Manuel De Sica
Interview by Sijbold Tonkens
Among the films shown at the Valencia Film Festival was Umberto D by Vittorio de Sica. It is an Italian
classic like Bicycle Thieves. The film was restored, every frame was cleaned by hand. A short documentary
was shown about the restoration, how the film was before and after. The music was by Allesandro Cicognini. On
Legend label in Italy there is recently a compilation CD with music from Vittorio de Sica films by Cicognini, re-
recorded in stereo. Manuel de Sica was in charge of the restoration of his father's film.
Manuel de Sica about his career as a film composer:
The Gardens of the Finzi Continis was one of my first feature films that I did as a musician. I got an Oscar
nomination for that score.
The film was directed by my father and I suggested to him to use Jewish music in the film. I am half a writer and
half musician, that gives me two different points of view to where put some music into a film. I do a lot of comedy
films in Italy, the usual Christmas films. To the European film it is not functional to write music as the Americans
do.
Sijbold Tonkens: Do you prefer to write music for the more serious films?
MD: No, I like to do the comedies. I like the Billy Wilder comedies, I like good comedies. We have a lot
of good Italian comedies like the films by Ettore Scola, Dino Risi, I did 5 films with Dino.
ST: Riz Ortolani did some of Dino Risi's films.
MD: Yes, but not as much as I did. Armando Trovajoli worked a lot for Dino. I worked for Commencini
too. The directors like to label you with a style. You did the Finzi Continis so you are a dramatic composer.
But I did a lot of comedies as well. I also did Dellamorte dell Amore, which is a post modern Euro-
comedy. I did that as a challenge, they waited for Tangerine Dream to do the score. But they never answered, so
they came to me.
I am now working on a film called TRE, a 7th century costume production. I write a lot of music for that
film. I scored it with the Bulgarian Symphony Orchestra. I wrote one hour of different music. It needs a lot of
cultural research to fit the music into that period of time.
I studied at the conservatory under Bruno Maderna and I had Henry Mancini as a teacher in a way. Mancini
published a book once a time ago. The book was the first one with musical examples on records inside with
examples of any kind of orchestrations he does. He was the only person who published this book of cinema writing.
A lot of today's composers like to joke on the computer and play with the memories the computer has. I had to learn
it from a piano part with a film clip and orchestrate the melody to fit with the film. It is the only way to learn it right.
I also change my style a lot, I don't want to become a cliché.
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