Bicycle Thieves

Bicycle Thieves (Italian: Ladri di biciclette; sometimes known in the United States as The Bicycle Thief)[4] is a 1948 Italian neorealist drama film directed by Vittorio De Sica.[5] It follows the story of a poor father searching post-World War II Rome for his stolen bicycle, without which he will lose the job which was to be the salvation of his young family.

For other uses, see The Bicycle Thief (disambiguation).
Bicycle Thieves
Theatrical release poster
Directed byVittorio De Sica
Produced byErcole Graziadei, Sergio Bernardi, Count Cicogna[1]
Screenplay byVittorio De Sica
Cesare Zavattini
Suso Cecchi d'Amico
Gherardo Gherardi
Oreste Biancoli
Adolfo Franci
Story byLuigi Bartolini
Starring
Music byAlessandro Cicognini
CinematographyCarlo Montuori
Edited byEraldo Da Roma
Production
company
Produzioni De Sica[2]
Distributed byEnte Nazionale Industrie
Cinematografiche
Joseph Burstyn & Arthur Mayer (US)
Release date
  • 24 November 1948 (1948-11-24) (Italy)
Running time
89 minutes
CountryItaly
LanguageItalian
Budget$81,000 or $133,000
Box office$371,111 (domestic gross)[3]

Adapted for the screen by Cesare Zavattini from the 1946 novel by Luigi Bartolini, and starring Lamberto Maggiorani as the desperate father and Enzo Staiola as his plucky young son, Bicycle Thieves received an Academy Honorary Award (most outstanding foreign language film) in 1950 and, in 1952 was deemed the greatest film of all time by Sight & Sound magazine's poll of filmmakers and critics;[6] fifty years later another poll organized by the same magazine ranked it sixth among the greatest-ever films.[7] The film was also cited by Turner Classic Movies as one of the most influential films in cinema history,[8] and it is considered part of the canon of classic cinema.[9]

Plot

In the post-World War II Val Melaina neighbourhood of Rome, Antonio Ricci (Lamberto Maggiorani) is desperate for work to support his wife Maria (Lianella Carell), his son Bruno (Enzo Staiola) and his small baby. He is offered a job of pasting advertising bills but tells Maria that he cannot accept because the job requires a bicycle. Maria resolutely strips the bed of her dowry bedsheets‍—‌prized possessions for a poor family‍—‌and takes them to the pawn shop, where they bring enough to redeem Antonio's pawned bicycle.

On his first day of work, Antonio is atop a ladder when a young man (Vittorio Antonucci) snatches the bicycle. Antonio gives chase but is thrown off the trail by the thief's confederates. The police warn that there is little they can do. Advised that stolen goods often surface at the Piazza Vittorio market, Antonio goes there with several friends and Bruno. They find a bicycle that might be Antonio's, but the serial numbers do not match.

At the Porta Portese market, Antonio and Bruno spot the thief with an old man. The thief eludes them and the old man feigns ignorance. They follow him into a church where he too slips away from them.

In a subsequent encounter with the thief, Antonio pursues him into a brothel, whose denizens eject them. In the street, hostile neighbours gather as Antonio accuses the thief, who conveniently falls into a fit for which the crowd blames Antonio. Bruno fetches a policeman, who searches the thief's apartment without result. The policeman tells Antonio the case is weak‍—‌Antonio has no witnesses and the neighbors are certain to provide the thief with an alibi. Antonio and Bruno leave in despair amid jeers and threats from the crowd.

On their way home, they near Stadio Nazionale PNF football stadium. Antonio sees an unattended bicycle near a doorway and after much-anguished soul-searching, instructs Bruno to take the tram to a stop nearby and wait. Antonio circles the unattended bicycle and jumps on it. Instantly the hue and cry is raised and Bruno – who has missed the tram – is stunned to see his father pursued, surrounded and pulled from the bicycle. As Antonio is being muscled toward the police station, the bicycle's owner notices Bruno and in a moment of compassion tells the others to release Antonio.

