Those forces will make him a thief or starve him. The individual cannot win against the larger forces of society. I take it this reflects the vigorous Marxism of De Sica’s gifted screen writer, Cesare Zavattini, and probably De Sica’s own politics. In episode after episode, Antonio loses when he is outnumbered.
But throughout the movie, Antononio is outnumbered: when a roomful of policemen dismiss his problem the useless speeches, show, and suggestions at the union hall the many sellers at the flea markets the flea markets themselves with hundreds of bicycles and bicycle parts as against the one Antonio wants the crowd at the church that interferes with his trying to get information from the old man the neighborhood crowd that thwarts his capture of the thief and finally the crowd that captures him when he himself has become a “bicycle thief.” When Antonio himself steals a bicycle (becoming one of the Ladri di biciclette), he is alone and quickly outnumbered. Its brand name, “Fides” means faith or trust in Latin. It is contrasted to the hundreds or thousands of bicycle parts in the two flea markets. Incidentally, the bicycle itself becomes a symbol for this relationship between the one and the many. (De Sica thought this episode important enough to use six cameras to film it.) The boy steals the bike, and the man delays and misdirects the pursuit. That is why it is important to recognize that it is two people who steal his bicycle. In short, his few plusses come when he faces his opponents one-on-one or when someone is with him and he can outnumber them.Ĭonversely, his defeats come when he himself is outnumbered. At the end, he is forgiven his stealing a bicycle when he and the owner are face to face, and the owner relents (perhaps prompted by little Bruno’s grief and fear).He gets a little extra money for the family bedsheets when he and his wife (Lianella Carell), two people, face the one-person pawnbroker.He gets the job itself when he faces a boss one-on-one.He gets the paper giving him a job when he is an individual.In other words, the film begins by bringing Antonio out as an individual and ends by submerging his individuality back into the anonymous crowd of city-dwellers.Īntonio’s defeats and to his successes follow a similar pattern.
In the final scene, he (and his son, the engaging Bruno (Enzo Staoia), now totally defeated, melt back into a crowd. And Ricci, singled out, is given a job, one that requires a bicycle. The first word I can hear on the sound track is his name, Ricci. (Apparently, the workers’ union provides the jobs, for later we find the same functionary in the crowd at the union hall.) The opening sequence singles out our hero, Antonio or “Anto” (Lamberto Maggiorani). In the opening a crowd of men seeking jobs follow a bus carrying a paper-pushing official at a job center. Throughout, we see crowds of people on the streets and busses and trolleys filled with people.Ĭonsider (as always!) the opening and closing sequences.
BICYCLE THIEF MOVIE MOVIE
Bicycle Thieves is very much a movie of crowds. Perhaps that is why I think of the city as the essence of human civilization, rural life as an aberration.īe that as it may, it is part of the glory of cities to produce crowds and crowds of people. The city film that comes right away to my mind is Jules Dassin’s Naked City, no doubt because I grew up in the “naked city” itself, New York. Bicycle Thieves is a “city film.” Indeed, as Geoffrey Cheshire argues in an essay accompanying the Criterion DVD, “ Bicycle Thieves is one of cinema’s great ‘city films’.”
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