The Bicycle Thief (1949)

Great Italian Neo-Realism

What an awesome film!!! I have seen this over 10 times and it just keeps getting better, even though I already know what happens. May 19, 2008

The Bicycle Thief

This is a great movie. I have see it many times. The copy is excelent. We watch it in italian with English subtitles. April 22, 2008

Everyday Life

The Bicycle Thief is the story of a man (Lamberto Maggiorani) who gets a job as a poster hanger. Jobs are scarce, and he needs this one badly, but it requires that he have a bicycle. Fortunately, he has one, but it is in hock. To get the bike, he pawns some bedclothes and embarks on his job. Halfway through the day, however, a punk kid makes off with his bicycle. The rest of the film is spent desperately searching for the bicycle or any clues that might lead him to it with his son (Enzo Staiola). In true neo-realist fashion, the film does not end where one might expect with the events neatly wrapped up. Director De Sica uses long takes and deep focus to illustrate the ordinary lives of the actors who in fact are non-professionals. There are many memorable scenes, but all of them do not seem important to the central conflict, finding the bicycle. One particularly emotional one is that when the man and his son stop at a restaurant to eat. The boy watches a wealthier family as they eat. His father cannot really afford the meal they are having and is in agony over spending money he does not have, worrying about his bicycle, and trying to enjoy himself.

I would recommend this film if only to hear the way the actors speak. I love the rhythm to the Italian language and find myself enjoying hearing it even if I do not understand what is being said. Just this minor enjoyment can bring some happiness to a rather sad and frustrating story. February 29, 2008

50+ years and message still holds up...

90 minute black and white movie with sub-titles produced in 1949. Set in Rome in World War II era. Poverty and unemployment are rampant and desperation is captured beautifully. Antonio Ricci, husband and father of 2 young children, finally lands a job hanging posters after months of employment but position requires a bicycle. He pawned his bike to provide food for the family and wife has to pawn their bed sheets to pay off the loan to get the bike back. Ricci and his wife are excited of a future with steady income. First day on the job and Ricci has his bike stolen - he is devastated. Ricci and his son Bruno then proceed to search for the bike throughout Rome. There are hundreds (thousands) of bikes and task is seemingly hopeless. This simple but powerful story does a wonderful job in portraying perseverance, desperation, hope and hopelessness, family values and survival.

February 10, 2008

MAY WE REMAIN MORAL IN AN IMMORAL SOCIETY? WE MUST!

View this film as if you are reading a novel by Kafka and you will discover the mansions of meaning within this seemingly simple story.

He loses to a thief the most valuable possession of his starving family, that possession which will assure his family of food and shelter, without which they will certainly starve and fall into the deep immorality which surrounds them. Postwar and devastated and dysfunctional Rome is but a symbol for our society today. Read it as you would Kafka's Trial.

The law offers absolutely no hope, neither at the police station which can only file the report in a truly Kafkaesque scene, nor when the victim captures the thief. The Police Officer, well familiar with these situations, can only reveal the truth about the legal system, which is not good. Another police officer, perhaps on the take, perhaps concealed the true serial number of a bike frame in question.

The Church as well offers no hope during a long and torturous sequence. It appears often to be one of those Protestant sects which tried to buy Irish Catholic starving waifs with soup and a song, but turns out to be infact a Catholic Church on a self righteous mission to save poor souls, never meeting them as persons and equals with feelings and minds and individual hardships. Watch this attentively and despair and repent and do better.

This movie is truly the most painful and profound and inexorable film I have seen. After several years of attempt, last night I finally watched it all the way through. As in other films and stories which end so tragically we pray later for a happy if unconvincing ending. The victim of the second theft recognizes Ricci has enough trouble, and presses no charges, not out of despair for the legal system as did Ricci, but out of kindness. How much infinitely kinder it might have been for him to sell him that bicycle for half of the few hundred lira left to him family merely as a token to preserve his dignity, but how unbelievable that ending would have been, despite the cheers and tears it would unavoidably evoke. Instead we are left with the deepest despair, a father utterly humiliated, powerless and morally compromised before his worshipful and loving son. Thus are we compelled irresistably to create our own resolution. See this film. Give your bicycle to the poor, as Jesus commanded.

There is no ready made Hollywood happy ending here. There is no deus-ex-machina provided for our convenience and comfort. We must examine ourselves and find peace with this tale of deep tragedy, a tale which reflects accurately the history of tragic drama, from Oedipus to King Lear to Hamlet. As Aristotle's unities it nods at a unity of time and place and action. As the epics it subtly presents the dynamics from father to son. As Ricci wanders about Rome we recall Odysseus and his son, Oedipus and his father, Hamlet and his father, the Russian novelists, DH Lawrence, James Joyce and in particular Ulysses's explicit examination of the theme of fathers and sons.

Here the relationship of father and son is so subtly presented and underplayed as to appear elusive, yet it touches the profundities found most clearly in ancient Greek drama. The marvelous, modern acting makes this foundational subtext almost invisible. Long before Duvall or Brando, in the forties, watch this main star engage us with very real and subtle and underplayed acting necessary for the big screen, not for theatre but for neo-realism. With one briefly clutched jaw muscle whole volumes go unspoken but to those who have eyes and ears. This appears thus not theatre but near documental reality, placed in a devastated social landscape so simple it seems universal. Thus we feel most directly and intimately and personally the epic dynamics at work, all done so casually as to be missed by those who cannot see. I on the other hand had to try five times over some decades to be able to watch this movie all of the way through, most often pausing at the boy's mozarrella eating contest, or the church mission. It is far too intense, the waters passing unheard and unseen underground. Watch them pass, how the father grows from a casual negligence of his son to realizing too late how very much he means to him. If only the father had brought his son to work with him to watch the bibcyle rather than leaving him that day to earn tips at the gas station, rather than dragging him along too late to search for the stolen bicycle and observe his downfall and humiliation.

Let's come up for air. Notice the influence this film has not only on modern actors as mentioned, but also on modern film-makers such as most famously Woody Allen. The entire Santora sequence here is parodied fully in his best film Broadway Danny Rose, just as from another early Da Sicca film he steals the large twins at the buffet table.

This is the truly greatest film ever made and the most difficult to view. The Criterion edition is the one to have, with extras, as well as their new edition of Walker - Criterion Collection, but just for fun. Other essential films to have at home include of course Grand Illusion - Criterion Collection, Seven Samurai - 3 Disc Remastered Edition (Criterion Collection Spine # 2), Rashomon - Criterion Collection and Throne of Blood - Criterion Collection and so many others. But please, if you can endure it, begin with this very simple and most profound and horrible tale of post-war tragedy and post-apocalyptic poverty. Like poetry it reads on its surface simply; like poetry it bears measureless, unknown, avoided depth in the heart of everyone who sees it with eyes wide open. January 21, 2008

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