resistance to fascism, unemployment, poverty, and the social divisions between the poorer, rural South and the industrialized North of Italy. One of the best examples of this is a film by Luchino Visconti called La Terra Trema ("the earth trembles,"1948).
             Like De Sica's Bicycle Thief (correctly translated as Bicycle Thieves) combined realism and conventional drama. De Sica used a non-professional actor for the protagonist, but had his voice dubbed by a professional (post-war Italian films were almost always post-dubbed for sound and this practice has continued). It deals with the problems and environment of the poor but used studios for interior scenes in addition to location shooting.
             De Sica began his career as a popular comic actor. He bagan directing in 1940 and his most successful works were in collaboration with the screenwriter Cesare Zavattini. One of Zavattini's main contributions to their work was his commitment to the notion of approximating real time rather than traditional cinematic pacing. Their films tend to show the gradual unfolding of events and create interstitial moments that convey meaning without propelling the plot forward at all.
             De Sica's films are not improvisational, but he excelled at using non-professional actors because his own acting skill made him adept at eliciting good performances. He worked with his performers own body language and facial expressions, allowing them to look natural while conforming to the script (the effect is totally different, for example, from that of the non-professional actors in Visconti's La Terra Trema).
             During the war, Mussolini's Fascist party established a ministry of propaganda, but its director feared that the Italian public would reject heavily propagandistic films. Instead, he suggested that it support a cinema of "distraction" modeled on Hollywood. Mussolini agreed
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