Bicycle Thieves

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William B Best post-WW2 film I've ever watched. Must see movie. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 11/22/24 Full Review Stephen J A friend recommended this to me. He had it on DVD. The ratings are super high for a reason. I enjoyed the story, I enjoyed the acting. I enjoyed how everyone involved with the movie brought out the feeling of the culture at that time. If you find yourself complaining about this or that, think about how many many many other people lived their lives. And I loved the ending, as well! Note: for a while I thought the movie was just a little above average. Glad I stuck with it. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 11/19/24 Full Review Jens B 🚲 Rome after World War II: A father, unemployed for two years, finally gets a job putting up posters, but he absolutely needs a bicycle for it. After pawning the family's good bed linens, he manages to reclaim his own bike, only to have it stolen on the very first day of work. What follows is an emotional rollercoaster, with shifts between hope and resignation. The brilliance of Vittorio De Sica's classic of Italian Neorealism lies in the universal and timeless nature of the themes it touches upon. Anyone who has ever struggled with financial worries, been dependent on a job or something else, can easily relate to Antonio's situation. Moreover, the fact that Bruno is probably one of the best child characters in film history, as well as the film's ending, makes BICYCLE THIEVES both profoundly simple and deeply moving. It is rightly considered a classic. 🔮📿 Both sequences with the fortune teller are fantastic. The first is a textbook example of suspense, while the second offers a graceful insight into the mother's emotional world, who otherwise only appears significantly at the beginning of the film. 🫣 (And can someone please keep an eye on Bruno? He's nearly run over multiple times, keeps falling down, and gets lured by shady old men.) Rated 4.5/5 Stars •  Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 09/22/24 Full Review Vishnu T The End Was So Emotional & Made Me Speechless💔 Special Mention To The Kid🙇 Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 12/05/23 Full Review Matthew B In one often-mentioned scene in Bicycle Thieves, the hard-pressed labourer Antonio Ricci (Lamberto Maggiorani) is putting up posters as part of what will prove to be a short-lived job that he vainly hopes will take his family out of poverty, and put food on their table. The poster he is putting up shows a picture of Rita Hayworth. In one way, this can be seen as the contrast between the world of the glamorous film star and that of struggling Italian families living in post-war Italy. On another level, we could see this as the contrast between two different styles of moviemaking. Rita Hayworth's movies belonged to a more idealised vision of the world. She starred in musicals, those films that celebrate wealth and glamour, and offer fairy tale endings. Even the more cynical of her movies are not realistic. Vittorio de Sica was one of the pioneers of a different kind of film-making. His early works were made in the style of neo-realism. Bicycle Thieves was not the first Italian neorealist film. It was not even de Sica's first work in this style. He had already made Shoeshine at this point. Roberto Rossellini may be said to be the movement's originator with his wartime movie, Rome, Open City. Nonetheless Bicycle Thieves is generally regarded as the best early work in this style, and it regularly appears in lists of the greatest movies ever made, rising and falling in poll position depending on current critical tastes. The film inspired many later directors, including Ken Loach, Satyajit Ray and Isao Takahata. What exactly is neorealism? It is possible that the style developed in part due to accidental circumstances. Rossellini and de Sica were forced to make their early films on a low budget, and this involved making as good a movie as they could with the resources available, giving a rough-edged and raw look to them. For Bicycle Thieves, de Sica could not obtain financial backing from a studio, so he raised the money to make the film by asking his friends for help. A rainstorm was provided with the help of the local fire department. Without access to a studio, de Sica filmed on location, using the streets of Rome as his backdrop The extras in the film were street vendors. All the actors in the film are non-professional and untrained. Maggiorani was an ordinary factory worker, and a man who would struggle to find work after making Bicycle Thieves. We should not form a misleading impression that Bicycle Thieves was purely an amateur production however. As de Sica's carefully composed scenes show, he was a professional film-maker. The circumstances surrounding the film's production may have been accidental, but de Sica fully subscribed to the philosophy of the neorealist movie. De Sica wanted to show the lives of ordinary Italians without resorting to melodramatic, sentimental or far-fetched plots. His films had a social conscience. He wanted the viewer to care about the poverty and struggle of post-war Italians, and to share their suffering. He made films intended to make his audience feel angry. The poor are shut out from this world of wealth. Ricci tries to give his wife Maria (Lianella Carell) a glimpse through the window of his new workplace, but an employee pulls down a shutter before she can see it. When Ricci decides to have a little father-son time by taking Bruno for a pizza, the hungry man and boy watch a rich family eating spaghetti. They also have a young boy, who gazes superciliously at Bruno. "You would need a million a month to be able to eat like them," Ricci comments enviously. Aside from the church, there is another ineffectual supernatural aid –a fortune teller who takes money from the family whilst offering vague advice: "You will either find it immediately or not at all". Ricci is perfectly aware of that, and wanted something more specific. Now he owes more money, and is no wiser. It is apt he should consult a dishonest fortune teller when he is being cheated by Fortune. De Sica denies us an easy resolution. He does not want to reassure the audience, or allow us to feel too comfortable. He wants us to feel outraged on behalf of the Riccis and every other Italian family in their plight. I wrote a longer appreciation of Bicycle Thieves on my blog page if you would like to read more: https://themoviescreenscene.wordpress.com/2021/08/12/bicycle-thieves-1948/ Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 08/16/23 Full Review Alexsander F O filme é lindo, é de uma simplicidade... Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 01/08/24 Full Review Read all reviews

Bicycle Thieves

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