Bicycle Thieves


Bicycle Thieves is a 1948 Italian neorealist drama film directed by Vittorio De Sica. It follows the story of a poor father searching post-World War II Rome for his stolen bicycle, without which he will lose the job which was to be the salvation of his young family.
Adapted for the screen by Cesare Zavattini from the 1946 novel by Luigi Bartolini, and starring Lamberto Maggiorani as the desperate father and Enzo Staiola as his plucky young son, Bicycle Thieves received an Academy Honorary Award in 1950 and, in 1952 was deemed the greatest film of all time by Sight & Sound magazine's poll of filmmakers and critics; fifty years later another poll organized by the same magazine ranked it sixth among the greatest-ever films. The film was also cited by Turner Classic Movies as one of the most influential films in cinema history, and it is considered part of the canon of classic cinema.

Plot

In the post-World War II Val Melaina neighbourhood of Rome, Antonio Ricci is desperate for work to support his wife Maria, his son Bruno and his small baby. He is offered a job of pasting advertising bills but tells Maria that he cannot accept because the job requires a bicycle. Maria resolutely strips the bed of her dowry bedsheetsprized possessions for a poor familyand takes them to the pawn shop, where they bring enough to redeem Antonio's pawned bicycle.
On his first day of work, Antonio is atop a ladder when a young man snatches the bicycle. Antonio gives chase but is thrown off the trail by the thief's confederates. The police warn that there is little they can do. Advised that stolen goods often surface at the Piazza Vittorio market, Antonio goes there with several friends and Bruno. They find a bicycle that might be Antonio's, but the serial numbers do not match.
At the Porta Portese market, Antonio and Bruno spot the thief with an old man. The thief eludes them and the old man feigns ignorance. They follow him into a church where he too slips away from them.
In a subsequent encounter with the thief, Antonio pursues him into a brothel, whose denizens eject them. In the street, hostile neighbours gather as Antonio accuses the thief, who conveniently falls into a fit for which the crowd blames Antonio. Bruno fetches a policeman, who searches the thief's apartment without result. The policeman tells Antonio the case is weakAntonio has no witnesses and the neighbors are certain to provide the thief with an alibi. Antonio and Bruno leave in despair amid jeers and threats from the crowd.
On their way home, they near Stadio Nazionale PNF football stadium. Antonio sees an unattended bicycle near a doorway and after much-anguished soul-searching, instructs Bruno to take the tram to a stop nearby and wait. Antonio circles the unattended bicycle and jumps on it. Instantly the hue and cry is raised and Brunowho has missed the tramis stunned to see his father pursued, surrounded and pulled from the bicycle. As Antonio is being muscled toward the police station, the bicycle's owner notices Bruno and in a moment of compassion tells the others to release Antonio.
Antonio and Bruno then walk off slowly amid a buffeting crowd. Antonio fights back tears and Bruno takes his hand. The camera watches from behind as they disappear into the crowd.

Cast

Production

Bicycle Thieves is the best-known work of Italian neorealism, the movement which formally began with Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City which aimed to give cinema a new degree of realism. De Sica had just made Shoeshine, but was unable to get financial backing from any major studio for the film, so he raised the money himself from friends. Wanting to portray the poverty and unemployment of post-war Italy, he co-wrote a script with Cesare Zavattini and others using only the title and few plot devices of a little-known novel of the time by poet/artist Luigi Bartolini. Following the precepts of neorealism, De Sica shot only on location and cast only untrained nonactors. That some actors' roles paralleled their lives off screen added realism to the film. De Sica cast Maggiorani when he had brought his young son to an audition for the film. He later cast the 8-year-old Enzo Staiola when he noticed the young boy watching the film's production on a street while helping his father sell flowers. The film's final shot of Antonio and Bruno walking away from the camera into the distance is an homage to many Charlie Chaplin films, who was De Sica's favourite filmmaker.

