Bicycle Thieves : National and Historical Context of its Production
By Barnaby Falck
The Bicycle Thieves is the story of Antonio Ricci, a working class man who after a long period of time desperately searching for work, finally gets a job posting advertising bills. However in order to get the job he must have a bicycle, which he lies about and then has to sell his own bed sheets to be able to buy a bike for the job. On his first day on the job, the bicycle is stolen, which leads him, and eventually his son, on a search for the bike that ends in Antonio becoming so desperate the he steals someone else’s bike.
The Bicycle Thieves has been described as perfectly capturing the difficult economic and moral conditions of Italy post World War 2, not only in its story, but also in how it presents itself (Gordon, p.3). The film is generally accepted as being the most well-known and one of the most highly rated films of the Italian Neo-Realist movement (Wagstaff, p.34). In order to look at the national context of The Bicycle Thieves, and to explore why it perfectly captures the economic and moral conditions of Italy at the time, it is essentially that we first take a look at earlier forms of Italian cinema and at the origins of the Italian Neo-realist movement.
Before Benito Mussolini and his Fascist party took power, Italy was one of the most prestigious film-making countries in the world. It produced some of the first “blockbuster” films in cinema history, such as Enrico Guazzone’s Quo Vadis (1912) and Giovanni Pastrone’s Cabriria (1914) (Thompson, p.461). Not only was Italian cinema at this time one of the most influential, but it was also one of the most experimental, producing films inspired by “Futurism” and also many films like Nino Martoglio’s Lost in Darkness (1914), which is often considered one of the precursor’s to the Neorealist movement (Thompson, p.461). However, due to the financial cost of the First World War, mixed with rising foreign competition in the years after the war, Italian cinema started to rapidly decline (Day, p.1). It was at this exact same time, following the great financial strain of the First World War that left Italy nearly bankrupt, and the rise of foreign industrial competition, that lead to the rise of the Fascist Party. Once the Fascists took power in 1922, they immediately imposed tight censorship on all cinema, which only increased with the advent of sound films, which reached Italy in 1930 with Gennaro Righelli’s The Song of Love (Day, p.1). However the rise in censorship does not mean that the Fascist party didn’t support cinema, in fact Italian Cinema continued to grow during this period and huge amounts of government resources went into the Italian film industry (Day, p.1). ‘Il Cinema e l’arma piu forte’ – ‘Cinema is the most powerful weapon’ was the motto under which the Cinecitta studio were created (Ventresca, p.104). The first of these Cincettia studios was commissioned in 1934 and completed in 1937. The goal of these studios was that they were to be a ‘Cinema City’, providing aspiring film-makers a place to learn and create films (Ventresca, p.105). These Cincettia films are often seen by many as just mass producing Fascist propaganda, and while this is true in many aspects, they also helped boost connections between different film-makers in Italy, helped re-energize the Italian film industry as a whole, and also stimulated a lot of cultural interaction (Day, p. 1). Italian cinema became dependent on these Cincettia film studios (Marcus, p.36). However, with the rise of the Cincettia’s, censorship laws became even harsher. It is often said that the Italian neo-realist movement actually began during this period with many film critics of the time (such as Visconti, Puccini, Zavattini etc), who as a form of protest against censorship laws and against the government criticised these new high budget films as not focusing on real world issues (Marcus, p.42).
In 1945, Benito Mussolini was killed and his Nazi allies were forced from Italy by the advancing allied forces. Italy was left devastated by 5 years of almost constant warfare. Italian infrastructure had been heavily bombed throughout the entire war, including the Cincettia studios, in fact, these studios had been so heavily damaged by Allied bombing that they were un-usable (Ventresca, p.114). Italian cinema was forced to evolve, which it did. From the moment the Fascist government fell, many film-makers took to the street to start making new films (Thompson, p.333). Since it was impossible to shoot on the streets and ignore the great social challenges that Italy was facing (almost every Italian city suffered a great deal in bombings), films started focusing on everyday aspects of Italian life, such as poverty, oppression, injustice and desperation (Rocchio, p.58). These new conditions to making films; being forced to take to the streets to make films and focusing on more real world events signified two things. First of all, it showed that the harsh censorship laws of the Fascist government were gone. Secondly, it represented the arrival of Italian Neo-realist cinema. Italian Neo-realism was not only influenced by the social conditions in Italy, but also had a number of artistic predecessors that helped shape and influence it. The works of Alessandro Blasetti, Nino Martoglio and Jean Renoir played huge roles in the creation of Italian neo-realism, especially Renoir in how he moved away from the traditional melodrama that film at the time was preoccupied with and instead focused on more real world issues (Bondanella, p.46). However, perhaps the biggest influence on neo-realism were the documentary style films of Francesco De Robertis (Marcus, p.41).
