“You live and you suffer.” Bicycle Thieves (1948)

One of the best-known Italian neorealism films depicts utter impoverishment and despair that leads people into committing crime. Vittorio De Sica, also born into poverty in Sora (Lazio), wanted to illustrate the poverty of post-war Italy using a new degree of realism. He used only real locations for shooting, not sets, and decided to cast only non-professional actors. Lamberto Maggiorani, who plays the main character of Antonio Ricci in Bicycle Thieves (1948, Ladri di biciclette), was a factory worker who earned around $1000 for his performance. That enabled him to buy new furniture and go on a vacation with his family. When he returned to work at the factory, he was laid off since other poverty-stricken workers believed he made millions as a movie star. Maggiorani continued to work as a bricklayer, and even De Sica didn’t want to give him any roles other than being an extra. 

Vittorio De Sica shows his characters being disregarded and invisible to the rest of the society. This is a society where a loss of a bicycle can ruin your whole life. In this wrenching tale, Maggiorani plays Antonio Ricci, who is desperate for work to support his family. He finds a job posting which requires a bicycle that he doesn’t have, so his wife sells her precious dowry bed sheets so that he can buy a bicycle. On his first day, somebody steals his bicycle while he was on top of a ladder pasting up movie posters. The police tells him there’s not much to do. Soon, he notices a thief at the city market and decides to take justice into his own hands. He chases the thief, but even when he searches his apartment, there’s nothing there, so all was in vain.  Tomasulo states that bicycle represents a job, home, pride, faith, hope, Italy, physical and social mobility, while the theft allows for a continuous successions of disappointments. The only thing that meant either life or death was that bicycle. And it’s gone now. 

Maria: We can sleep without sheets.

Maria: You shouldn’t have pawned your bike!

Antonio Ricci: And how were you supposed to eat?

Italian neorealism focuses on the poor and working class, depicting difficult economic conditions of post-World War II Italy, portraying despair, poverty, hunger, difficult (im)moral decisions and everyday life overall. Largely amateur casts received critical acclaim, and De Sica, being an actor himself, was able to elicit amazing performances even from children. Enzo Staiola playing Bruno was cast when De Sica noticed a young boy watching the shooting while helping his father sell flowers. De Sica is not creating epic historical dramas or focusing on exceptional tales. His stories are unpretentious tales of ordinary people struggling in dire straits. And he was an actor as well, and a way to finance his films was to continue acting. After a controversial film Shoeshine (1946), he raised the money for this film from his family and friends.

Antonio Ricci: You live and you suffer.

Italian neorealism along with the lack of money for filmmakers as well resulted in using location shooting and natural lighting. Physical space is being reanalyzed and expanded. Social shots and real people are now in the background, a contrast to Hollywood’s painted-on backgrounds. Everything seems natural and ordinary in De Sica’s movies. Unfortunately, even poverty seems so natural and real. This film was popular everywhere except in Italy. They didn’t need to see the misery and dashed hopes on the big screen, they just needed to look out the window.

Bruno, Ricci’s son, is introduced through a shot of bicycle frames. His gaze is always directed to his father who represents a traditional identification figure. Bruno imitates him throughout the film with simple gestures and body language. And he behaves as an adult, out of sheer necessity: he has to take care of his sister and work. That’s why the shot of boy’s disappointment with his father, as one of the most famous shots in the history of cinema, is even more powerful. I’ll leave it to you to find out why it happened. The title will make more sense then.

Vittorio De Sica is not idealizing poverty and thinking there’s solidarity between the impoverished ones. Every man is on his own, even if it’s wrong. But sometimes there’s no choice. And it seems so natural.

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References

Bazin, Andre (1949/2011). “Bicycle Thieves”. André Bazin and Italian Neorealism. Continuum International Publishing Group.

Newton, Michael (2015). Why Vittorio de Sica is one of Europe’s greatest tragic film-makers. The Guardian.

Jacobson, Herbert L. (1949). De Sica’s “Bicycle Thieves” and Italian Humanism. Hollywood Quarterly 4 (1): 28–33.

Eggert, Brian (2017). Bicycle Thieves. DeepFocusReview.com.

Tomasulo, Frank. (1982). “Bicycle Thieves”: A Re-Reading. Cinema Journal 21(2), 2.