The Bicycle Thief

Directed By: Vittorio De Sica

Cast:
Lomberto Maggiorani - Antonio Ricci
Enzo Staiola - Bruno
Lianella Carell - Maria

In postwar Italy life is not easy for most. Men who fought in the war are fighting now just to put food on the table. Work is not easy to come by and Antonio feels like his misfortunes have made a turn for the better when he gets a job putting ads around a large city. It has fairly good pay and it pays extra for his family of four. Trouble is, he will need a bicycle for the job. He bartered his last bicycle for bread money and now his wife has to sell their bed sheets so he can get the job.
All seems fine on the first day of work until a young man steals his bike away. In that instant his hopes fall through the floor. The company that employs him won’t get another bike. He asks some friends to help look but it is a daunting task. In the marketplace we glimpse row after row of bicycles. When they all look so similar I have no idea how they can tell a certain model apart from any other. The search ends up being useless and right when he is about to give up hope he spots the thief and his bike but can’t catch him. No one seems to help stop the thief either and no one is very willing to help. When he finds the thief later the entire neighborhood speaks up for him - now he is up against no less than a local mob. There are no witnesses and the bike is nowhere in the thief’s house.
At this point we can’t help but feel the father’s feelings of despair and failure. Right beside him is his son and everything comes to climactic low when Antonio resorts to stealing another bicycle - one of hundreds just left there in the open. This time of course there are plenty of people that come after Antonio. Right when he is being taken to the police the person who’s bike he stole sees Bruno, his young son, and decides not to press charges. The worst thing is that Bruno, his son witnesses this. In the end it is his young son that comforts his father.
In the final analysis I wouldn’t say this is not a feel-good movie but it is definitely a star in the Neo-realist films that were produced by Italy after the war. Unlike American films which always tended to have happy endings - with a soldier coming home to his sweetheart or a cowboy riding off into the sunset - these films painted a grimmer more true-to-life portrait of the working man’s struggle to live in a harsh and unforgiving world. In a country like Italy - on the losing end of WWII this was unfortunately, all too apparent.
The Bicycle Thief, to its credit doesn’t try to hide anything in a sugar coated façade. It drives its point home directly and repeatedly. Gone are the external enemies from other countries - now the only enemies are our own country men.
3 stars