One of the great directors of the postwar Italian neorealist movement. Vittorio De Sica was the most populist of all the neorealists, he told stories about poor people living hand-to-mouth, and opposite many of his contemporaries, his films are most closely tied to current events in the immediate postwar years. Grinding poverty and working class slums are the pillars of his best work, but before becoming one of the pioneers of neorealism, he made "white telephone" comedies in the early 1940s that presented a politically fascist ideology. These films have a rich history and were a perfect form of escapism told in traditional, Hollywood-style narrative. They were an opiate of the masses. The fascist regime preferred a successful commercial cinema based on the Hollywood model, especially since these films concealed the exploitation of class struggle and hid the inconvenient truths in which Italians struggled to live with. 

After the war, when reality could no longer be kept under a bushel, De Sica and his friends carried "the camera into the streets, into the courtyards, into barracks, into garages" and made films about genuine human struggle (unemployment among the desperate proletariat, children forced to steal to eat another meal, and homeless people punished by unjust state laws). 

His films have conviction and are made with tremendous passion, always aimed at the emotional heart of his audience. When he feared neorealism was becoming a formula, he reimagined social revolution as a fairytale, unleashing his personal brand of neorealism which was nothing more than "reality filtered through poetry, reality transfigured." De Sica was not a disciple of Zola, naturalism, or things which were ugly. He structured his realism into prayers of human solidarity, hoping his images would increase love, understanding, and sympathy among people. For these reasons some critics have cited his work as too sentimental and manipulative, but De Sica's films were never aimed at "feelings for feelings sake, but empathy for the sake of restoring a cohesive community in which human beings are able to relate to each other without violence or indifference" (Curle/Snyder). 

He was far more universal, warm, and accessible than his neorealist contemporaries, perhaps even to a fault by the time the 60s rolled around. His work degenerated in the 60s when he started to make commercial hack comedies, which to me felt like films that never came from an artist but from someone struggling to pay rent. There was gold to be found in films like THE BOOM and MARRIAGE ITALIAN STYLE, as well as masterpieces in the 70s like SUNFLOWER and mood puzzlers like THE GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS. But his best work is forever enshrined with the classics his made with Cesare Zavattini, films like BICYCLE THIEVES, SHOESHINE, THE ROOF, TWO WOMEN, and MIRACLE IN MILAN, all of which helped usher in a Golden Age of Italian film. If you're new to neorealism and looking for an accessible way to digest what life was like for Italians before, during, and after the war, De Sica is a great place to start.