7/31/2023 0 Comments Bicycle thiefAs Antonio laments to his wife about the job he has accepted (but thinks he’s already lost), Maria comes up with a thrifty solution to get the bike back. Antonio is offered a job in the city pasting posters on walls he later tells his wife, Maria (Lianella Carell), that it is a “good job” with a “family allowance”, but one that strictly requires a bicycle – something that he no longer has, having pawned it for food money. Instead, he sits hopelessly off in the distance by a dusty road, with a sparse landscape and crumbling apartments looming overhead, unaware of the bus’s arrival until one of the men from the steps runs to fetch him. Antonio Ricci’s (Lamberto Maggiorani) name is called for work, but he is nowhere to be found. 1īicycle Thieves opens with the arrival of a bus – a sign of life – and the scattering of young men who assemble and follow a government agent to the steps of a makeshift employment office. By the end of World War II, De Sica had begun to transition away from the artificiality of the sanctioned historical melodramas and romantic comedies of the time and towards a way of making films that privileged the experiences of real people. Because of the nature of the tragedy, the audience is left hanging without a resolution, and the relationship between Bruno and his father is left unsure.Ladri di biciclette ( Bicycle Thieves, 1948) marked Vittorio De Sica’s eighth directorial credit in a prolific filmmaking career, which had included work produced within the dictates of Italy’s government-controlled cinema during the time of Benito Mussolini’s Fascist regime. At the end of the film, although the audience can still sense the love between the two of them, Antonio’s pride has been lost and Bruno’s respect and admiration for his father has been challenged. The audience can still tell that Bruno respects his father up to the point that he sees his father get caught for stealing the bike. This is a low point for Antonio and he wants to still be respected by his son, so he doesn’t want him to see him steal the bike. This affection is what leads Antonio to send Bruno away from him so he can steal a bicycle in order to keep his job and provide for his family. The audience sees that Antonio is frustrated, but at this point, can still sense the love and care he has for Bruno. As the days wear on, and the search keeps coming up fruitless, the tension between Bruno and Antonio begins to rise. Through his obedience and appreciation for his father, the audience sees how much Bruno looks up to Antonio in the beginning of the film. Even immediately after Antonio’s bicycle is stolen, their relationship prevails and both father and son begin a search for the stolen bike. At the beginning, the audience sees the excitement both Antonio and his son have for the possibilities this new job gives their family. As the film progresses, the relationship between Antonio and Bruno slowly deteriorates. In terms of the father-son relationship depicted in The Bicycle Thief, this film could be considered a tragedy. Second, The Bicycle Thief also explored the evolution of the relationship between the Antonio, the father, and Bruno, the son. Although overall it seemed that while both families lived in poverty, the family in The Bicycle Thief was a little better off and de Sica didn’t portray poverty as harshly as Chaplin. Similarly, both families were treated the same by other people in the film, particularly police. The sons in each family also had to contribute in some way to provide for the rest of their families. Both fathers had to rely on a type of small, odd job in order to provide for their family because both lived in a time where neither could get a regular day job to support themselves. While there were material differences, the two families’ social status compared to others in the films seemed rather similar. The family in The Bicycle Thief however, has an apartment with multiple rooms, more than one bed, and a larger kitchen amongst other things. Their living space is only one room equipped with only a bed, a table, a chair, and a small kitchen set. In The Kid, the main characters have next to nothing in their possession. First, we had already encountered a depiction of extreme poverty in Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid, but the poverty in The Bicycle Thief was portrayed a little bit differently. There were a couple things to consider after watching the film The Bicycle Thief directed by Vittorio de Sica.
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