Ladri di biciclette (1948)

Second viewing; first seen on June 13, 1994.

U.S. original release title: The Bicycle Thief.
U.K. release title, and correct translation: Bicycle Thieves.

A poor man is hired as a poster hanger. On his first day of work, his bicycle -- a necessary item for his job -- is stolen, sending him on a wild goose chase through the streets of Rome.

This is a very good film, although I am not sure I liked it for the exact same reasons as I did on my first viewing. First of all, let me say that most reviews I came across are just useless, with two exceptions, which I will mention later. If you get turned on by words like "heartbreaking", "devastating", "poetic" (this one is a real movie-criticism pest), and so on, you will probably disagree with me. Otherwise, there is a small chance you will find what I have to say interesting. The question of realism must be dealt with as swiftly as possible, so we can get down to the really important issues. This film is called 'neo-realist', and is considered as part of a movement with that name. In my humble opinion, this pertains exclusively to (1) film-making technique, especially location shooting in city streets; (2) subject matter, namely, poor people, who, for some reason, are considered more 'real' than rich ones -- good luck trying to make that label stick on a film dealing with aristocrats, for example. This summary takes care of all the people claiming that the plot and characters are not realistic and therefore the film is unworthy of its label. One particular review, posted on the Discussion Board on this film's IMDB page, falls into this category, but has some valid points, and is rather amusing, so I will partially transcribe it here:

[begin quote]
Pomposo Massimo
by
clayasbury» Mon Oct 14 2013 03:56:27 Flag ▼
IMDb member since May 2011
Post Edited:Mon Oct 14 2013 06:53:30
(...)
Yes, beautifully shot, impressive casting, charming gesticulations....But, if you intend to make gritty, unflinching social commentary through art (neo-realism), it must rest upon a narrative more credible and substantial than this.
The protagonist is surrounded by poverty, yet 1 million bicycles jam the streets of Rome as he searches for his with his son. Simple supply and demand principles undo this attempt at realism - fatally. Something so commonplace can't also be that which we are also intended to believe is so rare and valuable.
He is also surrounded by friends - friends with means, money, vehicles, etc... Yet, they spend all day and most of the night running/driving/fighting through Rome rather than loan him a bicycle for a week or the money (with interest!) to rent/buy one? Again, this is a bicycle, not the Hope Diamond.
Nitpicking? Suspension of disbelief?
No, let me remind you this is neo-realism.
[end quote]

With realism out of the way, let me get to what I think is this film's main point: a study on certain essential qualities for human survivability. The main character is obviously a fool, a man who, under any social conditions, would never amount to much, and under the harsh conditions depicted by the movie, will have a hard time simply surviving. He consistently does the wrong thing throughout the entire movie and does not show the least respect for a valuable possession -- his bicycle: right at the start he tells some footballing children to look after it, later goes out on his job without a simple protecting device such as a padlocked chain; in a later scene, he shows the same neglect for something much more valuable: his son, whom he leaves unguarded and then panics when he thinks something awful has happened to him. But you can see his helplessness in far more trivial things, such as his utter inability to do a decent job of hanging a poster. The film's genius consists in opposing him to his son, a much smarter and more resourceful person. A key scene is when the son scolds his father about some damage that was done to the bicycle at the pawnshop and is scornfully dismissed; obviously the father was both too careless to pay attention to such things and too weak-willed to assert himself to the pawnbroker. The son is neither, and thus must have taken after his mother, who also shows resourcefulness by deciding to pawn the bedsheet. All of which leads us to the polemic about this film's political message. I am convinced it is neither Marxist nor Nihilist, and in fact is not propaganda of any type. It sheds some light on social darwinism, not as a political system to be espoused, but as a fact of life which must be reckoned with. It is interesting to connect the film's content with its production history, something which I picked up (regardless of what was really meant) from Christopher Mulrooney's notes on this movie ("Out of nothingness, a career in the movies, a certain apparatus is needed for this.") and the movie's Wikipedia page's account of the difficulties its director went through ("had just made the controversial film Shoeshine and was unable to get financial backing from any major studio for the film, so he raised the money himself from friends.").

Rating: 83 (down from 90)