Considered one of the fathers of neorealism, Vittorio De Sica was an eclectic filmmaker and actor. He started his career as a director delving into the Italian-style comedy and white telephones cinema. Together with Cesare Zavattini, he progressively conceived and put into practice a way of representing reality that profoundly shaped the world’s debate on cinematographic language and theory. De Sica’s films feature popular acclaimed stars such as Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni and were received on the international stage as prestigious products, as evidenced by his four Oscar awards. Domestically, however, his works were ignored and nearly ostracised in Italy, probably due to post-World War II concerns about which representation of the country was being offered to the public.