Bicycle Thieves

Few would argue that 1946's BICYCLE THIEVES is an essential part of the Serious Filmgoer's education.  A neorealist classic of Italian cinema.  It has been revered by critics and cited by filmmakers as hugely influential.  I believe I originally saw the film in grade school, and certain that I met it with indifference.  I watched it again on Christmas Eve, 2020.  It seemed an appropriate time, especially after a year in which lives were ravaged by the coronavirus.  I felt the film might resonate even stronger.

It does resonate.  Its simple story of an everyman named Antonio (Lamberto Maggiorani) who scrounges for work to support his wife and two children in post WWI Rome is heartbreakingly effective.  Vittorio De Sica is a masterful director with a direct, yet artful style.  His evocation of poverty is palpable.  I did find it more successful in De Sica's later UMBERTO D, a film with which I immediately gained a strong connection, but BICYCLE THIEVES never once felt cheap or manipulative, and the opportunities abound for such.

Antonio is assigned to paste posters around town but needs a bicycle.  He and his wife Maria (Lianella Carell) are forced to sell their bedsheets at the local pawn to get his old bike back.  Things look up if for only a day.  A young punk will steal the bike while Antonio is on a ladder plastering images of Rita Hayworth.  This touches off a long, fruitless pursuit. And this, dear reader, is where I feel the movie steps a bit wrong.  So much screen time is spent on this quest that De Sica (and multiple co-screenwriters) misses the chance for more raw drama with Antonio and his family.  I would agree with the chorus if the film had spent more time with them.   The film all but forgets about Maria in the third act. We should've had more examination of the fallout from the loss.  Of a bike and a job, but also of a sense of self worth.  And how Antonio and his loved ones would weather such a storm.

That is not to say that BICYCLE THIEVES does not portray a convincing relationship between Antonio and his son Bruno (Enzo Staiola) as they comb the streets of Rome.  Their scene in the restaurant, many times imitated in later films, is a crusher.  Their faces and body language portray more than mere words.  They and the city itself give a soul to De Sica's downbeat poem of the working class, with occasional welcome doses of humor.   I could've done without the the fortune teller subplot, though.

In the end BICYCLE THIEVES is deserving of its classic status.  A most worthwhile hour and a half.  De Sica's scenes could each be analyzed and interlocked into a bellowing rant against the apathy of the government, the police, maybe the military.  Maybe even the church.  By the final scene, all may not be lost, but the forward march seems awfully grim.