All of these influences are clearly visable within the Bicycle Thieves. Vittorio De Sica was originally a theatre actor in the early 1920’s. After the Fascist government took power, he started his own theatre company, which mostly focused on light hearted comedies (Wagstaff, p.204). De Sica is often said to represent many Italians of his day, especially those who focused on artistic professions (Gordon, p.3). He was a self-proclaimed Roman Catholic, as were most in Italy at the time, however his life was also filled with a lot of ‘vice’; he was a heavily gambler and this often put him in great financial difficulty (Wagstaff, p.204). Some aspects of his own personal life would end up in the Bicycle Thieves. In fact, Bicycle Thieves is often said to be a very sentimental film, albeit mixed with a lot of social commentary (Gordon, p.3). De Sica had two main intentions with The Bicycle Thieves. His first intention is that he wanted to represent everyday Italian life in post war Italy, while also telling a story (Wagstaff, p.217). The story of The Bicycle Thieves is comparable with almost every single working class Italian of the time, life was extremely difficult and filled with poverty, oppression, injustice and desperation. In true Italian Neo-realist style, De Sica shot on the streets of Rome and used non-professional actors, often just finding people off the streets to play the major parts of the film. Filming in the streets of Rome had the effect of showing the extent of devastation that Rome was still feeling in 1948, while using non-professional actors gave the film a sense of personal stakes and attachment to a story that the actors, especially lead actor Lamberto Maggiorani, had probably already experienced (Wagstaff, p.218-19).
De Sica’s second intention with the film is that he wanted to show the political chaos that was going on in Italy at the time (Wagstaff, p.217). The film was made in the lead up to the Italian general elections of 1948. After over 20 years of Fascist rule, the Italian people had a chance to choose their leaders, and it was a race between the two parties that people were now putting their hopes in, the Communists and the Christian Democrats. Both Catholicism and Communism had been supressed during Fascist rule (although Catholicism had merely been repressed while Communists were often killed), but post-World War 2, many people were ready to put their faith in both, with many people being up in arms about which was the correct way forward for Italy (Ventresca, p.239).
Everything that we’ve been exploring through the establishment of Italian Neo-realism and Vittoria De Sica’s own intentions with the film, can be seen through details within The Bicycle Thieves, both through the progression of events in the story and through many background details. Many of the themes of the film can be directly paralleled with the real Italy of the time.
A major theme of the film is desperation, which is perfectly represented within the film in four moments. First of all, near the beginning of the film, a group of people are standing amongst the rubble of a housing district, desperately waiting for a man to give them news on who has received a job. When Antonio Ricci’s name is called, he is nowhere to be seen. He is found nearby, sleeping amongst the rubble, bathing in the sun. He has reached a point where he is no longer expecting to receive a job. This shows how desperate and wide spread unemployment was in Italy at the time. The added touch of showing Antonio sleeping amongst the rubble shows the devastation that Rome has been through. Since this entire film is shot on location, the audience gets to see that even though the war has been over for three years, Rome remains in ruins in many places (Rocchio, p.67). The second case of desperation is shown when Antonio goes to accept his job, and he is told that to be able to do the job he needs to have a bicycle from the first day. Antonio lies, saying that he has a bicycle, even though he will not have to money to afford a bicycle until after he has been payed by the job that requires him to get a bicycle. He goes home, and after consulting with his wife, they are forced to sell their bed sheets to be able to afford the bike. Again, something not unusual to the average working class family of the time. The next two cases of desperation are two classic representations of those in economic stress in film; violence and theft (Marcus, p.87). After Antonio’s bike is stolen, he searches the entire city for his bike. At two points in the film he thinks he’s found the person who stole his bike, and in one case, he chases the suspect all the way to his home and tries to start a fight with him. This results in Antonio being forcefully being ejected from the neighbourhood. This begins Antonio’s spiral into full desperation, were he decides that the only way he’s going to be able to work the next day is by stealing somebody else’s bike. Once again these are the moral conditions that many people in Rome and the rest of Italy would have been facing at the time (Marcus, p.88).
There is a point in the film where Antonio thinks that his young son, Bruno, is drowning. He stares in horror as someone is dragged from a River dead, however he is relieved that it is not his son, and he simply goes on with his day. All the people who removed the body from the river, do not seem particularly concerned that someone has just died. The people at Rome would have been so used to widespread death, as people continued to die in large numbers even after the war had finished (Ventresco p.121).
