Bicycle Thieves

Bicycle Thieves (also released as The Bicycle Thief) is a 1948 Italian neorealist drama directed by Vittorio De Sica. The film centers on a poor father searching post-World War II Rome for his stolen bicycle, the loss of which would cost him the job meant to save his young family from destitution. The screenplay was adapted by Cesare Zavattini from Luigi Bartolini’s 1946 novel. Lamberto Maggiorani, a factory worker, plays the desperate father, and Enzo Staiola portrays his resourceful young son.

In 1950, the film received an Academy Honorary Award for most outstanding foreign language film. Sight & Sound magazine’s 1952 poll of filmmakers and critics named it the greatest film ever made; fifty years later, the same magazine ranked it sixth. By 2012, it placed 33rd among critics and 10th among directors. Turner Classic Movies cited it as one of cinema’s most influential works, and it is regarded as part of the classic film canon.

Plot

At the 1958 World Expo, it was voted third on the Brussels 12 list. Empire magazine ranked it fourth in its 2010 “100 Best Films of World Cinema.” The Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage also included it among 100 Italian films to be saved—movies that “have changed the collective memory of the country between 1942 and 1978.” In post-World War II Rome, Antonio Ricci urgently needs work to support his wife Maria, son Bruno, and infant. He is offered a job posting advertising bills but tells Maria he cannot accept because it requires a bicycle. Maria resolutely strips the bed of her dowry bedsheets—prized possessions for a poor family—and pawns them to redeem Antonio’s bicycle.

On his first day, while atop a ladder, a young man steals the bicycle. Antonio chases him but is thrown off by the thief’s confederates. The police file his complaint but say little can be done. Returning home embittered, Antonio realizes his only option is to search himself.

He asks a political comrade for help, who mobilizes his waste-collector colleagues. At dawn, Antonio and Bruno search the Piazza Vittorio market, where stolen goods often surface. They find a bicycle frame that might be Antonio’s, but vendors refuse to let them check the serial number. A carabiniere orders the vendors to allow him to read it; it does not match, and the officer will not let them examine it further.

At the Porta Portese market, Antonio and Bruno spot someone they believe is the thief with an old man. The thief escapes, and the old man feigns ignorance. They follow him into a church, where he slips away. Hopeless, Antonio consults a supposed “holy woman,” whose sibylline response is almost a joke.

Soon after, he encounters the thief by chance in a disreputable district and chases him into a brothel, where both are ejected. 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—no witnesses, and neighbors will provide an alibi. Antonio and Bruno leave amid jeers and threats. On their way home, they pass the Stadio Nazionale PNF football stadium. Antonio spots an unattended bicycle near a doorway.

After anguished indecision, he instructs Bruno to take a tram and wait nearby. Antonio circles the bicycle, then jumps on it. Immediately, a hue and cry is raised. Bruno, who missed the tram, is stunned to see his father pursued, surrounded, and pulled from the bicycle.

Production

As Antonio is 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 walk off slowly amid a buffeting crowd. Antonio fights back tears, and Bruno takes his hand. (uncredited) Production Bicycle Thieves is the best-known work of Italian neorealism, a movement that began informally with Roberto Rossellini’s Rome, Open City (1945) and brought a new degree of realism to Italian cinema. After making Shoeshine (1946), De Sica could not secure backing from any major studio, so he raised the money himself from friends.

Wanting to portray post-war poverty and unemployment, he co-wrote a script with Cesare Zavattini and others, using only the title and a few plot devices from Luigi Bartolini’s little-known novel. Following neorealist principles, De Sica shot only on location and cast untrained actors. Lamberto Maggiorani, for instance, was a factory worker. Some actors’ roles mirrored their off-screen lives, adding realism.

Title

De Sica cast Maggiorani when he brought his young son to an audition; he later cast eight-year-old Enzo Staiola after noticing the boy watching the production while helping his father sell flowers. The final shot of Antonio and Bruno walking away from the camera is an homage to Charlie Chaplin, De Sica’s favorite filmmaker. The original Italian title, Ladri di biciclette, translates literally as “thieves of bicycles”—both ladri and biciclette 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 authorities.