The_Bicycle_Thief

Critical response to The Bicycle Thief KOSURU ABHIJIT The Bicycle Thief is described as a Italian neorealist film in which is characterized as a social realism telling stories among the poor and working class and is filmed on location, frequently using nonprofessional actors. Italian Neorealism often shows the economical and moral conditions of post World War 2 Italy and the conditions of everyday life like poverty and desperation. Most movies of this genre are on set shooting and show how ordinary people live to survive as a way to dramatize the wider social issues going on about that time. The way they establish the realism is to have non professional trained actors which creates the idea of a greater sense of realism through the use of real people. The Bicycle thief is a neorealist film because of the location shooting and the dubbing of dialogue in which it establishes a historical document. The style the movie uses is of long take and documentary style which makes the sequences to have a duration of each moment that occurred within the movie. The dialogue is the day to day talk of poor people struggling to survive through an Italian post World War 2 event. It is filmed like a documentary as if everything is real because of historical event that took place. Another style that the film uses is the camera movements in which is expressed in rapid cuts that results in no tracking shots of the character. For example Ricci loses sight of the old man in the church in which you see a long shot take and a documentary style in which makes this sequence quite startling. When the old man slips away, Ricci is distracted by church officials and to the end of the sequence Ricci and Bruno walk towards the bridge in which most of the camera movement is expressed in rapid cuts. The viewer got easily lost because of this form of editing in which there was no tracking of the characters because the viewer looses the old man from Ricci’s point of view. For the narrative, the film’s style resolves around the long takes and a set of time-image that takes place during Ricci’s search for his bike. The film is mostly focused on the role that Ricci plays, like what detectives do in mystery stories, only that it is from a tragic experience within the character. We see Ricci’s point of view throughout the film, because through him we are able to see, to know, the society as a whole. A detective enters different situations or bridges, different worlds around him and he doesn’t belong to a single one of those events, like in Ricci’s situation before he had his bike stolen, he was within society, because the bicycle was necessary for his employment and his work is necessary for his family’s welfare. Once his bike is stolen, the events that surrounded him becomes different and he goes to search for his bike like a detective. Ricci’s search causes him to visit places in the city that many other people in the city typically stay within a routine set of places and actions. We see the boundaries from Ricci’s actions within the system to the actions that Ricci crosses in order to get to his bike throughout the film. Aside from the above mentioned traits, another large element of many Italian Neorealist films was an emphasis on a subdued and prosaic narrative, certainly no less powerful, but purposely drained of any overly- and unnecessarily-dramatic events. This last consideration is aided in large part by, first, the amount of scenes portraying swarms of men, similar to father Antonio (Lamberto Maggiorani), also on their bikes, trying to make a living, struggling for their very existence. He is not alone and this is the state of the nation. Second, as the film’s translated titles alludes to, the plurality of the incident pictured in the film is communal. Originally released in the United States as The Bicycle Thief, the UK and literal translation of Ladri di biciclette is Bicycle Thieves, and the latter translation has, in recent years, been seen as the preferred, if not the correct, version. It’s more than just a matter of semantics though. The indefinite “thieves” points to the fact that the film is not so much just about Antonio or just about the thief who steals his bike; it is about the popular masses, all going through the same things. It also points to, as we see as the film progresses, the notion of an indistinct designation of who the true thief of the film is. Antonio gets his bike stolen by one, sure, but when he needs one the tables are turned. As they are so eager to work, we hear the foreman call out “Ricci.” But, no one responds. The camera tracks an anonymous figure until he finds Ricci. This, we’ll see, is our protagonist, and it’s quite important that he, while others want so bad to do anything to get even the smallest amount of pay, isn’t even paying attention. He is drifting off, day-dreaming. The child-like, immature aspect of Antonio Ricci is pointed to throughout the film. He pouts, his temper is at times outrageously uncontrolled, his wife, in many cases – selling the sheets that he just sits on – is first to take action, and even young Bruno acts more sensible and mature in certain situations.  