Bicycle Thieves (Italian:Ladri di biciclette), also known asThe Bicycle Thief,[5] is a 1948Italian neorealistdrama film directed byVittorio De Sica.[6] It follows the story of a poor father searching in 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.
Adapted for the screen byCesare Zavattini from the 1946 novel byLuigi Bartolini, and starringLamberto Maggiorani as the desperate father andEnzo Staiola as his plucky young son,Bicycle Thieves received anAcademy Honorary Award (most outstanding foreign language film) in 1950, and in 1952 was deemed thegreatest film of all time bySight & Sound magazine's poll of filmmakers and critics;[7] fifty years later another poll organized by the same magazine ranked it sixth among the greatest-ever films.[8] In the2012 version of the list the film ranked 33rd among critics and 10th among directors.
The film was also cited byTurner Classic Movies as one of the most influential films in cinema history,[9] and it is considered part of the canon of classic cinema.[10] The film was voted number 3 on the prestigiousBrussels 12 list at the 1958 World Expo, and number 4 inEmpire magazine's "The 100 Best Films of World Cinema" in 2010.[11] It was also included on theItalian Ministry of Cultural Heritage’s100 Italian films to be saved, a list of 100 films that "have changed the collective memory of the country between 1942 and 1978."[12]
In post-World War IIRome, Antonio Ricci desperately needs work to support his wife Maria, his son Bruno and his small baby. He is offered a job posting advertising bills but tells Maria he cannot accept because the job requires a bicycle. Maria resolutely strips the bed of herdowry bedsheets—prized possessions for a poor family—and takes them to thepawn shop, where they bring enough to redeem Antonio's bicycle.
On his first day of work, Antonio is at the top of a ladder when a young man steals his bicycle. Antonio runs after him but is thrown off the trail by the thief's confederates. The police file Antonio's complaint but say that there is little they can do.
Advised that stolen goods often surface at thePiazza Vittorio market, Antonio and his son go there with several friends. They find a bicycle frame that might be Antonio's, but the vendors refuse to allow them to examine the serial number. They call over acarabiniere, who orders the vendors to allow him to read the serial number. It does not match that of the missing bicycle, but the officer won't allow them to examine it for themselves.
At thePorta Portese market, Antonio and Bruno spot someone he believes to be 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.
Antonio pursues the thief into a brothel, whose denizens eject them. In the street, hostile neighbors 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 success. 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.
Their way home takes them to theStadio Nazionale PNF football stadium. Antonio sees an unattended bicycle near a doorway and after much anguished indecision, instructs Bruno to take thetram to a stop nearby and wait. Antonio circles the unattended bicycle and jumps on it. Instantly, thehue 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 in tears 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.
Bicycle Thieves is the best-known work ofItalian neorealism, a movement that informally began withRoberto Rossellini'sRome, Open City (1945) and brought a new degree of realism to Italian cinema.[13] De Sica had just madeShoeshine (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,[14] he co-wrote a script withCesare Zavattini and others using only the title and few plot devices of a little-known novel of the time by poet and artistLuigi Bartolini.[15] Following the precepts of neorealism, De Sica shot only on location (that is, no studio sets) and cast only untrained actors. (Lamberto Maggiorani, for example, was a factory worker.) That some actors' roles paralleled their lives off screen added realism to the film.[16] De Sica cast Maggiorani when he had brought his young son to an audition for the film. He later cast the 8-year-oldEnzo 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 of the films ofCharlie Chaplin, who was De Sica's favourite filmmaker.[14]
Uncovering the drama in everyday life, the wonderful in the daily news.
