Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents v
3. Acknowledgments ix
4. A Note on Film Documentation and Photographs x
5. Introduction 1
6. De Sica on De Sica 22
7. Some Ideas on the Cinema 50
8. De Sica: Metteur en Scene 62
9. Umberto D. and Realism 77
10. Beyond the Movement-Image 81
11. Ideological Continuity and Cultural Coherence 86
12. Remembrance of Things Past 94
13. On a Train to the Kingdom of Earth: Watching De Sica’s Children 101
14. Shoeshine 126
15. The Art of Shoeshine 129
16. Holding Hands with a Bicycle Thief 137
17. Bicycle Thieves: A Re-reading 160
18. Neorealist Aesthetics and the Fantastic: The Machine to Kill Bad People and Miracle in Milan 172
19. Appendix: Reflections on Miracle in Milan 179
20. Miracle in Milan: Some Psychoanalytic Notes on a Movie 181
21. Pius Aeneas and Totò, il buono: The Founding Myth of the Divine City 189
22. Umberto D.: Vittorio De Sica’s ‚Super‘-Naturalism 198
23. The Subversive Potential of the Pseudo-Iterative 204
24. A Home in the Ditch of Saint Agnes: De Sica’s The Roof 210
25. The Case of De Sica 220
26. Hiding in the Light: De Sica’s Work in the 19605 226
27. In Love and War: Vittorio De Sica’s Two Women 242
28. De Sica’s Garden of the Finzi-Continis: An Escapist Paradise Lost 258
29. The Magic Mountain 280
30. Filmography 284