Antonio and Bruno then walk off slowly amid a buffeting crowd. Antonio fights back tears and Bruno takes his hand. The camera watches from behind as they disappear into the crowd.

  • The bike redeemed, the family saved
  • First day on the job
  • In search of the stolen bike
  • The thief's neighbors threaten Antonio
  • All seems lost

Cast
  • Lamberto Maggiorani as Antonio Ricci
  • Enzo Staiola as Bruno Ricci, Antonio's son
  • Lianella Carell as Maria Ricci, Antonio's wife
  • Gino Saltamerenda as Baiocco, Antonio's friend who helps search
  • Vittorio Antonucci as Alfredo Catelli the Bicycle thief
  • Giulio Chiari as a Beggar
  • Elena Altieri as the Charitable Lady
  • Carlo Jachino as a Beggar
  • Michele Sakara as the Secretary of the Charity Organization
  • Emma Druetti
  • Fausto Guerzoni as an Amateur Actor
  • Giulio Battiferri as a Citizen Who Protects the Real Thief (uncredited)
  • Ida Bracci Dorati as La Santona (uncredited)
  • Nando Bruno (uncredited)
  • Eolo Capritti (uncredited)
  • Memmo Carotenuto (uncredited)
  • Giovanni Corporale (uncredited)
  • Sergio Leone as a Seminary Student (uncredited)
  • Mario Meniconi as Meniconi, the Street Sweeper (uncredited)
  • Massimo Randisi as a Rich Kid in the Restaurant (uncredited)
  • Checco Rissone as a Guard in Piazza Vittorio (uncredited)
  • Peppino Spadaro as a Police Officer (uncredited)
  • Umberto Spadaro (uncredited)

 

Production

Bicycle Thieves is the best-known work of Italian neorealism, the movement which formally began with Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City (1945) which aimed to give cinema a new degree of realism.[10] De Sica had just made Shoeshine (1946), but was unable to get financial backing from any major studio for the film, so he raised the money himself from friends. Wanting to portray the poverty and unemployment of post-war Italy,[11] he co-wrote a script with Cesare Zavattini and others using only the title and few plot devices of a little-known novel of the time by poet/artist Luigi Bartolini.[12] Following the precepts of neorealism, De Sica shot only on location (that is, no studio sets) and cast only untrained nonactors. (Lamberto Maggiorani, for example, was a factory worker.) That some actors' roles paralleled their lives off screen added realism to the film.[13] De Sica cast Maggiorani when he had brought his young son to an audition for the film. He later cast the 8-year-old Enzo Staiola when he noticed the young boy watching the film's production on a street while helping his father sell flowers. The film's final shot of Antonio and Bruno walking away from the camera into the distance is an homage to many Charlie Chaplin films, who was De Sica's favourite filmmaker.[14]

Uncovering the drama in everyday life, the wonderful in the daily news.

— Vittorio De Sica in Abbiamo domandato a De Sica perché fa un film dal Ladro di biciclette (We asked De Sica why he makes a movie on the Bicycle Thief) – La fiera letteraria, 6/2/48

Translated title

The original Italian title is Ladri di biciclette. It literally translates into English as Bicycle Thieves, as there is no definite article and ladri is plural. The film was released as Bicycle Thieves in the United States and the United Kingdom. The poster titles were The Bicycle Thief in the US and The Bicycle Thieves in the UK.[15]

Bosley Crowther used The Bicycle Thief in his 1949 review in The New York Times,[4] and as a result this came to be the title by which the film was known in the United States, and some people became attached to it. When the film was re-released in the late-1990s, Bob Graham, staff film critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, was quoted as saying that he preferred the title The Bicycle Thief, stating, "Purists have criticized the English title of the film as a poor translation of the Italian ladri, which is plural. What blindness! The Bicycle Thief is one of those wonderful titles whose power does not sink in until the film is over".[16]

