The Bicycle Thief Review

The Bicycle Thief

Year:  1948

Director: Vittorio De Sica

Main Actors:  Lamberto Maggiorani, Enzo Staiola, and Lianella Carell

The Bicycle Thief is a postwar Italian film.  This film is about a family in the aftermath of WWII.  The father, Antonio Ricci, has been offered a job; however, a bicycle is required for the job.  He does not have a bicycle because he had to sell it for food for his family.  He came home and his wife took all the sheets off the bed.  They can live without sheets, but they could not live without the job.  This shows how scarce jobs were in postwar Italy.  After he obtained his bike he went to his job and is told to report there the next day.  The next day he started his job and while hanging up the Rita Hayworth Poster, his bike was stolen.  From there he and his son are on the hunt for the bicycle.

In our modern world the idea of a bicycle as the most prized possession is strange.  Not many people would sell their sheets for a bike, but that is how it was then.  This movie is realistic to the time.  The movement of the time was called neo-realism.   The director did not use professional actors and after the film was made Lamberto Maggiorani, who played Antonio Ricci, had a hard time finding a job.  Today, to be a main cast member of a movie, one needs to be trained, but the emphasis during this period in Italian film making was realism and professionals were not real.  They also did not use any artificial lighting, so some of the scenes were dark.  However, this gave the modern viewer an idea of what life was like after WWII for the average person living in a city that was destroyed by bombs, and where jobs were scarce, and the little things mattered.

Watching this movie, I felt so bad for Antonio Ricci. He needed this job so badly, just to have some thief take away his opportunity to take care of his family.  There is a great amount of pathos in this movie because it seems that no one around him with any authority cares.  The police told him, when he reported the bicycle stolen, to go look for the bicycle himself.  He searched in a stolen good market and followed a man who looked like the thief. He found someone he thought was the culprit, but nothing came of it because the bike is no longer there and the police, who arrived on the scene, told him that it is no use to press charges.

At the end of the movie, you can feel the desperation in the father.  He wanted so bad to support his family that he decided to steal another man’s bicycle.  He is caught and chased.  Fortunately, his son ran up and the bicycle owner does not press charges, but they all pointed out what a horrible example Antonio was to his son.  They walk off unfilled, without a bicycle for tomorrow.  It was hard; at least it was for me, to see Antonio, as in the wrong.  I felt so bad for him and I could see how desperate he was.  To him there is no choice, but to steal a bike.  Even though it is wrong he does it for the right reasons.

This ending makes sense for the time.  Most people did not have jobs and were living from day to day trying to feed their families.  The movie showed how people really lived and the daily challenges many faced.  The father thought that stealing a bicycle was his only option left to do right by his family, but it was no different than what was done to him.  Thus this movie shows the desperation of many Italians during this time; there was not a happy ending for a while for most people.