The Essentials: The 10 Best Vittorio De Sica Films

There were many different Vittorio De Sicas. The Italian maestro (and for once the word feels earned and not just thrown in there to show off the speaker's Italophilia) was not just the revered director of indelibly authentic neo-realist classics that put forth a progressive social agenda, he was also an inveterate gambler who often got into such debt he'd accept subpar material — sex comedies and soap operas — to make money. He was not just a once-divorced Roman Catholic, he was and remained the patriarch to his two families, even to the point, reportedly, of having one household set the clock back by two hours so he could celebrate the turn of New Year in both. He was not just a four-time Academy Award-winning director, whose "Shoeshine" helped establish the Foreign Language category in the first place, he was also an Academy Award-nominated actor (he got his nod for "A Farewell to Arms") with over 150 acting credits to his name, including a career peak in Max...