According to critic Philip French of The Observer, the alternative title The Bicycle Thief is misleading, "because the desperate hero eventually becomes himself a bicycle thief".[17] The 2007 Criterion Collection release in North America uses the plural title.[18]

De Sica changed many aspects of Bartolini's novel, but retained the title, which used the plural form and referred, in the book, to a post-war culture of rampant thievery and disrespect for civil order countered only by an inept police force and indifferent allied occupiers.[19]

Critical reception

When Bicycle Thieves was released in Italy, it was viewed with hostility and as portraying Italians in a negative way. Italian critic Guido Aristarco praised it, but also complained that "sentimentality might at times take the place of artistic emotion." Fellow Italian neorealist film director Luchino Visconti criticized the film, saying that it was a mistake to use a professional actor to dub over Lamberto Maggiorani's dialogue.[14] Luigi Bartolini, the author of the novel from which de Sica drew his title, was highly critical of the film, feeling that the spirit of his book had been thoroughly betrayed since his protagonist was a middle-class intellectual and his theme was the breakdown of civil order.[19]

Bicycle Thieves has continued to gain very high praise from critics, with the film-review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reporting 98% positive reviews from 54 reviews, with an average 9.1 out of 10 rating.[20] The picture is also in the Vatican's Best Films List for portraying humanistic values.[21]

Bosley Crowther, film critic for The New York Times, lauded the film and its message in his review. He wrote, "Again the Italians have sent us a brilliant and devastating film in Vittorio De Sica's rueful drama of modern city life, The Bicycle Thief. Widely and fervently heralded by those who had seen it abroad (where it already has won several prizes at various film festivals), this heart-tearing picture of frustration, which came to [the World Theater] yesterday, bids fair to fulfill all the forecasts of its absolute triumph over here. For once more the talented De Sica, who gave us the shattering Shoeshine, that desperately tragic demonstration of juvenile corruption in post-war Rome, has laid hold upon and sharply imaged in simple and realistic terms a major—indeed, a fundamental and universal—dramatic theme. It is the isolation and loneliness of the little man in this complex social world that is ironically blessed with institutions to comfort and protect mankind".[22] Pierre Leprohon wrote in Cinéma D'Aujourd that "what must not be ignored on the social level is that the character is shown not at the beginning of a crisis but at its outcome. One need only to look at his face, his uncertain gait, his hesitant or fearful attitudes to understand that Ricci is already a victim, a diminished man who has lost his confidence." Lotte Eisner called it the best Italian film since World War II and Robert Winnington called it "the most successful record of any foreign film in British cinema."[14]

When the film was re-released in the late 1990s Bob Graham, staff film critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, gave the drama a positive review: "The roles are played by non-actors, Lamberto Maggiorani as the father and Enzo Staiola as the solemn boy, who sometimes appears to be a miniature man. They bring a grave dignity to De Sica's unblinking view of post-war Italy. The wheel of life turns and grinds people down; the man who was riding high in the morning is brought low by nightfall. It is impossible to imagine this story in any other form than De Sica's. The new black-and-white print has an extraordinary range of grey tones that get darker as life closes in".[16]

Legacy

Many directors that have cited it as a major influence include Satyajit Ray, Ken Loach, Giorgio Mangiamele, Bimal Roy, Anurag Kashyap, Balu Mahendra, and Basu Chatterjee.[23][24][25][26][27][28][29]

The film was noteworthy on film directors of the Iranian New Wave, such as Jafar Panahi and Dariush Mehrjui.[30][31]

Filipino action star Nelson Anderson said it was the favorite Italian neorealist film of his contemporary Weng Weng, who cried upon his first viewing in the early 1980s. In a project that never materialized, they intended to depart from their usual fare by remaking it as an action-comedy with a human touch.[32]

The film was used as source material for Pee-Wee's Big Adventure (1985).[33] It was parodied in the film The Icicle Thief (1989).

