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Neorealism is a movement especially in Italian filmmaking characterized by the simple direct depiction of lower-class life. De Sica's finest achievement is bringing the previously ignored working classes to the screen. His primary aim in the Bicycle Thieves was to use the camera to show how people lived. The non-professional actors give fine performances and lend the film a documentary-like air, even though the narrative itself is fictional.
A crowd forms in front of a government employment agency, as it does every day, waiting - often in vain - for job announcements. one of the unemployed laborers who participates in this daily ritual, is selected to hang posters in the city, a job requiring a bicycle, which he has long sold in order to sustain his family's meager existence for a few more days. He and his wife, return to the pawn shop with a few remaining possessions, their matrimonial linen, in order to redeem the bicycle. During his first day at his new work, his bicycle is stolen. He combs the city with his young son, in search of the elusive bicycle. The movie focuses on both the relationship between the father and the son and the larger framework of poverty and unemployment in postwar …show more content…
A singular camera shot follows an employee climbing several stories of pawned linen in order to store another acquisition. A panning film sequence in a restaurant juxtaposes the father and son "feasting" on bread and mozzarella with an affluent family dining nearby. A long, travelling shot of a street bazaar shows Antonio and Bruno searching through an endless sea of nondescript bicycles, all presumably stolen. "The Bicycle Thief" is an honest examination of a soul torn by responsibility and moral consequence, a simple man incapable of articulating his pain, a film devoid of the proselytizing tirades endemic to the rose-colored lenses of contemporary Hollywood. "The Bicycle Thief" is the story of humanity, in all its imperfect beauty and heartbreaking cruelty, the quintessential definition of an artistic masterpiece...truly a cinematic
A crowd forms in front of a government employment agency, as it does every day, waiting - often in vain - for job announcements. one of the unemployed laborers who participates in this daily ritual, is selected to hang posters in the city, a job requiring a bicycle, which he has long sold in order to sustain his family's meager existence for a few more days. He and his wife, return to the pawn shop with a few remaining possessions, their matrimonial linen, in order to redeem the bicycle. During his first day at his new work, his bicycle is stolen. He combs the city with his young son, in search of the elusive bicycle. The movie focuses on both the relationship between the father and the son and the larger framework of poverty and unemployment in postwar …show more content…
A singular camera shot follows an employee climbing several stories of pawned linen in order to store another acquisition. A panning film sequence in a restaurant juxtaposes the father and son "feasting" on bread and mozzarella with an affluent family dining nearby. A long, travelling shot of a street bazaar shows Antonio and Bruno searching through an endless sea of nondescript bicycles, all presumably stolen. "The Bicycle Thief" is an honest examination of a soul torn by responsibility and moral consequence, a simple man incapable of articulating his pain, a film devoid of the proselytizing tirades endemic to the rose-colored lenses of contemporary Hollywood. "The Bicycle Thief" is the story of humanity, in all its imperfect beauty and heartbreaking cruelty, the quintessential definition of an artistic masterpiece...truly a cinematic