Attention all bicycle thieves and gardeners for the Fitzi-Continis, Cinema Italia San Francisco is taking over the Castro Theater this Saturday, Sept. 26 to screen four masterpieces of Italian Neorealist cinema by the master himself, Vittorio de Sica, all of them recently restored. A 35-mm print of La Ciociara (11:30 a.m.) takes things back to the last days of World War II, when a savvy widow falls for a young leftist (Jean-Paul Belmondo, best-known as the bad boy in Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless). The West Coast theatrical premiere of the uncut version of L’Oro Di Napoli follows at 2 p.m., with Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianna (the Italian equivalent of Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn) pairing up in Matrimonio All’Italiana (“Marriage, Italian Style”) at 5:00. The fest concludes with another visit to the Second World War, Il Giardiano Dei Fitzi Contini, in which a family of aristocratic Jews emerges from the conflict unscatched — almost. Although a full day of cinematic history feels like taking your cultural medicine, De Sica’s sweetness and light make it all go down easy.
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