The Bicycle Thieves: Film with Profound Influence
In a film career spanning almost 35 years, De Sica eminently succeeded in adding many fresh dimensions to the seventh art. But, for The Bicycle Thieves alone he is assured of immortality, writes Vidyarthy Chatterjee
Bicycle Thieves (1948)
One of the founding fathers of the neo-realist movement in cinema (along with, notably, Roberto Rossellini, Luchino Visconti and the ideologue, Cesare Zavattini), Vittorio de Sica is known primarily for the moving ‘trilogy of solitude’ he made in the period 1946-1952.
Shoeshine, The Bicycle Thieves and Umberto D. took a close and compassionate look at the deceived and deprived lives of individuals in the city’s lower depths in the aftermath of World War II. The economic and moral crisis of the upheaval left a deep imprint on De Sica’s sensitive and cultured mind which, in turn, came to be reflected in the trilogy.
Shoeshine (1946) is about two young boys, Pascale and Giuseppe, who survive the cruel war days by shining shoes. They are good friends who share in many small-time adventures, but one day they are arrested and put in a reformatory for juvenile offenders where their trials really begin. They make a desperate bid for freedom and manage to escape but they cannot ward off their tragic destiny. In the film, De Sica dramatically shows the corruption of youthful innocence by the adult world. Its bleakness and almost unrelieved gloom endorse the view that while men fight and win or lose wars, the worst sufferers in any war are unprotected children (and equally vulnerable womenfolk). It is difficult to think of Shoeshine without its condemnation of the ideology of war.
In contrast, The Bicycle Thieves (1948) ends on a note of assertion of the human spirit which, when the film was made, seemed weighed down heavily by the material and psychological consequences of the World War, particularly for those on the losing side. The film’s protagonist, Antonio, is an impoverished worker who finds himself offered the chance to hang posters, but for the job he must have a bicycle. After selling or pawning everything he owns, including the family linen, he manages to buy one, only to have it stolen. Accompanied by his small boy, Bruno, Antonio scours the urban wilderness for the thief and his bicycle — but to no avail. Meanwhile, the ultimate humiliation awaits Antonio which he overcomes by virtue of a divine moment of unspoken solidarity with his little son.
For six decades, The Bicycle Thieves has had the kind of international influence that any filmmaker of class would give his life for. The views of at least two unabashed lovers of this great human, artistic and political document may be recalled. At home, the role that De Sica’s film played in helping Satyajit Ray decide to become a filmmaker is by now a part of the folklore of serious Indian cinema.
It was during a visit to London in 1949 that Ray first saw The Bicycle Thieves and felt immediately attracted to it. It gave him the confidence he needed to use non-professionals as well as outdoor locations (for Pather Panchali). In years to follow, Ray was to see the works of other neo-realist masters but, as he was to repeatedly say, for him De Sica represented the highest achievements of Italian neo-realist cinema. His admiration was particularly reserved for The Bicycle Thieves, and some years before his death he told the documentarist K Bikram Singh how he always marvelled at De Sica’s eye for detail; his ability to cram a wealth of information in a single shot, etc.
Among renowned film scholars, perhaps no one has been more enthusiastic in his praise of The Bicycle Thieves than Andre Bazin, the intellectual and ideological guru of the Cahiers group which, in the ‘Sixties, produced the French nouvelle vague and took the film world by storm. Calling the film an exalted specimen of pure cinema, Bazin underlined the absence of professional artists, the absence of sets and the bare presence of a storyline. He wrote more than one long essay justifying why he thought The Bicycle Thieves to be the ‘only valid Communist film of the whole past decade’, meaning the ‘Forties.
De Sica rounded off his celebrated trilogy with the story of Umberto Domenico Ferrari, an old-age pensioner who finds it a devastating experience to make two ends meet on a miserable government dole. As Umberto D. (1952) wanders the city with just his pet dog for company, he has no choice but to confront the utter moral and material destitution to which he has been reduced by forces beyond his comprehension. This masterpiece, which was easily recognised as such by Bazin and stoutly defended by him in the face of severe opposition from right-wing newspapers in both Rome and Paris, was especially close to De Sica’s heart. For one thing, it was made with his own money.
More importantly, the film reflected beliefs and commitments that De Sica held dear. The director refused to leaven the starkness of the old man’s life in the midst of an unrelenting society by taking recourse to any emotional concession. Great as The Bicycle Thieves is as both art and politics, its chances of popular acceptance were enhanced by the innocent sufferings of the child Bruno and his sad yet loving relationship with his father. There was no such element of relief, if that is the right word to use, in the saga of the old man who, swallowing his pride and dignity, is compelled to fall back on varied tricks to save himself from going under.
