“It was July 1945,” recalled Franco Interlenghi, “and I was playing with my mates in front of the British embassy in Rome, near where I lived. An old guy who lived on the top floor above us put his head out — perhaps we were making too much noise — and said: ‘What are you doing? Go to Via Po where De Sica is looking for kids for a film’.”
So began the career of one of the key actors in Italy’s golden age of cinema. His naturalistic performance in that first role, at 13 years of age, helped in establishing the neorealist genre which was to yield such riches. Not that at the start he seemed destined to land the part. “When I finally