Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica, 1948)

INTRODUCTION

The World War II devastated the national cinemas tremendously, affecting the economic stability of the cinema industries. The Nazis destroyed prewar European economy, and setting up its own economic threshold. By the end of WWII, the Nazi economy was eliminated. Mashall Plan rebuilt the European national industries, allowing production to go on a large scale. For Italy, due to the early surrender, the production facilities were pretty much intact. For Pre-War Italian Cinema, in 1922, Benito Mussolini seized power and Italian Cinema was used as a form of propaganda, educating Italians with documentaries and newreels. He set up Cinecitta studios in Rome and in 1937, he took charge of the studios and doubled Italian production within a year. 

THEORY DISCUSSION

The Italian Neorealism was founded in 1943 by Cesare Zavattini, suggesting a new form of Italian Cinema that abolishes contrived and planned plots, use real people and locations so that direct contact is established with the contemporary social reality. The Plots are fake structures of "everyday life",the actors are contribute to the falsehood and establish connection to Contemporary Social Realism by using real locations.  

SYNOPSIS

Unemployed Antonio Ricci is elated when he finally finds work hanging posters around war-torn Rome. His wife, Maria, sells the family's bed linens to retrieve Ricci's bicycle from the pawnshop so he can take the job. However, disaster strikes when Ricci's bicycle is stolen, and his new job is doomed unless he can find the thief. With the help of his lively son, Bruno and also his several friends, Ricci combs the city, growing increasingly desperate for justice. Ricci desperate until caused him to steal the bicycle and end up he got caught.  

ANALYSIS

In this film, the shots of locations were shown as in the ruins of the post-war era. In film making, a location is any place where a film crew will be filming actors and recording their dialogues. Film makers often choose to shoot on location because they believe that greater realism can be achieved in a "real" place. In this scene, it's a long takes of locations, buildings, roads and the bridges. 

Besides, this film used the grainy film stock which giving it its newsreel look. Obviously, the visual of this film was not that clear enough to be watch. 

In addition, the socially conscious and the humanistic point of view were shown in few scenes of this film. For example, the socially conscious was shown at the first scene where Ricci was at the employment booth (disseminating job). This is the Ricci unemployed scene which show the situation of of unemployment in the post War World II. Furthermore, in the police station scene also shown the humanistic point of view. In this scene, the police was not helpful at all when Ricci went to make police report about his lost but the police do not even want to bother him as the police think that it's just a small case or crime which not worth enough for them to investigate. Not only this, the humanistic was shown in the church scene where the church offered the foods, haircut service and so on for free. This whole film also possesses the melodramatic aspects such as the background music and the sound effect was quite loud enough.

  

Ricci is an useless husband and father in this film. In the beginning of this film, her wife was asked whether Ricci could get a job and she's carrying a water bucket at that moment. All along the way they back home, Ricci not even help his wife to cary the water bucket but just letting his wife carry the water bucket for so long. Besides, he also show the characteristics of a useless father where Ricci was focusing on looking for his bicycle until he do not know his son was fell down at the street. He has never been concerned about his son's health at all when he asked his son to look for his bicycle for whole day even when it's rainy day. What he want is just to get back his bicycle but at the same time, he already neglected his own son. 

Last but not least, this film also emphasis on the present. From the beginning of this film, Ricci get his job and her wife exchange her bedsheet and got some money to get back their bicycle. Unfortunately, Ricci lost his bicycle on the second day which also his first day of working. When the third day, Ricci, his son and his several friends were looking for the bicycle but at the end still cannot find it. 

CONCLUSION 

As a conclusion, the points mentioned above were combined in order to make an Italian Neorealism film. Those points were actually the characteristics of the Italian Neorealism film. Even the film was in black and white but all the elements included could bring out different meaning to the audiences as well.