In between The Bicycle Thieves and Umberto D., De Sica made what he called ‘a fable (where) my only intention is to attempt telling a twentieth-century fairy tale’. In the amazingly lyrical Miracle in Milan (1950), De Sica renounced for a while his preoccupation with neo-realism. His hitherto quiet but moving struggle with the nitty-gritty of life as faced by the lowest common denominator is replaced here by a fantasy so fantastic as never to have been equalled by anyone attempting anything similar. Recently, I was amazed to find a film from Israel called The New Land, paying tribute to Miracle in Milan in many unmistakable ways. Verily, masters die, but their works stay on…
Miracle in Milan is populated by an assortment of characters who are often as crazy and colourful as they are desolate and deprived. They are residents of a shanty town who try to resist their expulsion by a group of powerful landowners who want to clear the place and put up buildings and factories. Chased away from their homes, the vagrants’ search for a welcoming place causes them to climb skywards. In a visually stunning denouement, these mythical characters escape poverty by flying over the city of Milan on magic broomsticks. A work of heightened imagination, the film can be read as a paean to the magic and miracle of cinema which allows free admittance to even the poor and powerless to the realm of gorgeous wish-fulfilment. At the same time, it can be taken as an oblique condemnation of the philistinism and bourgeois greed with which commercial centres like Milan were and are associated.
Neo-realism never really deserted De Sica, or it could be put the other way round. Like a refrain, it would surface again and again in his films, sometimes even when he dealt with less distressful subjects. The theme of young couples in trouble, fleeting reflections of which are to be seen in the opening passages of The Bicycle Thieves, was repeatedly tackled by De Sica. Into stories of conjugal difficulties, frequently stemming from unemployment or poverty, De Sica deftly wove those aspects of his political and intellectual credo that viewers had first observed in his films of the late ‘Forties and the early ‘Fifties. Il Tetto (1956), the story of a young homeless couple’s desperate dream to build a house in a single night, carried perceptions dating back to the more obvious neo-realist period.
The first half of the ‘Sixties was a prolific period in De Sica’s career when he made no less than half a dozen films. These were varied in subject, style, mood and texture. One poked fun at human vulnerability in the face of religious insistence; another was plain naughty with erotic story-telling as its principal prop.
But it was with Il Boom (1963) that the maestro caused a round of renewed interest in his films. A victim of financial difficulties, a once-wealthy contractor is on the verge of bankruptcy and scandal. Despairing, he contemplates suicide. However, when he learns that an industrialist who has lost an eye is offering an astronomical sum to whoever will give him his, he is gripped by euphoria. He hopes in this manner not to lose his social position, but he has not given any thought to the possibility that his dream might go up in smoke. Il Boom was neo-realism with a twist in that it examined the privileged class from a new angle, giving a view of the psychology of someone who had been rich but had been reduced to dire straits by circumstances.
Vittorio de Sica did not live long into the seventh decade of the last century, but he was restive and creative till the very end. In fact, he made a film even in the year he died in the French town of Neuilly sur Seine at age 73. In a film career spanning almost 35 years, De Sica eminently succeeded in adding many fresh dimensions to the seventh art. But, for The Bicycle Thieves alone he is assured of immortality.
First published in the Economic Times
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BTW the name of the movie is “The bicycle thief” and NOT thieves
Rahul, both the titles are equally valid. None of them are incorrect.
A great tribute to a great filmmaker….
THis is one of the few films I never tire of seeing. A great, visionary, humanistic piece of art!
By the way, Rahul has a point. Either you say “The Bicycle Thief” or “Bicycle Thieves”.
“The Bicycle Thieves” doesn’t make any sense at all: such a title would imply you are making a film about all the bicycle thieves in the world in general.
And to differ from most, I only thought of “The Bicycle Thief” as a wasted opportunity: such a great theme, and yet such a poorly constructed film. It was very, very much half-baked for me. I am sorry I just don’t call something great just because all the ten people standing next to me say it great.
Well, as you rightly put it “to differ from most”, if that’s the reason, fair enough. Otherwise, a film that not only brought a whole new perspective to cinema but inspired a series of filmmakers right from Ray to more recently Anurag Kashyap at home and a generation of Iranian, European, African, Latin American filmmakers–and still continues to inspire– is anything but “a wasted opportunity.”
Nothing changes if you find it “half baked”.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to convince you that it’s a great film, however, without your approval, it continues to remain one of the greatest films in the history of cinema, maybe not for you, but who cares!
We can definately take this discussion forward, however, “I just don’t call something great just because all the ten people standing next to me say it great” doesn’t even qualify to be called an argument!
Cheers!
Yes Bikas, in fact I doubt whether a majority of cinema goers today would have patience to appreciate the beauty of this film. At a screening of La Dolce Vita a few years back at Siri Fort, many people in the hall found it boring! So I guess it is we who are in a minority appreciating these forgotten classics.
I am not a film historian–so how many directors did the film influence doesn’t interest me at all. Or what grounds it broke. If I see a 1920s “The Wind” I still see something great there: and not just because it brought something which wasn’t brought before. The power is still there. That takes your first “argument”, Bikas.