— Vittorio De Sica inAbbiamo 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
The original Italian title isLadri di biciclette. It literally translates into English as "thieves of bicycles"; bothladri andbiciclette are plural. In Bartolini's novel, the title referred to a post-war culture of rampant thievery and disrespect for civil order, countered only by an inept police force and indifferent allied occupiers.[17]
When the film was screened in the United States in 1949,Bosley Crowther referred to it asThe Bicycle Thief in his review inThe New York Times,[5] and this came to be the title by which the film was known in English. When the film was re-released in the late-1990s,San Francisco Chronicle film critic Bob Graham said that he preferred that version, stating, "Purists have criticized the English title of the film as a poor translation of the Italianladri, 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".[18] The 2007Criterion Collection release in North America uses the titleBicycle Thieves.[19]
WhenBicycle Thieves was released in Italy, it was viewed with hostility and as portraying Italians in a negative way. Italian criticGuido Aristarco praised it, but also complained that "sentimentality might at times take the place of artistic emotion." Fellow Italian neorealist film directorLuchino 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 because his protagonist was a middle-class intellectual and his theme was the breakdown of civil order.[17]
Contemporary reviews elsewhere were positive. Bosley Crowther, film critic forThe 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 shatteringShoeshine, 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".[5] Pierre Leprohon wrote inCinéma D'Aujourd'hui 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." Then Paris-basedLotte H. Eisner called it the best Italian film since World War II, and UK critic 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 theSan 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".[18] In 1999,Chicago Sun-Times film reviewerRoger Ebert wrote that "The Bicycle Thief is so well-entrenched as an official masterpiece that it is a little startling to visit it again after many years and realize that it is still alive and has strength and freshness. Given an honorary Oscar in 1949, routinely voted one of the greatest films of all time, revered as one of the foundation stones of Italian neorealism, it is a simple, powerful film about a man who needs a job". Ebert added the film to his "The Great Movies" list.[20] In 2020,A. O. Scott praised the film in an essay entitled "Why You Should Still Care About 'Bicycle Thieves'."[21]
Bicycle Thieves is a fixture on theBritish Film Institute'sSight & Sound critics' and directors' polls of the greatest films ever made. The film ranked 1st and 7th on critics' poll in 1952 and 1962 respectively. It ranked 11th on the magazine's 1992 Critics' poll, 45th in 2002Critics' Poll[22] and 6th on the 2002Directors' Top Ten Poll.[23] It was slightly lower in the 2012 directors' poll, 10th[24] and 33rd on the 2012 critics' poll.[25]The Village Voice ranked the film at number 37 in its Top 250 "Best Films of the Century" list in 1999, based on a poll of critics.[26] The film was voted at No. 99 on the list of "100 Greatest Films" by the prominent French magazineCahiers du cinéma in 2008.[27]
The Japanese filmmakerAkira Kurosawa cited this movie as one of his 100 favorite films.[28][when?] The film was included by the Vatican ina list of important films compiled in 1995, under the category of "Values".[29]
Bicycle Thieves has continued to gain very high praise from contemporary critics, with the review aggregator websiteRotten Tomatoes reporting 99% of 70 reviews as of April 2022 as positive, with an average rating of 9.20/10. The site's critics consensus reads, "An Italian neorealism exemplar,Bicycle Thieves thrives on its non-flashy performances and searing emotion."[30]
Academy Awards: Honorary Award, asThe 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; asThe Bicycle Thief, Cesare Zavattini; 1950.
The film features incidentally in the 1992Robert Altman filmThe Player. A Hollywood studio executive (played byTim Robbins) tracks a screenwriter to a theater showingBicycle Thieves and stages what he represents as a chance meeting.[citation needed]
^abHealey, Robin (1998).Twentieth-century Italian Literature in English Translation: An Annotated Bibliography 1929-1997. University of Toronto Press. p. 49.ISBN978-0-8020-0800-8.
^abGraham, Bob.San Francisco Chronicle, film review, November 6, 1998. Last accessed: December 30, 2007.
Lombardi, Elena (December 2009). "Of Bikes and Men: The intersection of three narratives in Vittorio De Sica'sLadri di biciclette".Studies in European Cinema.6 (2–3):113–126.doi:10.1386/seci.6.2-3.113/1.
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