The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (113 page)

It is not always remembered that de Sica—pioneer sponsor of the nonprofessional actor—was originally a young romantic lead actor on the stage and in the movies. Thus, the slightly fake gallantry, the silver hair that might be tin, which Hollywood made use of and which Rossellini observed so tactfully in
Il Generale della Rovere
(59), were the remains of an early emphasis on charm and brightness. In the 1930s, he played in
Gli Uomini … che Mascalzoni
(32, Mario Camerini);
Daro un Milione
(35, Camerini);
Ma Non e Una Cosa Serza!
(36, Camerini);
Il Signor Max
(37, Luigi Comencini);
Castelli in Aria
(39, Augusto Genina); and
I Grandi Magazzini
(39, Camerini).

He also acted in the earliest films that he directed, and
The Children Are Watching Us
is his first serious resort to realism. It was scripted by Cesare Zavattini, whom de Sica had known since 1932. There is no doubt about the social and political involvement de Sica felt with war-torn Italy. He spoke of his films being a struggle “against the absence of human solidarity, against the indifference of society towards suffering. They are a word in favor of the poor and the unhappy.” It could be argued that that strength of feeling requires more than a word. Time soon caught up with neorealism and left it looking like an idealistic stance, not fully participated in by its practitioners. This is not to say that
The Children Are Watching Us, Shoeshine, Bicycle Thieves (The Bicycle Thief
in America), and
Umberto D
are not moving films, or that they are inaccurate or misleading portraits of Italy in the years after Mussolini.

The difficulty is that they are schematically contrived:
Bicycle Thieves
, for instance, is either too long a telling of a fragment from urban problems, or too sketchy an examination of the pressurized mind of a man on the brink of unemployment. Not all the real locations and “real” people disguise the way that the story has been set up—that the man has a son to create the necessary sentimental commentary on his dilemma, that once his bicycle is stolen, other cycles crowd the screen and the trilling of bells runs through the music. In the same way, the enlargement of the subject, to show how the victim himself becomes a thief, and the implication that all the city is caught in the same spiral, is trite compared with, say, the dynamic analysis Losey makes in
M
and
The Criminal
. The more one sees
Bicycle Thieves
, the duller the man becomes and the more poetic and accomplished de Sica’s urban photography seems. The disappearing perspective of a sunny, dusty Rome, briefly puddled by a thunderstorm, but with streets and squares receding into hopelessly empty expanses, is not only very beautiful but a clear heralding of the elegant alienation in Antonioni’s work.

Perhaps
Bicycle Thieves
would work best in thirty minutes, one episode among several—a form de Sica used in
L’Oro di Napoli
. As it is, it functions like a plan; it is emotional only to the extent that the plan is relevant to a real human plight. Like many would-be documentarists, de Sica is actually uneasy about feeling. When it arises, he shuts it off brusquely, as if he mistrusted an oversentimental reaction from his innate coldness. I do not mean that he was callous, but that his films skirt round feelings and prefer not to investigate character. Thus, it is the idea of the man in
Bicycle Thieves
that moves us, and always the cinematic realization in a Renoir film that affects our response. Neorealism was a naïve regime, far less rewarding than the cinema verité movement that came some twelve years later. Because de Sica and Zavattini were most attached to it, they have been the most misunderstood.

Far better to accept the shortcomings of the cursory gestures to working-class solidarity and see that
Miracolo a Milano
has that curiously Italian fusion of fantasy and the everyday that Fellini has thrived on, that
Umberto D
takes objectivity toward abstraction in a way that can be usefully related to the work of Renoir. In other words, de Sica is a less emotional but more reflective director than is sometimes alleged.

It was the overreliance on the heart on his sleeve that led to charges of betrayal when the impetus went out of neorealism.
Stazione Termini
was not a sellout to David Selznick, but an underachieved emotional melodrama; a subject close to Italian tradition, given the advantages of Jennifer Jones and Montgomery Clift, but let down by de Sica’s reticence (with such material, Ophuls could have made a masterpiece).
Il Tetto
was an ostensibly working-class subject undermined by compromise. At this stage, de Sica resumed the acting career that he had never entirely abandoned:
I Nostri Sogni
(43, Vittorio Cottafavi);
Nessuno Torna Indietro
(44, Alessandro Blasetti);
Roma, Citta Libera
(46, Marcello Pagliero);
Lo Sconosciuto di San Marino
(48, Cottafavi and M. Waszinsky);
Altri Tempi
(52, Blasetti); the faithless lover in
Madame de …
(53, Max Ophuls); and an increasing emphasis on a twinkling-eyed father figure—
Pane, Amore e Gelosia
(54, Comencini);
Il Segno di Venere
(55, Dino Risi);
Pane, Amore e …
(55, Risi);
Padri e Figli
(57, Mario Monicelli);
It Happened in Rome
(57, Antonio Pietrangeli);
Amore e Chiacchiere
(57, Blasetti); Rinaldi in
A Farewell to Arms
(57, Charles Vidor);
Kanonenserenade
(58, Wolfgang Staudte);
La Prima Notte
(58, Alberto Cavalcanti); and
Les Noces Vénitiennes
(58, Cavalcanti).

