Bicycle Thieves (Italian: Ladri di biciclette), also known as The Bicycle Thief, is a 1948 Italian neorealist film directed by Vittorio De Sica. It tells the story of a poor man searching the streets of Rome for his stolen bicycle, which he needs to be able to work. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Luigi Bartolini and was adapted for the screen by Cesare Zavattini. It stars Lamberto Maggiorani as the poor man searching for his lost bicycle and Enzo Staiola as his son.
It was given an Academy Honorary Award in 1950, and, just four years after its release, was deemed the greatest film of all time by the magazine Sight & Sound‘s poll of filmmakers and critics in 1952 The film placed sixth as the greatest ever made in Sight & Sound’s latest directors’ poll, conducted in 2002 and was ranked in the top 10 of the BFI list of the 50 films you should see by the age of 14.
Antonio Ricci is an unemployed man in the depressed post-World War II economy of Italy. With a wife and two children to support, he is desperate for work. He is delighted to at last get a good job pasting up posters, but he must have a bicycle. He is told unequivocally, “No bicycle, no job.” His wife Maria pawns their bedsheets in order to get money to redeem his bicycle from the pawnbroker.
On his first day of work, Antonio’s bicycle is stolen by a young thief, who snatches it when he is putting up a poster. Antonio gives chase, but to no avail. He goes to the police, but there is little they can do. The only option is for Antonio, his young son Bruno, and his friends to walk the streets of Rome themselves, looking for the bicycle. They search Rome’s largest square Piazza Vittorio, where they encounter countless bicycles and parts resembling his own. They falsely accuse a merchant of possessing the stolen bike, and their task seems futile. Subsequently, at the market at Porto Portese Antonio and Bruno believe they have found the thief trying to pawn the bike to an old man, and they chase him but he manages to get away. They then pursue the old man into a church, where they accuse him of knowing where the purported thief resides. The commotion disrupts the mass, and the old man manages to slip away.
During a rare treat of a meal in a restaurant, Antonio shares his shattered dreams with his son. Desperate, Antonio even visits the dubious fortune teller that he had earlier mocked. However, she merely doles out to him the vague and unhelpful, “you’ll find the bike quickly, or not at all.” Antonio hands over some money and leaves.
As he walks out of the clairvoyant’s house, he encounters the thief and chases him into a whorehouse. Antonio takes the thief outside and is set upon by the hostile neighbours. Bruno slips off to fetch a policeman. Meanwhile, Antonio angrily accuses the thief of stealing his bike, but the young man denies it. When the policeman arrives, the thief is lying on the ground, having or feigning a seizure. The irate neighbours blame Antonio for causing the “innocent” boy’s fit.
The policeman tells Antonio that his case is weak; he did not catch the thief red-handed, nor did he get the names of any witnesses, and the policeman is certain the neighbours will give the thief an alibi. Antonio gives up and walks away in despair, to the jeers of the crowd.
Sitting on the curb outside a packed football stadium, Antonio sees hundreds and hundreds of parked bicycles. As he cradles his head in despair, a fleet of bicycles speeds past him. After vacillating for some time, he tries to steal one outside an apartment. However, he is caught by a crowd of angry men who slap and humiliate him in front of his son. The bicycle’s owner sees how upset Bruno is and mercifully declines to press charges. Antonio and his son walk away, dejected.
Bicycle Thieves is the best known neo-realist film; a movement begun by Roberto Rossellini‘s Rome, Open City (1945), which attempted to give a new degree of realism to cinema Following the precepts of the movement, De Sica shot only on location in Rome, and instead of professional actors used nonactors with no training in performance; for example, Lamberto Maggiorani, the leading actor, was a factory worker. The picture is also in the Vatican’s Best Films List for portraying humanistic values.
Paget A2 Film Studies 