Umberto D.
Short description
Umberto Domenico Ferrari is a retired civil servant living on a meager pension in post-war Rome. He rents a room in a boarding house whose landlady pressures him constantly for overdue rent and threatens to evict him and his dog, Flike. With no way to raise the money, and with only a young maid named Maria and the dog as companions, he struggles to keep his dignity while his circumstances close in around him.
Vittorio De Sica directed the film, working from a screenplay by Cesare Zavattini, with Giuseppe Amato, Angelo Rizzoli and De Sica producing. It followed Shoeshine, Bicycle Thieves and Miracle in Milan in De Sica's filmography, and was made in the neorealist mode for which he had become known. Carlo Battisti, a non-professional actor, plays Umberto, with Maria Pia Casilio as Maria and Napoleone the dog as Flike.
The film has an audience rating of 7.9 out of 10 on TMDB from 766 votes, while critics rate it higher, at 9 out of 10 from 41 reviews. That gap suggests a work whose reputation among critics rests on its restrained portrayal of poverty and old age, even if it reaches a narrower general audience than some of De Sica's other films.
What's left behind the scenes
- The film marked the debut for many members of the cast, including the leads Carlo Battisti (1882-1977) and Maria-Pia Casilio (1935-2012).
- This is the only film in which Carlo Battisti, who was not an actor but a linguistics professor at the University of Florence, appeared.
- Two dogs played in the film. The trained dog had a black head and a white right side. The other dog (with a white muzzle and a black spot on its right side) appeared in two scenes – when Umberto hides from the police after the demonstration is dispersed, and when he pulls Flaik out of the pond.
- Maria-Pia Casilio, who played the maid, had no acting education. She was approved for the role when she was gawking at real actresses who, as they say now, came to the casting. Director Vittorio De Sica (1901-1974) noticed her somewhere in the gallery and immediately decided that only she should play the maid. Casilio subsequently appeared in three more of his films. She continued to act until the late 1990s.
- In 1999, the film, restored by Mediaset (Italy's largest private media and telecommunications company), was shown in cinemas in New York, Rome, and Milan again.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