The second, none of my comments were arguments. It was nothing more than a personal opinion. Regarding “who cares”, I think then that you do have a poor opinion of readers. I am not a film critic, none of us here are (if you labour under a delusion, let me just clear that up for you): I am simply a movie reviewer, the poorer and far-removed cousin of a film critic. As you read reviews, you begin to identify with a reviewer: just as I find people who do not go to see a film just because Nikhat Kazmi hasn’t given it enough stars. And my job here is to do just that: give a personal comment. So that people who identify with me up till now, if any, do know what I’ve to say regarding this particular film.
Style and inspiration doesn’t prove the worth of a film or even the director, by the way. I guess that’s something on a different plane altogether, and anyway I’m not going to discuss it here at all. I am not the approver of something here; if you consider yourself or this web site in such a light, Bikas, then nothing remains more to be said. You’ve got to learn whar reviewing is.
No, I too don’t want any further discussion. I have become too tired of the same fingers pointed in the same fashions. Just Aniruddha, stop reviewing Munnabhais and Yuvraajs if you really feel oh-so-touchy for those “forgotten classics”. No further comments from me on this, so better you also don’t waste energies in answering me.
This is normal. How many people today have the patience to read Divine Comedy, or even Petrarcan Sonnet? Or even a modern poem? Life has taken a pace unknown in human history. Attention span has changed with that. Filmmakers of course ‘read’ the classics the way a great author reads grammar and prosody, or a nano-technologist the quantum theory. But, a teenager girl who uses an ipod or a laptop cares zero for the working principles, let alone the beauty in their pattern. This whole argument looks pointless to me from that perspective.
The definitions and distance between film reviewer, film critic and film theorist are however a hot and relevant topic, not only in India, but everywhere in the world wherever there’s a film school and a film industry. Definition of ‘definition’ = the common consensus (among people professionally and/or seriously involved in the related field) on the description of a phenomenon (object, idea, process etc). Someone may cancel this definition. In that case, I’d love to know what s/he means by definition.
My definition of a soccer-game can be ‘it’s an act of fun in bed in which two persons of different sexes are physically involved (etc etc).’ But that’s not soccer. People will outright reject my definition of soccer.
Anyway, I see I’ve already started treading on dangerous territory. So, I choose to refrain for the moment.
@Bicycle Thieves
I think somehow the British started it. And in our country it was Ray who always referred to the film as ‘Bicycle Thieves’. I wonder why it was so. The original name was Ladri di Biciclette, which should translate to Bicycle Thief. But, there was a reason why it was pluralized. Interested reader may check this link for a plausible answer (just roll on till you get to the discussion on the film, after the credits and the bibliography.) http://www.filmreference.com/Films-Kr-Le/Ladri-di-Biciclette.html
Nice comment anirban. Patience is clearly not one of the virtues of the new generation
Also. I think its becoming a bit of a fad to dimiss yesteryears classics as “outdated” or irrelevant.
I was just reading the short essay titled “Film Making” in Ray’s “Our Films, Their Films”. At the end of the second paragraph, he comes to agree with a definition of cinema as the “highest form of commercial art.” And yes, cinema was never really personal. It could never afford to be. It was born as a consumable commodity, in the age of capitalism. We know of another art form, namely architecture, that was a commodity (something to be used, something with a functionality). But that was not an art form of the capitalist era. And we know of another art form, like photography, which was also a daughter of capitalism, but unlike cinema which was a personal form of expression. We must not forget cinema was always an industry, and even more so today (even after wide availability of cheap prosumer video cameras, editing suites and pirated softwares.)
Like any other commodity, film can be reviewed too. And that can’t be much different from a coffee review (recently I wrote a few such coffee, cigar and wine reviews, and that was a really interesting experience — a new kind of writing). But, at the same time, films can be reviewed in some other different ways — the way we review a poem, or a piece of music. Or it can be reviewed at the level of its technicalities — plot structure, mode of narration, ploys used for the narration, use of subtext, editing style, choice of lenses and camera movement, framing, choice of lighting, sound characteristics, use of live sound, sound-visual conflicts, choice of decor, art direction, make up, choice of locations etc (these things themselves can make four or more different types of reviews). And then it can be reviewed on the basis of its narrative, taking it as a cultural text (which places the review properly in the realm of culture studies). Each of these reviews is valid, and can rightfully be called a ‘review”. Moreover, all these can be packed in a single review, depending on the writer’s style, the channel through which the review will be published, and the proposed readers.
I guess, in a ‘free’ site like DearCinema, all sorts of reviews are welcome. When it is possible to satisfy all kinds of readers, on the net, I see no need to focus much. Is it really necessary to have a very focused target audience on the net (I’m writing this remembering the concept of ‘clutter’)? Instead, can’t there be something for anyone, any kind of reader interested in some discussion on cinema — simply, anyone who can read?
humm….. LADRI means THIEVES… an “i” is used for plural, just like we use the “s”. The singular form is ladro. even google translator can tell you all that