four motion pictures that won Oscars in the category of Best Foreign Language Film. In 1993, he was awarded an honorary Oscar for Lifetime Achievement at the 65th Annual Academy Awards in Los Angeles. Roberto Gastone Zeffiro Rossellini (8 May 1906 – 3 June 1977) was an Italian film director and screenwriter. Rossellini was one of the directors of the Italian neorealist cinema, contributing films such as Roma città aperta (Rome, Open City 1945) to the movement. He was an acknowledged master for the critics of Cahiers du Cinema in general and André Bazin, François Truffaut, and Jean-Luc Godard in particular. Truffaut noted in his 1963 essay, Roberto Rossellini Prefers Real Life (available in The Films In My Life) that Rossellini's influence in France particularly among the directors who would become part of the nouvelle vague was so great that he was in every sense, "the father of the French New Wave". Ingrid Bergman married to Roberto Rossellini (1950–57) Alberto Lattuada (Italian pronunciation: [alˈbɛrto lattuˈaːda; latˈtwaːda]; 13 November 1914 – 3 July 2005) was an Italian film director. n 1940 he started his cinema career as a screenwriter and assistant director on Mario Soldati's Piccolo mondo antico ("Old-Fashioned World"). In 1943 he directed his first movie, Giacomo l'idealista. Luci del Varietà (1950), co-directed with Federico Fellini, was the latter's first directorial endeavour. His 1962 film La steppa was entered into the 12th Berlin International Film Festival. In 1970, he was a member of the jury at the 20th Berlin International Film Festival. Luchino Visconti di Modrone, Count of Lonate Pozzolo (2 November 1906 – 17 March 1976), was an Italian theatre, opera and cinema director, as well as a screenwriter. He is best known for his films The Leopard (1963) and Death in Venice (1971). He began his filmmaking career as an assistant director on Jean Renoir's Toni (1935) and Partie de campagne (1936), thanks to the intercession of their common friend, Coco Chanel. After a short tour of the United States, where he visited Hollywood, he returned to Italy to be Renoir's assistant again, this time for La Tosca (1939), a production that was interrupted and later completed by German director Karl Koch because of World War II. Together with Roberto Rossellini, Visconti joined the salotto of Vittorio Mussolini (the son of Benito, who was then the national arbitrator for cinema and other arts). Here he presumably also met Federico Fellini. With Gianni Puccini, Antonio Pietrangeli and Giuseppe De Santis, he wrote the screenplay for his first film as director: Ossessione (Obsession, 1943), the first neorealist movie and an unofficial adaptation of the novel The Postman Always Rings Twice. In 1948, he wrote and directed La terra trema (The Earth Trembles), based on the novel I Malavoglia by Giovanni Verga. Giuseppe De Santis (11 February 1917 – 16 May 1997) was an Italian film director. One of the most idealistic neorealist filmmakers of the 1940s and 1950s, he wrote and directed films punctuated by ardent cries for social reform. He was the brother of Italian cinematographer Pasqualino De Santis. His wife was Gordana Miletic, a Yugoslav actress and former ballet dancer. De Santis was born in Fondi, Lazio. He was a member of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) and fought with the anti- German Resistance in Rome during World War II. He was first a student of philosophy and literature before entering Rome's Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia. While working as a journalist for Cinema magazine, De Santis became, under the influence of Cesare Zavattini, a major proponent of the early neorealist filmmakers who were trying to make films that mirrored the simple and tragic realities of proletarian life using location shooting and nonprofessional actors. In 1942, De Santis collaborated on the script for Ossessione, Luchino Visconti's debut film, which is usually considered one of the first neo-realist films. While still working for Cinema magazine, he increasingly worked as a screenwriter and assistant director until 1947 when he made his own directorial debut with Caccia Tragica (Tragic Hunt). Like the two films to follow, it was a sincere call for better living conditions for the Italian working class and agrarian workers. Issues of corruption, the black market, collaboration with the Germans, and treatment of ex-soldiers were also introduced in the film. His third film Bitter Rice (1950), the story of a young woman working in the rice fields who must choose between two socially disparate suitors, made a star of Silvana Mangano and was a landmark of the new cinematic style. It also earned De Santis an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Story. By the early 1950s, the neorealist movement was falling out of favour with critics and audiences. New filmmakers began using dramatic stories that centered on relationships and de Santis also altered his focus. Cesare Zavattini (20 September 1902 – 13 October 1989) was an Italian screenwriter and one of the first theorists and proponents of the Neorealist movement in Italian cinema. Born in Luzzara, near Reggio Emilia in northern Italy, on 20 September 1902, Zavattini studied law at the University of Parma, but devoted himself to writing. In 1930 he relocated to Milan, and worked for the book and magazine publisher Angelo Rizzoli. After Rizzoli began producing films in 1934, Zavattini received his first screenplay and story credits in 1936. In 1935, he met Vittorio De Sica, beginning a partnership that produced some twenty films, including such masterpieces of Italian neorealism as Sciuscià (Shoeshine, 1946) Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves, American release title, The Bicycle Thief, 1948), Miracolo a Milano (Miracle in Milan, 1951) and Umberto D. (1952) In his only experience in Hollywood, Zavattini wrote the screenplay for The Children of Sanchez (1978) based on Oscar Lewis’s book of the same title, a classic study of a Mexican family. At the 11th Moscow International Film Festival in 1979, he was awarded the Honorable Prize for the contribution to cinema.In 1983 he was a member of the jury at the 13th Moscow International Film Festival. Zavattini died in Rome on 13 October 1989. He was an atheist. Michelangelo Antonioni, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI (29 September 1912 – 30 July 2007), was an Italian film director, screenwriter, editor, and short story writer. Best known for his "trilogy on modernity and its discontents" —L'Avventura (1960), La Notte (1961), and L'Eclisse (1962)— Antonioni "redefined the concept of narrative cinema" and challenged traditional approaches to storytelling, realism, drama, and the world at large.[2] He produced "enigmatic and intricate mood pieces" and rejected action in favor of contemplation, focusing on image and design over character and story. His films defined a "cinema of possibilities". Antonioni received numerous awards and nominations throughout his career, including the Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize (1960, 1962), Palme d'Or (1966), and 35th Anniversary Prize (1982); the Venice Film Festival Silver Lion (1955), Golden Lion (1964), FIPRESCI Prize (1964, 1995), and Pietro Bianchi Award (1998); the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists Silver Ribbon eight times; and an honorary Academy Award in 1995. He is one of three directors to have won the Palme d'Or, the Golden Lion and the Golden Bear, and the only director to have won these three and the Golden Leopard. n 1942, Antonioni co-wrote A Pilot Returns with Roberto Rossellini and worked as assistant director on Enrico Fulchignoni's I due Foscari. He is more of a bridging figure between Neo Realism and International Film. .