The Bicycle Thief by Vittorio De Sica is a movie that breaks the Hollywood aesthetic of beautiful people, fancy homes, and extensive wealth that only thrives in fantasy and sometimes-unconquerable dreams. It exploits the plight of working class individuals who live in what some may call ghettoes or over crowded cities. Standing outside of a government agency, men await the fates of their futures: will it be their day to get work or will they go home in defeat to tell their wives and children that they might not have enough money to eat? It is a travesty to envision a life that is lived moment to moment and the future holds no promise for a better tomorrow. .
It is striking to watch a movie that encapsulates the very heart of the working class. The audience is introduced to the movie's central character, Antonio. A man who is in search of a job and the one he receives requires a mode of transportation common in those days, a bicycle. The bicycle he owns is in a repair shop waiting for alterations to be done, but because of the lack of money his family has, he never acquired the opportunity to pay for it. He then journeys back home to his wife, his son, and his newborn to herald the good news, however, as all good things too good to be true there is a catch. Antonio tells his wife that he can have this beneficial job if he has a bicycle, translation: we need money to get the bike so I can work. Maria, his wife, decides to pawn their precious linens, apart of her dowry, in order to retrieve Antonio's bicycle from the shop. .
However, maintaining the bicycle long enough to see a single paycheck would pose as a dilemma rather than a means of support.
First day on the job the bicycle gets stolen, crisis becomes the inevitable. Another plight of the working class individual, stolen goods are as good as gone and sold and money in someone else's pocket. This movie also showed the delineation between authority and common folk.
The Bicycle Thief is about a poor family in which Ricci, the father, is looking for a job. ... An example of this can be seen in The Bicycle Thief. ... For instance, in The Bicycle Thief when Ricci tells his wife, Maria, that he got a job, but he needed a bicycle for the job. ... In The Bicycle Thief there were many great examples of this. ... The Bicycle Thief is an excellent example of this. ...
In Vittorio De Sica's, Bicycle Thief, Pier Paolo Pasolini's, Mamma Roma, and Roberto Rossellini's, Rome, Open City, each filmmaker uses humor to evoke emotion and bolster his view about the absurd nature of extreme class distinctions in post WWII Italy. ... Vittorio De Sica deviates from his grave and serious expressive strategy of portraying a desolate and devastated country by injecting unexpected bits of humor in the "pizzeria" scene in his film, Bicycle Thief. ... During the film, the viewer realizes the importance of the bicycle as the sole ray of hope in the prota...
Victorrio De Sica's film The Bicycle Thief possesses some of the qualities and aspects of Aristotle's theory, but certainly not all. ... Many people will say that The Bicycle Thief is a tragedy. ... Throughout the film, he is looking to get back his bicycle but to no avail. ... The characters in this film are subject to "the same cyclical structure: the impoverished Roman is the first victim of the theft of his bicycle, and finally out of desperation himself becomes a bicycle thief" (Restivo, 36). ... In conclusion, The Bicycle Thief is a film that can be classified in ma...
One of the two men rode away with his bicycle while the thief's partner distracted Antonio and lead him in the wrong direction chasing after his bicycle. ... After just being chased off by the thief's family and friends they begin to lose hope and Antonio enter a state of psychosis in which he is pushed to the edge and attempts to steal a nearby bicycle. ... After passing the bicycle Antonio turns around and very cautiously approaches the bicycle with a demeanor that appears very suspicious. He lunges for the bike and immediately begins a running mount onto the saddle followed by the...
Another fine example of neorealism is The Bicycle Thief (1948), written by Cesare Zavattini and directed by Vittorio De Sica. ... Antonio's new job can bring his family new hopes and happiness, which are drastically destroyed when his bicycle is stolen. The banal circumstances are brought to life when it is realized that a modest bicycle is such an important element in determining the future survival of the Ricci family. ... Antonio's frustration of missing the thief for a second time fuels the hopelessness in continuing his search. ...
The movie's main character is up for a job posting posters throughout the city, the only glitch is that it requires a bicycle. He says he can get one, with that he pawns his family's linens to acquire a bicycle so that he can support them. During his first day on the job his bicycle is stolen. The movie progresses a few days while the man and his young son comb the streets looking for the bicycle and the thief. He finds the thief, but without proof or witnesses they are unable to do anything. ...
Bicycles Thieves (1948) represents one of the most important films of Italian neorealism. ... It is because all of these features that Andre' Bazin said that Bicycle Thieves is "one of the first examples of pure cinema. ... When Antonio was going to be lynched by those people who defended the thief; and the last scene, which can be seen as a denunciation against the hope for social justice. Concerning the structure of the sequences "little by little episodes become increasingly dramatic: the escape of the accomplice, the impossibility to arrest the thief, the attempt of robbery. ....
Theft of personal property especially bicycles is a growing concern. On numerous occasions residents of Lee Village reported the theft of their children's bicycles. A few weeks later the owner recovered the bicycles after spotting a child riding the bike through the same neighborhood from which it was stolen. Military Police were called and visited the home of the alleged thief and found multiple bicycles and parts in the garage. The child's mother denied any knowledge of the bicycles being stolen; the child was only 13 years old. ...
The illustration that Boxill uses is that of a bicycle that is stolen and then let to the offspring of the thief. He points out that the offspring would be wrong in keeping the bicycle, even though he or she was not the cause of the disinheritance. ...
