The Bicycle Thief Essay

The movie “The bicycle thief” is a neorealist Italian drama. The protagonist of the plot is an unemployed man, Antonio Ricci. The movie aptly depicts the state of post-world economic unrest. The lack of job opportunities resulted is alienation of labour, which Marx considers to be a state where labour is external to the worker. Under such a situation work is just a tool for survival. Given an option the worker would prefer not to work. This gives us the idea that such a kind of labour is more inclined towards being termed as coercion than that of the free will. As a prey to circumstances, the young boy, Bruno is forced to resort to child labour. He is deprived of a normal childhood that he would have had otherwise.
The story takes off with Antonio getting a job. He is appointed to hang up poster on the streets. But the catch is he needs a cycle to fulfil the job’s requisite. At that moment his bicycle was at the pawn-shop, but Antonio's wife Maria says they could pawn their six sheets instead. The first day at work Antonio's bicycle gets stolen. Antonio is devastated and rushes to the police station in order to seek help and report the stolen. He is taken aback by the Officer’s reckless attitude towards him. He is not taken seriously but to …show more content…
On his way back home Antonio is tempted to steal a cycle for himself, falling prey to vicious cycle of poverty. The materialist doctrine states that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of other circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men who change circumstances and that it is essential to educate the educator himself. Hence this doctrine necessarily arrives at dividing society into two parts, one of which is superior to society. The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionising