“You live and you suffer.” Bicycle Thieves

One of the best-known Italian neorealist films depicts utter impoverishment and despair that leads people into committing crime. Vittorio De Sica, also born into poverty in Sora (Lazio), sought to depict 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, Antonio Ricci, in Bicycle Thieves (1948, Ladri di biciclette), was a factory worker who earned around $1,000 for his performance. That enabled him to buy new furniture and go on a vacation with his family.

The story of Lamberto Maggiorani gives the film an almost cruel afterlife. Maggiorani, who played Antonio, was himself a factory worker before De Sica cast him in Bicycle Thieves. After the film, he returned to the factory, only to lose his job because the other workers believed he had become rich. According to Time, the manager told him: “They claim you made millions from the movie. It’s not fair to fire them and keep you.” Maggiorani then struggled to find steady work, took jobs as a bricklayer, and tried unsuccessfully to continue acting; even De Sica was apparently unwilling to use him except in minor extra roles since he did not search for actors so much as for characters: people whose faces, gestures, bodies, and social histories already seemed to contain the role. Horribly, the film that made Maggiorani immortal also helped make him unemployable.

Vittorio De Sica shows his characters being disregarded and invisible to the rest of society. This is a society where losing 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 that requires a bicycle he doesn’t have, so his wife sells her precious dowry bed sheets to buy one. On his first day, someone steals his bicycle while he is on a ladder pasting up movie posters. The police tell 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 after searching his apartment, he finds nothing, so it’s all in vain. Tomasulo states that the bicycle represents a job, home, pride, faith, hope, Italy, physical and social mobility, while the theft allows for a continuous succession 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, himself an actor, 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 since he was an actor, financing films was also a way 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, 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, unlike Hollywood’s painted-on backgrounds. Everything seems natural and ordinary in De Sica’s movies. Unfortunately, even poverty seems so natural and real. As a consequence, 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 the 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 or assuming there’s solidarity among 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, André (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.
• Sargeant, Winthrop (1957). Bread, Love, and Neo-Realismo-II. The New Yorker.
• Tomasulo, Frank (1982). “Bicycle Thieves”: A Re-Reading. Cinema Journal 21(2), 2.