It's been half a century since the maestro, Vittorio De Sica, created the undisputed masterpiece of Italian neo-realism in the chaotic streets of post-war Rome. The Bicycle Thief, which begins a fiftieth-anniversary revival this Friday at the Mayan, was made on a minuscule budget, using a pair of aging cameras, a tiny cast of non-actors and a new esthetic forged by war and disillusionment. If the film feels a little musty these days, its understanding of the human condition remains unsurpassed.
What perfect simplicity. An impoverished man, Antonio, finds a job posting bills advertising American movies. But his family's well-being is endangered when his bicycle is stolen. Without transportaion, he will lose his job and have no prospect for another. So the desperate father and his nine-year-old son, Bruno, set out into the harsh, indifferent city to find the bicycle--with profoundly tragic results. The film's dramatic economy and visual authenticity have lost nothing to time.
That a prospective producer of The Bicycle Thief, Hollywood mogul David O. Selznick, insisted that suave matinee idol Cary Grant play the lead is one of the fine comic ironies in movie history. That De Sica instead cast Lamberto Maggiorani, an anonymous Roman factory worker, is one of the glories. That Selznick wanted an American child star in the role of the boy is hilarious; that De Sica found an unaffected cherub named Enzo Staiola in a Roman back-alley is less a miracle than a tribute to the director's perseverance. These were not actors in the traditional sense--they were people who, under De Sica's gentle guidance, the French critic Andre Bazin once wrote, achieved "a transparency seemingly as natural as life itself."
Moviegoers who cherish The Bicycle Thief all have their favorite moments. A week never passes when I don't recall two of mine.
In the first, father and son indulge a rare luxury by going to a restaurant. There, little Bruno finds himself face to face with a boy at the next table. Their eyes lock, and in an instant the differences between them are crystal clear. Bruno is poor and disheveled, the other child spruced up in his dinner suit. Antonio and Bruno have but bread to eat, the other table is laden with hot soup and meat. In the wordless gaze of the two boys we understand the pitiless gulf between have and have-not in war-ravaged Rome--and throughout history.
Inevitably, the other unforgettable scene is the final one. Driven to desperation, the frustrated father who cannot recover his stolen bicycle steals a bicycle himself. But a crowd quickly chases him down, and he is pummeled in the street. When the bike's owner sees little Bruno, sympathy siezes him and he lets Antonio go. But irreparable damage has been done: The father's public humiliation is nothing next to the shame of having his worshipful son witness it. In despair, Antonio begins to weep. In the end, they walk together into the indifferent crowd, and the boy slips his hand into his father's hand. It is a gesture not just of sympathy but of resignation: They are partners in tragedy now.
This great example of the filmmaker's art is not De Sica's achievement alone: Cesare Zavattini's lean script (from a novel by Luigi Bartolini), the fluid black-and-white cinematography of Carlo Montuori and Allesandro Cigognini's wrenching musical score heighten every emotion, and the "performances" of Maggiorani and Staiola, while not the first by non-professionals, changed forever the concept of movie acting. In this age of synthetic emotion and canned special effects, it's a profound pleasure to revisit an experience so unbearably real.
--Gallo
The Bicycle Thief.
Directed by Vittorio De Sica. Screenplay by Cesare Zavattini. Starring Lamberto Maggiorani and Enzo Staiola.