Translated title

The original Italian title is Ladri di biciclette. It literally translates into English as Bicycle Thieves, as there is no definite article and ladri is plural. The film was released as Bicycle Thieves in the United States and the United Kingdom. The poster titles were The Bicycle Thief in the US and The Bicycle Thieves in the UK.
Bosley Crowther used The Bicycle Thief in his 1949 review in The New York Times, and as a result this came to be the title by which the film was known in the United States, and some people became attached to it. When the film was re-released in the late-1990s, Bob Graham, staff film critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, was quoted as saying that he preferred the title The Bicycle Thief, stating, "Purists have criticized the English title of the film as a poor translation of the Italian ladri, which is plural. What blindness! The Bicycle Thief is one of those wonderful titles whose power does not sink in until the film is over".
According to critic Philip French of The Observer, the alternative title The Bicycle Thief is misleading, "because the desperate hero eventually becomes himself a bicycle thief". The 2007 Criterion Collection release in North America uses the plural title.
De Sica changed many aspects of Bartolini's novel, but retained the title, which used the plural form and referred, in the book, to a post-war culture of rampant thievery and disrespect for civil order countered only by an inept police force and indifferent allied occupiers.

Critical reception

When Bicycle Thieves was released in Italy, it was viewed with hostility and as portraying Italians in a negative way. Italian critic Guido Aristarco praised it, but also complained that "sentimentality might at times take the place of artistic emotion." Fellow Italian neorealist film director Luchino Visconti criticized the film, saying that it was a mistake to use a professional actor to dub over Lamberto Maggiorani's dialogue. Luigi Bartolini, the author of the novel from which de Sica drew his title, was highly critical of the film, feeling that the spirit of his book had been thoroughly betrayed since his protagonist was a middle-class intellectual and his theme was the breakdown of civil order.
Bicycle Thieves has continued to gain very high praise from critics, with the film-review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reporting 98% positive reviews from 54 reviews, with an average 9.1 out of 10 rating. The picture is also in the Vatican's Best Films List for portraying humanistic values.
Bosley Crowther, film critic for The New York Times, lauded the film and its message in his review. He wrote, "Again the Italians have sent us a brilliant and devastating film in Vittorio De Sica's rueful drama of modern city life, The Bicycle Thief. Widely and fervently heralded by those who had seen it abroad, this heart-tearing picture of frustration, which came to yesterday, bids fair to fulfill all the forecasts of its absolute triumph over here. For once more the talented De Sica, who gave us the shattering Shoeshine, that desperately tragic demonstration of juvenile corruption in post-war Rome, has laid hold upon and sharply imaged in simple and realistic terms a majorindeed, a fundamental and universaldramatic theme. It is the isolation and loneliness of the little man in this complex social world that is ironically blessed with institutions to comfort and protect mankind". Pierre Leprohon wrote in Cinéma D'Aujourd that "what must not be ignored on the social level is that the character is shown not at the beginning of a crisis but at its outcome. One need only to look at his face, his uncertain gait, his hesitant or fearful attitudes to understand that Ricci is already a victim, a diminished man who has lost his confidence." Lotte Eisner called it the best Italian film since World War II and Robert Winnington called it "the most successful record of any foreign film in British cinema."
When the film was re-released in the late 1990s Bob Graham, staff film critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, gave the drama a positive review: "The roles are played by non-actors, Lamberto Maggiorani as the father and Enzo Staiola as the solemn boy, who sometimes appears to be a miniature man. They bring a grave dignity to De Sica's unblinking view of post-war Italy. The wheel of life turns and grinds people down; the man who was riding high in the morning is brought low by nightfall. It is impossible to imagine this story in any other form than De Sica's. The new black-and-white print has an extraordinary range of grey tones that get darker as life closes in".

Legacy

Many directors that have cited it as a major influence include Satyajit Ray, Ken Loach, Giorgio Mangiamele, Bimal Roy, Anurag Kashyap, Balu Mahendra, and Basu Chatterjee.
The film was noteworthy on film directors of the Iranian New Wave, such as Jafar Panahi and Dariush Mehrjui.
Filipino action star Nelson Anderson said it was the favorite Italian neorealist film of his contemporary Weng Weng, who cried upon his first viewing in the early 1980s. In a project that never materialized, they intended to depart from their usual fare by remaking it as an action-comedy with a human touch.
The film was used as source material for Pee-Wee's Big Adventure. It was parodied in the film The Icicle Thief.
Norman Loftis's film Messenger is considered to be a remake of Bicycle Thieves.

Stage adaptation

A theatrical adaptation of the film was created by Littlebrain Theatre, in a devised adaptation with a cast of nine. The production premiered as part of the Rhinoceros Theatre Festival in Chicago, from January 18 to February 22, 2019.

Awards