Economic responsibility contrasting with moral responsibility is shown as a major factor at many points in the film, one that is particularly hard hitting is when Antonio loses his temper and hits his son, and decided that to make up for it he is going to take them both to a restaurant, a luxury that only higher classes of citizens would have been able to really afford. It is this sacrifice of economic stability for personal pleasure that was a huge issue at the time, with the rise of capitalism in Italy (Rocchio, p.72).
The film also shows the average Italians dependence in the two biggest movements of the time, Communism and Catholicism, and how many people took the benefits of both movements, but did not truly participate in them because they were truly desperate. Antonio seeks help in his communist friends and uses them to help get his bike back so he can benefit himself and his family, not his fellow communists. One of the people that helped steal Antonio’s bike is seen going to a church service merely so that he can get some food and a shave, something that would have been very difficult for him to achieve outside of church. He willingly accepts the gifts, but only half-heartedly goes to the church service (Marcus, p.90-93).
The Bicycle Thieves is an extremely important film to both Italy and International cinema. The film is a benchmark in the works of Italian Neo-realism, perfectly capturing all the traits of this movement of cinema (Gordon, p.4). It is also an extremely important film within the context of its own country, as it came about after years of censorship and it is perhaps one of the finest examples of real life at the time being represented in film, without being a documentary. It tells a story that would not be uncommon to the average Italian of the time, and sets it against the background of urban Rome, showing the underlying social changes that were shaping and evolving an un-certain Italy into what it would become today.
The Bicycle Thieves has been described as perfectly capturing the difficult economic and moral conditions of Italy post World War 2, not only in its story, but also in how it presents itself (Gordon, p.3). The film is generally accepted as being the most well-known and one of the most highly rated films of the Italian Neo-Realist movement (Wagstaff, p.34). In order to look at the national context of The Bicycle Thieves, and to explore why it perfectly captures the economic and moral conditions of Italy at the time, it is essentially that we first take a look at earlier forms of Italian cinema and at the origins of the Italian Neo-realist movement.
Before Benito Mussolini and his Fascist party took power, Italy was one of the most prestigious film-making countries in the world. It produced some of the first “blockbuster” films in cinema history, such as Enrico Guazzone’s Quo Vadis (1912) and Giovanni Pastrone’s Cabriria (1914) (Thompson, p.461). Not only was Italian cinema at this time one of the most influential, but it was also one of the most experimental, producing films inspired by “Futurism” and also many films like Nino Martoglio’s Lost in Darkness (1914), which is often considered one of the precursor’s to the Neorealist movement (Thompson, p.461). However, due to the financial cost of the First World War, mixed with rising foreign competition in the years after the war, Italian cinema started to rapidly decline (Day, p.1). It was at this exact same time, following the great financial strain of the First World War that left Italy nearly bankrupt, and the rise of foreign industrial competition, that lead to the rise of the Fascist Party. Once the Fascists took power in 1922, they immediately imposed tight censorship on all cinema, which only increased with the advent of sound films, which reached Italy in 1930 with Gennaro Righelli’s The Song of Love (Day, p.1). However the rise in censorship does not mean that the Fascist party didn’t support cinema, in fact Italian Cinema continued to grow during this period and huge amounts of government resources went into the Italian film industry (Day, p.1). ‘Il Cinema e l’arma piu forte’ – ‘Cinema is the most powerful weapon’ was the motto under which the Cinecitta studio were created (Ventresca, p.104). The first of these Cincettia studios was commissioned in 1934 and completed in 1937. The goal of these studios was that they were to be a ‘Cinema City’, providing aspiring film-makers a place to learn and create films (Ventresca, p.105). These Cincettia films are often seen by many as just mass producing Fascist propaganda, and while this is true in many aspects, they also helped boost connections between different film-makers in Italy, helped re-energize the Italian film industry as a whole, and also stimulated a lot of cultural interaction (Day, p. 1). Italian cinema became dependent on these Cincettia film studios (Marcus, p.36). However, with the rise of the Cincettia’s, censorship laws became even harsher. It is often said that the Italian neo-realist movement actually began during this period with many film critics of the time (such as Visconti, Puccini, Zavattini etc), who as a form of protest against censorship laws and against the government criticised these new high budget films as not focusing on real world issues (Marcus, p.42).