Norman Loftis's film Messenger (1994) is considered to be a remake of Bicycle Thieves.[34][35]

Stage adaptation

A theatrical adaptation of the film was created by Littlebrain Theatre, in a devised adaptation with a cast of nine.[36] The production premiered as part of the Rhinoceros Theatre Festival in Chicago, from January 18 to February 22, 2019.[37]

Awards
  • Locarno International Film Festival, Switzerland: Special Prize of the Jury, Vittorio De Sica; 1949.
  • National Board of Review: NBR Award, Best Director, Vittorio De Sica; Best Film (Any Language), Italy; 1949.
  • New York Film Critics Circle Awards: NYFCC Award, Best Foreign Language Film, Italy; 1949.
  • Academy Awards: Honorary Award, as The Bicycle Thief (Italy). Voted by the Academy Board of Governors as the most outstanding foreign language film released in the United States during 1949; 1950.
  • Academy Awards: Nominated, Oscar, Best Writing, Screenplay; as The Bicycle Thief, Cesare Zavattini; 1950.
  • British Academy of Film and Television Arts: BAFTA Film Award, Best Film from any Source; 1950.
  • Bodil Awards, Copenhagen, Denmark: Bodil, Best European Film (Bedste europæiske film), Vittorio De Sica; 1950.
  • Golden Globes: Golden Globe, Best Foreign Film, Italy; 1950.
  • Cinema Writers Circle Awards, Spain: CEC Award, Best Foreign Film (Mejor Película Extranjera), Italy; 1951.
  • Kinema Junpo Awards, Tokyo, Japan: Kinema Junpo Award, Best Foreign Language Film, Vittorio De Sica; 1951.
  • Best Cinematography (Migliore Fotografia), Carlo Montuori.
  • Best Director (Migliore Regia), Vittorio De Sica.
  • Best Film (Miglior Film a Soggetto).
  • Best Score (Miglior Commento Musicale), Alessandro Cicognini.
  • Best Screenplay (Migliore Sceneggiatura), Cesare Zavattini, Vittorio De Sica, Suso Cecchi d'Amico, Oreste Biancoli, Adolfo Franci, and Gerardo Guerrieri.
  • Best Story (Miglior Soggetto), Cesare Zavattini.
  • Listed as one of TCM's top 15 most influential films list, as The Bicycle Thief (1947),[38]
  • Ranked #4 in Empire magazines "The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema" in 2010.[39]
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See also