The film also moves quickly in setting up a directorial choice that would be quite common throughout the Neorealist movement, that of the medium- to long-shot and the long take. This method of filmmaking added to an unmediated realism, a directorial distance, as viewed by Bazin, which allowed for cinema to achieve it’s utmost power – to capture human experience and behavior authentically. With a notable absence of manipulative close-ups, Bicycle Thieves does indeed present a rather objective view of action and of character. Again, as the unclear “thief/thieves” of the title suggests, an immediate passing of judgment with concreteness of character is not this film’s goal. Among the excellent plot devices and scenes shown early on is when Antonio and his wife, Maria, go to essentially hawk the sheets in order to buy the bike. It is sad to begin with in just the fact that they have to do it, but to add emphasis, though by no means insistently, De Sica keeps the camera at a crucial distance, just far enough back so that we can see the tower of similarly bundled sheets; rows upon rows, shelves upon shelves of sheets, of symbolically the last resorts of so many. Not long after this moment we get the first day of work. The scene in the Ricci house as Antonio and Bruno get ready for the day is probably my second favorite in all of the film (the first will be discussed in a bit). As the two dress the same, pack the same lunch, put their sandwiches in the same pockets, a terrifically dynamic father/son relationship is established. It is also an extraordinarily pleasant scene, one of only a few from here on out, where Antonio and Maria kid around and Bruno, wide-eyed and eager, aggressively cleans the deified bicycle (taking a moment to note humorously that the sellers damaged the bike and he would have said something about it – again, a questioning of Antonio’s assertiveness is shown). This joy quickly changes during the film’s most pivotal scene, where the bike is stolen. It is worth noting here that it is probably no coincidence that Antonio, whose job is pasting posters for movies, is putting up a picture featuring Rita Hayworth – in this, see Hollywood. Is this a comment on unrealistic glamour and cinematic artificiality by De Sica, or is it simply the kind of poster that would have really been put up at the time' Either works in my book.  So many great scenes then take place. There is the policeman brushing off Ricci’s distressed request for help (“It’s just a bike,” he says). Or, the scene in the rain where Bruno falls unbeknownst to Ricci and, when Ricci asks what happened, Bruno angrily, somewhat accusingly, lets him know that he tripped. The chase after Ricci thinks he has spotted the thief is, again, played in long-shot, deemphasizing the easy dramatic tension; instead, De Sica allows time for such extraneous though rich detailed scenes as Bruno urinating on the wall and getting caught. A sequence in the church, a frequent motif of these Italian filmmakers and their Catholic ideology, is also classic. Relevant too is this church scene in that it stresses the importance of the religious institution to all, even, or maybe especially in this case, the most downtrodden and impoverished. Some seek solace in the return of their bike; others look for it in God. With this fact in mind, Antonio’s behavior in this house of worship is seen as awfully disrespectful. He’s running around, yelling, accusing, and acting out of order to an embarrassing degree. His embarrassment would only be matched, probably surpassed, in the later scene where, after having mocked his wife for it earlier, he resorts to seeking the assistance of the psychic. Before the conclusion of the picture, though, is a digression that creates one of, to me, the greatest moments in all of cinema. Exhausted, defeated, in an attempt to make up for scolding him, Antonio proposes to Bruno that they go get lunch. And they do. And it is a magnificent scene. Bruno, taking a sip of wine, munching on a mozzarella sandwich, is in a perpetual state of bemusement; he’s bemused at his father, at the richer looking family next to them, bemused at what he and his father have just been through. It’s a magical scene and perhaps shows better than any other the enormous acting talent of this young boy. It is also an extraordinary moment of a typically Neorealist narrative aside. The little moments in life, the details, are where these Italian filmmakers found and conveyed so much. There is really nothing to say about when Antonio attempts to steal the bike at the end that hasn’t already been said. It’s just awful. It’s a conclusion, conceivably inevitable, that goes right for the heart, of the audience and of the matter of the film. The only aspect I should point to is the final heart-breaking image of Antonio, tears in his eyes, humiliated, walking through the crowd, Bruno as usual beside him. It has been a terrible sequence of events. But, there’s hope. Bruno reluctantly, hesitantly, reaches his hand up and grabs his fathers. There’s no bike, no job, but this family will persevere.   The film features one of the greatest camera shots of the century. Not one scene is shot in a studio. At the end of the film, a single, two second shot captures Bruno's reaction to the fact his father has done something dishonourable. I will never forget that scene!