In 1945, Benito Mussolini was killed and his Nazi allies were forced from Italy by the advancing allied forces. Italy was left devastated by 5 years of almost constant warfare. Italian infrastructure had been heavily bombed throughout the entire war, including the Cincettia studios, in fact, these studios had been so heavily damaged by Allied bombing that they were un-usable (Ventresca, p.114). Italian cinema was forced to evolve, which it did. From the moment the Fascist government fell, many film-makers took to the street to start making new films (Thompson, p.333). Since it was impossible to shoot on the streets and ignore the great social challenges that Italy was facing (almost every Italian city suffered a great deal in bombings), films started focusing on everyday aspects of Italian life, such as poverty, oppression, injustice and desperation (Rocchio, p.58). These new conditions to making films; being forced to take to the streets to make films and focusing on more real world events signified two things. First of all, it showed that the harsh censorship laws of the Fascist government were gone. Secondly, it represented the arrival of Italian Neo-realist cinema. Italian Neo-realism was not only influenced by the social conditions in Italy, but also had a number of artistic predecessors that helped shape and influence it. The works of Alessandro Blasetti, Nino Martoglio and Jean Renoir played huge roles in the creation of Italian neo-realism, especially Renoir in how he moved away from the traditional melodrama that film at the time was preoccupied with and instead focused on more real world issues (Bondanella, p.46). However, perhaps the biggest influence on neo-realism were the documentary style films of Francesco De Robertis (Marcus, p.41).
All of these influences are clearly visable within the Bicycle Thieves. Vittorio De Sica was originally a theatre actor in the early 1920’s. After the Fascist government took power, he started his own theatre company, which mostly focused on light hearted comedies (Wagstaff, p.204). De Sica is often said to represent many Italians of his day, especially those who focused on artistic professions (Gordon, p.3). He was a self-proclaimed Roman Catholic, as were most in Italy at the time, however his life was also filled with a lot of ‘vice’; he was a heavily gambler and this often put him in great financial difficulty (Wagstaff, p.204). Some aspects of his own personal life would end up in the Bicycle Thieves. In fact, Bicycle Thieves is often said to be a very sentimental film, albeit mixed with a lot of social commentary (Gordon, p.3). De Sica had two main intentions with The Bicycle Thieves. His first intention is that he wanted to represent everyday Italian life in post war Italy, while also telling a story (Wagstaff, p.217). The story of The Bicycle Thieves is comparable with almost every single working class Italian of the time, life was extremely difficult and filled with poverty, oppression, injustice and desperation. In true Italian Neo-realist style, De Sica shot on the streets of Rome and used non-professional actors, often just finding people off the streets to play the major parts of the film. Filming in the streets of Rome had the effect of showing the extent of devastation that Rome was still feeling in 1948, while using non-professional actors gave the film a sense of personal stakes and attachment to a story that the actors, especially lead actor Lamberto Maggiorani, had probably already experienced (Wagstaff, p.218-19).
De Sica’s second intention with the film is that he wanted to show the political chaos that was going on in Italy at the time (Wagstaff, p.217). The film was made in the lead up to the Italian general elections of 1948. After over 20 years of Fascist rule, the Italian people had a chance to choose their leaders, and it was a race between the two parties that people were now putting their hopes in, the Communists and the Christian Democrats. Both Catholicism and Communism had been supressed during Fascist rule (although Catholicism had merely been repressed while Communists were often killed), but post-World War 2, many people were ready to put their faith in both, with many people being up in arms about which was the correct way forward for Italy (Ventresca, p.239).
Everything that we’ve been exploring through the establishment of Italian Neo-realism and Vittoria De Sica’s own intentions with the film, can be seen through details within The Bicycle Thieves, both through the progression of events in the story and through many background details. Many of the themes of the film can be directly paralleled with the real Italy of the time.