References
  1. Christopher Wagstaff (2007). Italian Neorealist Cinema. University of Toronto Press. Retrieved June 9, 2012.
  2. Gordon, Robert (2008). Bicycle Thieves (Ladri Di Biciclette). New York: Macmillan. p. 26. ISBN 9781844572380. Retrieved 29 April 2018.
  3. "The Bicycle Thief (1949)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved October 1, 2014.
  4. Crowther, Bosley (December 13, 1949). "The Bicycle Thief (1948) THE SCREEN; Vittorio De Sica's 'The Bicycle Thief,' a Drama of Post-War Rome, Arrives at World". The New York Times.
  5. Scott, A.O. (August 13, 2020). "Why You Should Still Care About 'Bicycle Thieves' - On the unforgettable heartbreak and enduring pleasures of an Italian neorealist masterpiece". The New York Times. Retrieved August 16, 2020.
  6. Ebert, Roger (March 19, 1999). "The Bicycle Thief / Bicycle Thieves (1949) review". Chicago Sun-Times. Archived from the original on February 27, 2009. Retrieved July 20, 2010.
  7. Sight and Sound Top Ten Poll Archived 2017-02-01 at the Wayback Machine, director's list 2002. Last accessed: 2014-01-19.
  8. Ebert, Roger. "TCM's 15 most influential films of all time, and 10 from me". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved 8 September 2011.
  9. Ebert, Roger. "The Bicycle Thief / Bicycle Thieves (1949)". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved 8 September 2011.
  10. Megan, Ratner Archived 2007-08-10 at the Wayback Machine. GreenCine, "Italian Neo-Realism," 2005. Last accessed: December 30, 2007.
  11. Wakeman, John. World Film Directors, Volume 1. The H. W. Wilson Company. 1987. pp. 232.
  12. Gordon, Robert (2008). Bicycle Thieves (Ladri Di Biciclette). New York: Macmillan. pp. 3–4. ISBN 9781844572380. Retrieved 17 August 2015.
  13. Associated Press. Published in The New York Times. Lamberto Maggiorani Obituary. April 24, 1983. Last accessed: December 30, 2007.
  14. Wakeman. pp. 232.
  15. "Bicycle Thieves (1948): Release Info". Retrieved October 3, 2016.
  16. Graham, Bob. San Francisco Chronicle, film review, November 6, 1998. Last accessed: December 30, 2007.
  17. French, Philip. The Guardian, DVD review, February 19, 2006. Last accessed: December 30, 2007.
  18. DVD Talk review of the Criterion Collection DVD, 17 Feb, 2007.
  19. Healey, Robin (1998). Twentieth-century Italian Literature in English Translation: An Annotated Bibliography 1929-1997. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. p. 49. ISBN 0802008003. Retrieved 17 August 2015.
  20. "The Bicycle Thief (1949)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved January 7, 2016.
  21. United States Conference of Catholic Bishops website, 2008. Last accessed: May 20, 2008.
  22. Crowther, Bosley. The New York Times, film review, "Vittorio De Sica's The Bicycle Thief, a Drama of Post-War Rome, Arrives at World", December 13, 1949. Last accessed: December 30, 2007.
  23. Robinson, A. Satyajit Ray: A Vision of Cinema. I. B. Tauris.2005. ISBN 1-84511-074-9. p. 48.
  24. Lamont, Tom (16 May 2010). "Films that changed my life: Ken Loach". London: The Observer. Retrieved 22 July 2019.
  25. National Film and Sound Archive: 'Il Contratto' on Australianscreen
  26. Anwar Huda (2004). The Art and science of Cinema. Atlantic Publishers & Dist. p. 100. ISBN 81-269-0348-1.
  27. Akbar, Irena (14 June 2008). "Why Sica Moved Patna". Indian Express Archive. Retrieved 4 May 2015.
  28. Mahendra, Balu (7 September 2012). "சினிமாவும் நானும்..." (in Tamil). filmmakerbalumahendra.blogspot.in. Retrieved 9 June 2014.
  29. "A Manzil of Memories: Rare Memorabilia Of Basu Chatterji's Films". Learning & Creativity. 2014-04-25. Retrieved 2014-05-27.
  30. "Remarks by JAFAR PANAHI". Film Scouts LLC. Archived from the original on 24 August 2011. Retrieved 22 May 2012.
  31. Wakeman, John. World Film Directors, Volume 2. The H. W. Wilson Company. 1988. 663–669.
  32. Leavold, Andrew (2017). The Search for Weng Weng. Australia: The LedaTape Organisation. pp. 180–181. ISBN 9780994411235.
  33. "Paul Reubens". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 16 December 2013.
  34. Kehr, Dave (October 20, 1995). "'Messenger' Delivers Stark Film Captures 1995 New York". The Daily News. Retrieved April 8, 2018.
  35. Rooney, David (June 27, 1994). "Messenger". Variety. Retrieved April 8, 2018.
  36. Barr, Zach (November 20, 2018). "Littlebrain Theatre". Facebook. Retrieved November 20, 2018.
  37. "Rhinoceros Theatre Festival 2019". Prop Thtr. December 27, 2018. Retrieved January 14, 2019.
  38. Ebert, Roger. "TCM's 15 most influential films of all time, and 10 from me | Roger Ebert's Journal". Roger Ebert. Retrieved 2013-06-29.
  39. "The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema". Empire.
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