Wick's Review

Summary - Really Great 4.5

Reverential movie, thy name is The Bicycle Thief. Long considered one of the greatest movies of all time, it still qualifies. Real people play the parts, none more affecting than seven year-old Enzo Staiola’s Bruno.

The kid’s now my favorite boy in all of movie history.

Bruno’s Dad hocks the family inheritance to buy a bike so he can accept a badly needed job. The bike gets stolen, leading father and son on a doomed hunt. Oddities of post-war Rome get explored in the process.

The Bicycle Thief still has the power to entrance and even entertain, notwithstanding its antique simplicity and ultimately bleak story. Lasciare a Bruno!

Note: The Italian dialog is elementally easy to follow even if the studio did a terrible job on the subtitles.

Acting - Really Great 4.5

Bruno is one of the greatest characters in movie history – spirited, plucky, stalwart. Among his great scenes, waving his hand like a mini-Godfather, hollering “They don’t pay for the repairs!” Love the kid.

Enzo Staiola was plucked off the Roman streets to play Bruno before he’d even turned ten. He went on to become a math teacher. If he’d of lived in Hollywood, he would have gone on to become a casualty.

Factory worker Lamberto Maggiorani plays his father, iconically.

Film - Great 4.0

The film’s original title Ladri di biciclette translates to Bicycle Thieves. Indeed it explores the duality of roles that people can take when calamity befalls them. Brilliant. The plural title also suggests why there are several feints of bicycle thievery before the actual one.

The Bicycle Thief is the best known Italian neorealist film, according to Wikipedia.
(Really, is the neo in neorealism necessary? Seems awfully Inside Baseball.)

Edge - Tame 1.4

Reality - Glib 1.2

Famed for its realism, The Bicycle Thief displays an Italy full of needless government interference in business. Thus jobs are in short supply. WWII’s recent conclusion explains the devastation of defeat, but good old social-democratic fairness strictures are what’s on display. No wonder Italy never fully thrived.

That said, the economic constipation seems partly false. Hence 1.5x circoreality.

2 Comments

• BigdaddyDave Feb 20, 2012 5:48AM

  Regarding Wick’s Review
  Glad to see you enjoyed it as much as I did!

• Wick Mar 25, 2011 11:59PM

  Regarding BigdaddyDave’s Review
  Solid review, seems fair. Nice job essaying this classic BigD.

  I’m slowly working my way through the classics also, finding almost none that are Perfect.

  Just as you judged The Bicycle Thief Very Good, I judged another Italian classic Very Good: Fellini’s 81/2

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