![]() Maggiorani, a factory worker who was selected when he brought his son to audition, has a handsome, almost noble face that soon becomes a mask of worry and tragedy. He painstakingly choreographed crowds and even hired 40 vendors for a scene where Antonio, his son and his friends look for the stolen bike in an open air market.Īn equal amount of care went into selecting key cast members, especially the father-son team. The film is beautifully photographed by Carlo Montuori, features a subtle Alessandro Cicognini score and in De Sica had a director who put every scene together for maximum effectiveness. This may sound like business as usual to young directors trying to get into Sundance, but at that time telling movie stories so far outside the conventions of Hollywood was revolutionary.īut just because “Bicycle Thief” cared about reality doesn’t mean it was slipshod or improvised. Neorealist films - others include “Open City,” “Shoeshine,” “Paisan” and “Umberto D” - were shot on real locations with available light, used nonprofessional actors and often had socially conscious themes. ![]() Making all the difference in this were the tenets of neorealism, a movement that took hold, partly out of ideological conviction and partly out of the necessity of a post-war lack of resources, in Italy in the late 1940s and early 1950s. “The Bicycle Thief” places us right there, allows us to live what turns out to be a shattering experience with these people, lets us feel for them in a deep and profound way that is almost beyond describing. That this slender tale ends up having the emotional resonance of classic tragedy may sound preposterous, but that is what happens. But on his first day at work, Antonio’s bicycle is stolen, and he spends the rest of the film trying to get it back. Getting his hands on one is difficult, but he succeeds, and his wife Maria (Lianella Carell) and his young son, Bruno (Enzo Staiola), are delighted. Told in brief summation, “The Bicycle Thief,” written by Cesare Zavattini and several collaborators based on a novel by Luigi Bartolini, has a narrative premise that sounds so slight it seems highly unlikely to be made into a film at all, let alone one that would captivate so many for so long.Īfter being unemployed for two years, Antonio Ricci (Lamberto Maggiorani) finally gets offered a job putting up movie posters and the like on the walls of post-war Rome, but only if he has a bicycle. For this killer of a film not only hasn’t lost a step since it won a special Academy Award and helped pave the way for the foreign language Oscar category, it’s even more involving now than it was then, a singular emotional juggernaut that has the kind of unrestrained power contemporary films can only dream about. In fact, to see “Bicycle Thief” again in a new 35 mm print struck for its 60th anniversary and screening starting today at the Music Hall in Beverly Hills is to experience what feels like a miracle. in 1949, “Bicycle Thief” has become one of those venerable masterpieces that people pay lip service to but never revisit out of fear that it has somehow become dated. Directed by Vittorio De Sica and first released in the U.S. ![]() ![]() Hoberman has written, “surely the most universally praised movie produced anywhere on planet Earth.”īut even if you watched it way back in the day, it’s likely been decades since you’ve seen it. If film means anything to you, you’ve at least heard of the Italian neorealist classic “The Bicycle Thief,” in its time, as the Village Voice’s J. ![]()
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