Bicycle Thieves (1948)
The Bicycle Thief (American Title)

Credits: Director: Vittorio De Sica Screenplay: Cesare Zavattini and Vittorio De Sica Based on the novel by: Luigi Bartolini Producer: Guiseppee Amato and Vittorio De Sica Cinematography: Carlo Montuori Editing: Eraldo Da Roma Original Music: Alessandro Cicognini Production Design: Antonio Traverso

Cast: Lamberto Maggiorani: Antonio Ricci, the father Enzo Staiola: Bruno Ricci, the son Lianella Carell: Maria Ricci, the mother Gino Saltamerenda: Baiocco, Ricci's friend, a labor organizer Vittorio Antonucci: Alfredo, the main thief Giulio Chiari: the old beggar Elena Altieri: the charitable lady Ida Bracci Dorati: La Santona, the fortune teller

Italian Neorealism

Bicycle Thieves will introduce you to a new style of filmmaking—Italian neorealism—which was shaped not only by the actual conditions of its production in a post-World War II Italy but also by an explicitly Leftist political agenda.  In studying this film, we would like you not only to give attention to this direct link between politics and cinema but also to contrast the narrative and stylistic practices of neorealism to those of classical Hollywood cinema.  The neorealist movement lasted only about a decade (from the late 1940s to the mid-1950s), but it was hugely influential on world cinema, shaping the films of the French and British New Waves and even Hollywood.  In the 1950s, Hollywood produced a cycle of social-problem films dealing with racism, anti-Semitism, juvenile delinquency, organized crime, and poverty, which were influence by the politics, popularity, and critical status of the neorealist films.  [A good example of this is On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan, 1954), which we will watch in this course next semester.] 

The historical context for Italian neorealism is of considerable importance.  For this reason, be sure to read closely pages 355-368 from chapter 11.

Marxist Influence on Neorealism

The filmmakers of neorealism felt they had a moral obligation to use their films to encourage social change.  They particularly wanted to make people aware of the difficulties that working people faced and how the institutions of their own government often failed to help them.  For example, Obsession, made in 1943 by Luchino Visconti, was reputedly the first Italian film to feature an unemployed man.  According to Roberto Rossellini, “For me, neorealism is above all a moral position from which to look at the world.  It then became and aesthetic position, but at the beginning it was moral.”

Many of the neorealists were committed Marxists.  As such they believed that the reconstruction of Italy was a perfect opportunity to rebuild society on the utopian principles of Marx, which include:

1. The ideal society is a classless society.  This ideal can be achieved if the classes can be made to see how they are all being exploited by the system.
2. The lowest classes have to develop a class consciousness.  They have to think about themselves not as individuals, but as members of a strong and vital group whose potential is not being realized.
3. Workers must demand their rights as a group
4. Unlike the myths proliferated by Hollywood, no individual can change the world.

Key Terms, People, and Concepts

Italian Neorealism, “white telephone” films, Cinecittà, Cesare Zavattini, Rome, Open City, Roberto Rossellini, Luchino Visconti, cinéma vérité, location shooting, post-synchronized sound, Marxism 

Things to Look For

• the parallel between the first and final shots of the film
• location shooting 
• the use of natural and ambient lighting
• camera movement
• long takes
• the use of negative space (i.e. empty, unfilled, white, or blank space; e.g. bare walls, empty lots, open skies)

Interesting Facts

• Bicycle Thieves, or The Bicycle Thief as it was dubbed in the U.S., was awarded an honorary Academy Award in 1949.  An official category for Best Foreign Language film was designated two years later.

• The immediate impact of Bicycle Thieves on international cinema was evident in the inaugural Sight and Sound (The British Film Institute’s renowned film journal) critics’ poll in 1952.  It was voted the greatest film ever made.  In subsequent years, though the film has slipped in critic and director polls, it consistently places among the top 50 films of all time.

• Sergio Leone was an assistant director on the film and played a bit part as a seminary student.  Leone went on to direct Clint Eastwood in A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966).  He also directed the acclaimed Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) and Once Upon a Time in America (1984).

Commentary

“The ideal film would be ninety minutes of the life of a man to whom nothing happens.”—Cesare Zavattini

“...Film makers, when they depict human social problems, instinctively seek the causes and effects of the disequilibrium in human relationships. They are led to conclusions, a sort of commentary in images, which are more or less partisan. There is none of this in my work.”—De Sica

Notable Films by De Sica:

The Children Are Watching Us (1944), Shoeshine (1946), Umberto D (1952), Two Women (1960), Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow (1963), Marriage Italian-Style (1966), The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1970), The Voyage (1974)

Discussion Questions

1. The Italian title of the film is Ladri di biciclette.  “Ladri” is a plural noun, so the literal translation of the title is Bicycle Thieves.  Why do you think the title became The Bicycle Thief when the film was brought to America?  What implications does this title change have for the film’s intended goals?  How might this title change reflect a different attitude toward audience expectations?

2. Consider the conditions under which Rossellini’s Rome, Open City was produced.  How does the form of the film reflect those conditions?  Why were those formal qualities considered so important that later films reproduced them, even if they had bigger budgets?  Give examples from Bicycle Thieves that are recognizably neorealistic in style, despite the film’s larger budget. 

3. De Sica’s major change in adapting the novel for the screen was the addition of Bruno.  What does the character of Bruno add to the film?  What does it allow De Sica to do? 

4. How does Bicycle Thieves challenge classical Hollywood narrative practices?  Specifically, consider the following:  the treatment of the protagonist, the handling of the dual-plot structure, the moral nature of the characters, the role of chance, shifts in mood.  How can that challenge be viewed politically? 

5. In what way do the opening and final shots of the film parallel each other?  In what way do these shots represent the neorealist approach to cinema?  In what way are these shots political?

6. Consider Zavattini’s remark that “the ideal film would be ninety minutes of the life of a man to whom nothing happens.”  How does his remark emblematize or embody the goals of Italian neorealism?  Why would this type of film be “ideal” for a neorealist filmmaker?  Does Bicycle Thieves fit Zavattini’s ideal notion of neorealism?  Why or why not? 

7. In his discussion of Umberto D., one the last neorealist masterpieces, David Cook comments that the film is “prone to be sentimental by its very nature.”  He goes on to suggest that sentimentality is endemic to the neorealist movement when he remarks that Umberto D. “does not avoid this pitfall (no neorealist film about victimized people ever did).”  What do you think Cook means by “sentimentality”?  Do you think that Bicycle Thieves is a “sentimental” film? Why or why not? 

8. David Cook includes The Naked City (also released in 1948) in his list of American films that have been influenced by Italian neorealism (368).  What similarities you see between The Naked City and Bicycle Thieves in terms of thematic and/or formal characteristics?  What differences do you see?