After studying literature and philosophy at the University of Rome, De Santis enrolled at the city's experimental cinematography centre and worked passionately as a film critic, mixing socially with those of the magazine "Cinema" along with young people of the calibre of Antonioni, Lizzani and Puccini. Screenwriter and assistant director to Visconti for "Ossessione" (1943), he contributed to the documentary "Days of glory (Giorni di gloria)" (1945) and made his directorial debut with the feature length film "The tragic hunt (Caccia tragica)" (1947), a veritable manifesto of his vision of the world. Following the "logic of a cinema that invokes immediate political intervention in national problems", he applied the lesson of Russian filmmakers (especially Pudovkin and Donskoj) to the world of poor farmworkers in the war-torn Padana valley, with surprisingly good results. The subsequent "Bitter rice (Riso amaro)" (1949) further defined the framework of a cinema unrivalled in Italy: an ingenious melodrama that crosses - starting with certain Gramscian intuitions - the aesthetics of comic strips with the diktats of neorealism, it is a sort of western set in the lowlands of Vercelli, and every bit as good as any visionary American epic; it remains a masterpiece of cinema untarnished by time.The subsequent "No peace under the olive tree (Non c'è pace tra gli ulivi)" (1950) marked a shift towards a staged cinema of Brechtian overtones. Nonetheless this drama of Ciociara shepherds is not without emotional punch. "Rome 11:00 (Roma ore 11)" (1952), the De Santis film that draws most on the neorealism, is based on a tragic true story of the collapse of a staircase crowded with unemployed women, and offers a rich gallery of female characters from all walks of life, portrayed with unparalleled sensitivity and authentic élan. The changing cultural climate in Italy later gradually forced one of country's most talented filmmakers into silence: of his later works, we ought to mention the poignant portrait of a woman in "A husband for Anna (Un marito per Anna Zaccheo)" (1953), the pithy action film "The wolves (Uomini e lupi)" (1957) and the ambitious "Attack and retreat (Italiani brava gente)" (1964), a biting representation of the disastrous Italian campaign in Russia.