His playing of the swindler trapped into heroism in
Il Generale della Rovere
was an affectionate glimpse of the two halves of de Sica’s nature. Far from the betrayer of an early vision, he was a once interesting director in decline. The emotion that had once been denied by a sort of shyness was swamped by cliché and overemphasis:
Two Women
supposedly rehabilitated him commercially, just as it brought Sophia Loren an Oscar. But his work in the 1960s was slick and tasteless. The pictorial grace and the emotional severity were both abandoned in a series of concocted comedies about sexual hypocrisy.
The Garden of the Finzi-Contini
was a regeneration only in that it was a serious, literary subject that de Sica transcribed with rather hollow rectitude. He stands now as a minor director. But the films from 1943–52, and
L’Oro di Napoli
, are still worth seeing.

André de Toth
(Sásvrái Farkasfawi Tóthfalusi Tóth Endre Antai Mihaly) (1913–2002), b. Mako, Hungary
1938:
Toprini Nasz; Ot Ora 40; Ket Lany Az Utcan; Hat Het Boldogsag; Semmelweiss
. 1943:
Passport to Suez; None Shall Escape
. 1944:
Dark Waters
. 1947:
Ramrod; The Other Love
. 1948:
Pitfall
. 1949:
Slattery’s Hurricane
. 1951:
Man in the Saddle
. 1952:
Carson City; Springfield Rifle; Last of the Comanches/Sabre and the Arrow
. 1953:
House of Wax; The Stranger Wore a Gun; Thunder Over the Plains
. 1954:
Riding Shotgun; The City Is Dark/Crime Wave; The Bounty Hunter; Tanganyika
. 1955:
The Indian Fighter
. 1957:
Monkey On My Back; Hidden Fear
. 1959:
The Two-Headed Spy; Day of the Outlaw
. 1960:
Confessions of a Counterspy; Morgan Il Pirata/Morgan the Pirate
(codirected with Primo Zeglio). 1961:
I Mongoli
(codirected with Riccardo Freda). 1962:
Oro Per I Cesari/Gold for the Caesars
(codirected with Freda). 1968:
Play Dirty
.

De Toth’s early career is far from clear. He was apparently an actor and scriptwriter in Hungary and Germany during the 1930s. He was a frequent visitor to England and America, and helped Alexander Korda on
Elephant Boy
(37, Zoltan Korda and Robert Flaherty). Report says that after a handful of Hungarian features, he was involved filming the Nazi invasion of Poland, but that he slipped away to England, where he worked for Korda as an editor and assistant director on
The Four Feathers
(39, Z. Korda),
Thief of Bagdad
(40, Michael Powell, Ludwig Berger, and Tim Whelan), and
The Jungle Book
(42, Z. Korda). By 1943, however, he was a director in Hollywood, where he had fifteen years as a maker of adventures, and half that as the husband of Veronica Lake.

A skiing accident restricted his work, but he reemerged to take over the interesting
Play Dirty
from René Clément and as a producer:
Billion Dollar Brain
(67, Ken Russell); and
El Condor
(70, John Guillermin).

De Toth is an entertaining director, especially when dealing with violence, treachery, and the psychological cruelty beneath them. His films are economical and sardonic. The main body of his work is Westerns: several Randolph Scott movies
—Man in the Saddle, Carson City, The Stranger Wore a Gun
, and
The Bounty Hunter
—which prefigure the Boetticher films, and three other creditable Westerns—
Springfield Rifle, Ramrod
, and
The Indian Fighter
. But
Crime Wave
is an excellent thriller;
House of Wax
—despite 3D gimmicks—is an ingenious horror; and
Monkey on My Back
is a startling treatment of drug addiction.

