Film: Ladri di Biciclette
Director: Vittorio de Sica
Country: Italy
Released: November 1948
Runtime: 89 minutes
Genre: Neorealism
Studio: ENIC
Influenced: Satyajit Ray, Ken Loach, Aki Kaurismäki, Paul Greengrass, Jafar Panahi
Now that we've seen the formative films of Rosselini and Visconti, it's time to complete the holy trinity of Italian neorealism by turning to Vittorio de Sica and his legendary contribution to cinema, Ladri di Biclette (Bicycle Thieves). Not forgetting Cesare Zavattini, of course, who was neorealism's main theorist and who wrote the screenplay for this movie and many others. Like Visconti, de Sica was a Catholic with communist sympathies but Ladri di Biclette is the most subtle and complex of all the neorealist films covered so far, and that's part of the reason for its enduring legacy. Whereas Visconti's La Terra Trema veered into strident politics at times, de Sica's Ladri di Biciclette is more nuanced, even at one point juxtaposing an underground communist cell with a vaudeville troupe rehearsing nearby, to hint at the comic nature of both.
As for the story, it's a simple one but all the more powerful for it, making the film akin to a moral fable. We're back in war-torn Rome just a few years after Rossellini's Roma, Città Aperta, following a man called Antonio who, like many others, is desperately seeking work. He's lucky to get a job pasting movie posters around Rome, but needs a bike to carry out his work. His wife Maria is forced to pawn her dowry bedsheets to raise the money needed to recover Antonio's old Fides bike from the pawnbroker. On his first day on the job, the bike is stolen and the drama of the film unfolds as we see Antonio and his son Bruno desperately traipsing around Rome trying to recover it, as he faces indifference from the police, the communists, the church and the Mafia-controlled black market.
Similar to La Terra Trema, Ladri di Biciclette makes clear how important ownership of private property (i.e. the means of production) is to personal prosperity. Taking a break from their search, Antonio and Bruno eat pizza and try their best to forget their troubles, in one of the film's most endearing scenes. Bruno can't help looking over at the rich kid stuffing his face at another table, while at times feeling anxious himself about whether his dad can afford to pay for their meal, underlining their class disparities. Meanwhile Antonio is scribbling sums on a piece of paper, trying to figure out how much money he could earn if he still owned his bike. “Your mother and her prayers can’t help us,” he tells Bruno.
Even when Antonio does finally track down the thief, his sense of hopelessness persists, as the threatening crowd gather round him and the thief's mother shows compassion for nobody other than her child. The walls close in even further when the policeman makes clear that without proof or witnesses, nothing can be done, and that the bike has probably already been sold for parts. Desperation takes hold of Antonio, driving him to act out of character. Bruno offering a hand to his tearful father is one of the most touching moments in cinema. In the final reckoning, de Sica's message is that family is the most reliable unit of solidarity, and the film's humanistic portrayal of the struggle of ordinary people would go on to inspire emerging national cinemas around the world, including in India and Iran.
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