Cast: Lamberto Maggioriani, Enzo Staiola

Director: Vittorio De Sica

Screenplay: Cezare Zavattini

Running time: 1 hr 36 mins

Genre: Drama/Italian Film



CRITIQUE:


The quintessential Italian Neorealist masterwork; one has to scour the annals of cinema to find a better film that is as influential, as extraordinarily transcendent as Vittorio De Sica’s seminal Bicycle Thieves. Even Danny Boyle’s Oscar underdog triumph Slumdog Millionaire owes much to this cinematic movement, which is to convey reality, the harsh ramifications of life, in its rawest proportions. Watching the backstreets of Rome in black-and-white, the everyday lives of its populace unfolds, and much to the gruelling journey of a workman’s loss of his bicycle – as fundamental a tool to maintain his employment status is a very tough post-World War Two Italy – is one that expunges heartache and infuriation from its audience. Anger for the thieves who stole the bicycle, and pity for the sufferers. The film is framed with Antonio’s finding of employment, sticking film posters around the walls of the city, and his loss of it, all because of the stolen vehicle. There are heart-tugging moments here: the wife sacrifices their bed linens to purchase her husband’s mean of transport, the father and son’s pursuit of the lost item, the father’s treat to his son in a restaurant where they can’t afford to eat, and the slow, painstaking corrosion of moral uprightness of the father, seen as a hero by his ten-year old child. It maintains that poverty, in the times of destitution, has a transformative power that makes the innocents become petty thieves. There are political and religious metaphors siphoning underneath its daylight cinematography, but it’s the powerful, uncompromising tale of hardship and loss of innocence that becomes almost a legacy to many films that follows, awestruck at the idea that even the simplest concepts can make the biggest of impressions. Even De Sica’s ending proves haunting, like most great art films, it makes its audience be reminded of the harsh reality.


VERDICT:

Poignant filmmaking to the highest order. Bicycle Thieves is one of cinema’s most resonating pieces, it would cross boundaries and generations, and would still have its message in pure crystal form: poverty has a corrosive power for desperation.



RATING: A+