Michel Deville
, b. Boulogne-sur-Seine, France, 1931
1958:
Une Belle dans le Canon
(codirected with Charles Gérard). 1960:
Ce Soir ou Jamais
. 1961:
Adorable Menteuse
. 1962:
A Cause, À Cause d’une Femme
. 1963:
L’Appartement des Filles
. 1964:
Lucky Jo
. 1965:
On a Volé la Joconde
. 1966:
Martin Soldat
. 1967:
Benjamin
. 1968:
Bye Bye, Barbara
. 1970:
L’Ours et la Poupée
. 1971:
Raphael, ou le Débauché
. 1972:
La Femme en Bleu
. 1974:
Le Mouton Enragé/The French Way/Love at the Top
. 1976:
L’Apprenti Salaud
. 1977:
Dossier 51
. 1979:
Le Voyage en Douce/Sentimental Journey
. 1981:
Eaux Profondes
. 1983:
La Petite Bande
. 1984:
Péril en la Demeure/Death in a French Garden
. 1986:
Le Paltoquet
. 1988:
La Lectrice
. 1990:
Nuit d’Été en Ville
. 1991:
Contre l’Oubli
. 1992:
Toutes Peines Confondues
. 1996:
Aux Petits Bonheurs
. 1997:
La Divine Poursuite
. 1999:
La Maladie de Sachs
. 2002:
Un Monde Presque Paisible
.

Very little of Deville’s work has traveled far outside France.
Benjamin
is not the happiest representative of a director who, at his best, is a complex and tender comedian of the emotions. Nothing seems to have equaled the musical interplay of
Ce Soir ou Jamais
and
Adorable Menteuse
, films about the resort to deception and masquerade among young lovers. With witty scripts by Deville himself and Nina Companeez, the use of such actresses as Anna Karina, Marina Vlady, Macha Meril, and Françoise Dorléac, and a camera style that delighted in filming social groups so that individuals or couples were never cut off from their context, Deville seemed a very promising director. It was mannered, literary comedy, harking back to the intrigue of
Twelfth Night
and classical French theatre. In fact, after working for several years as assistant to Henri Decoin, Deville had collaborated with Jean Meyer on the filming of two Comédie Française productions:
Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme
(58) and
Le Mariage de Figaro
(59). In the early 1960s, at least, he looked capable of taking up Renoir’s pursuit of winged cupid in something like the house-party atmosphere of
La Règle du Jeu
. But neglect may have forced him to coarsen his style and broaden his material.

Péril
and
La Lectrice
were successes beyond France: the latter had Miou-Miou as a professional reader who enters into her stories and her readers’ lives—a pretty idea, scripted by Deville and his wife.

Danny DeVito
, b. Neptune, New Jersey, 1944
1987:
Throw Momma from the Train
. 1989:
The War of the Roses
. 1992:
Hoffa
. 1996:
Matilda
. 2002:
Death to Smoochy
. 2003:
Duplex
. 2004:
I Married a Witch
.

There is a goblin of anger in DeVito the actor (and maybe not much else) that seemed to inspire him as a director.
Throw Momma
was demonically cruel, as if DeVito had understood both Hitchcock and slapstick and had a Rumpelstiltskin magic for drawing them together.
The War of the Roses
was a mess (nowhere more clearly than in DeVito’s own acting role), but it grasped the demented malice of married partners, and had an air of Buñuel in some scenes. As a result,
Hoffa
seemed very promising, for here was an authentic little beast who grabbed America by the balls.

This is not far from that lovable demon, DeVito the actor and husband to Rhea Perlman (she of
Cheers
and he from
Taxi
). But as an actor, DeVito is either ingratiating or apoplectic, and he so dominates any role in which he is cast that he is always a DeVito type:
Lady Liberty
(72, Mario Monicelli);
Hurry Up, or I’ll Be 30
(73, Joseph Jacoby);
Scalawag
(73, Kirk Douglas); very sweet in
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
(75, Milos Forman);
The Van
(76, Sam Grossman);
Goin’ South
(78, Jack Nicholson);
Terms of Endearment
(83, James L. Brooks);
Johnny Dangerously
(84, Amy Heckerling);
Romancing the Stone
(84, Robert Zemeckis);
The Jewel of the Nile
(85, Lewis Teague);
Head Office
(86, Ken Finkleman); delirious in
Ruthless People
(86, Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker); doing his best in
Wise Guys
(86, Brian De Palma);
Tin Men
(87, Barry Levinson); with Arnold Schwarzenegger in
Twins
(88, Ivan Reitman). His Penguin in
Batman Returns
(92, Tim Burton) is only frightening
before
he appears: the black cradle in the sewer is a great, macabre image. But DeVito’s complete Penguin is just a ranting, rubber demon. Val Lewton knew the wisdom of never showing the worst things. As it is, the Penguin becomes a shrew.