A major theme of the film is desperation, which is perfectly represented within the film in four moments. First of all, near the beginning of the film, a group of people are standing amongst the rubble of a housing district, desperately waiting for a man to give them news on who has received a job. When Antonio Ricci’s name is called, he is nowhere to be seen. He is found nearby, sleeping amongst the rubble, bathing in the sun. He has reached a point where he is no longer expecting to receive a job. This shows how desperate and wide spread unemployment was in Italy at the time. The added touch of showing Antonio sleeping amongst the rubble shows the devastation that Rome has been through. Since this entire film is shot on location, the audience gets to see that even though the war has been over for three years, Rome remains in ruins in many places (Rocchio, p.67). The second case of desperation is shown when Antonio goes to accept his job, and he is told that to be able to do the job he needs to have a bicycle from the first day. Antonio lies, saying that he has a bicycle, even though he will not have to money to afford a bicycle until after he has been payed by the job that requires him to get a bicycle. He goes home, and after consulting with his wife, they are forced to sell their bed sheets to be able to afford the bike. Again, something not unusual to the average working class family of the time. The next two cases of desperation are two classic representations of those in economic stress in film; violence and theft (Marcus, p.87). After Antonio’s bike is stolen, he searches the entire city for his bike. At two points in the film he thinks he’s found the person who stole his bike, and in one case, he chases the suspect all the way to his home and tries to start a fight with him. This results in Antonio being forcefully being ejected from the neighbourhood. This begins Antonio’s spiral into full desperation, were he decides that the only way he’s going to be able to work the next day is by stealing somebody else’s bike. Once again these are the moral conditions that many people in Rome and the rest of Italy would have been facing at the time (Marcus, p.88).
There is a point in the film where Antonio thinks that his young son, Bruno, is drowning. He stares in horror as someone is dragged from a River dead, however he is relieved that it is not his son, and he simply goes on with his day. All the people who removed the body from the river, do not seem particularly concerned that someone has just died. The people at Rome would have been so used to widespread death, as people continued to die in large numbers even after the war had finished (Ventresco p.121).
Economic responsibility contrasting with moral responsibility is shown as a major factor at many points in the film, one that is particularly hard hitting is when Antonio loses his temper and hits his son, and decided that to make up for it he is going to take them both to a restaurant, a luxury that only higher classes of citizens would have been able to really afford. It is this sacrifice of economic stability for personal pleasure that was a huge issue at the time, with the rise of capitalism in Italy (Rocchio, p.72).
The film also shows the average Italians dependence in the two biggest movements of the time, Communism and Catholicism, and how many people took the benefits of both movements, but did not truly participate in them because they were truly desperate. Antonio seeks help in his communist friends and uses them to help get his bike back so he can benefit himself and his family, not his fellow communists. One of the people that helped steal Antonio’s bike is seen going to a church service merely so that he can get some food and a shave, something that would have been very difficult for him to achieve outside of church. He willingly accepts the gifts, but only half-heartedly goes to the church service (Marcus, p.90-93).
The Bicycle Thieves is an extremely important film to both Italy and International cinema. The film is a benchmark in the works of Italian Neo-realism, perfectly capturing all the traits of this movement of cinema (Gordon, p.4). It is also an extremely important film within the context of its own country, as it came about after years of censorship and it is perhaps one of the finest examples of real life at the time being represented in film, without being a documentary. It tells a story that would not be uncommon to the average Italian of the time, and sets it against the background of urban Rome, showing the underlying social changes that were shaping and evolving an un-certain Italy into what it would become today.
Bibliography
Bondanella, Peter E. Italian Cinema: From Neorealism to the Present. (New York: F. Ungar Pub., 1983)
Day, Michael. Decline and Fall of Rome's Cinematic Empire. (The Independent. Independent Digital News and Media, 26 Dec. 2013. Web. 14 May 2016)
Gordon, Robert S. C. Bicycle Thieves = Ladri Di Biciclette. (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008)
Marcus, Millicent Joy. Italian Film in the Light of Neorealism. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1986)
Thompson, Kristin, and David Bordwell. Film History: An Introduction. (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2003)
Ventresca, Robert. From Fascism to Democracy: Culture and Politics in the Italian Election of 1948. (Toronto: U of Toronto, 2004)
Wagstaff, Christopher. Italian Neorealist Cinema: An Aesthetic Approach. (Toronto: U of Toronto, 2007)
Day, Michael. Decline and Fall of Rome's Cinematic Empire. (The Independent. Independent Digital News and Media, 26 Dec. 2013. Web. 14 May 2016)
Gordon, Robert S. C. Bicycle Thieves = Ladri Di Biciclette. (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008)
Marcus, Millicent Joy. Italian Film in the Light of Neorealism. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1986)
Thompson, Kristin, and David Bordwell. Film History: An Introduction. (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2003)
Ventresca, Robert. From Fascism to Democracy: Culture and Politics in the Italian Election of 1948. (Toronto: U of Toronto, 2004)
Wagstaff, Christopher. Italian Neorealist Cinema: An Aesthetic Approach. (Toronto: U of Toronto, 2007)
Filmography
Bicycle Thieves (1948) Directed by Vittorio De Sica [Film]. Italy: Produzioni De Sica (PDS).