http://www.ropeofsilicon.com/article/cinematic_revival_the_bicycle_thief_ladri_di_biciclette The best and latest movie news, reviews, features and editorials - updated daily Thu, 18 Mar 2010 09:52:07 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 http://www.ropeofsilicon.com/article/cinematic_revival_the_bicycle_thief_ladri_di_biciclette#comment-37015 Stephanie Mon, 25 Jan 2010 11:44:20 +0000 http://www.ropeofsilicon.com/news/?p=9322#comment-37015 What makes this film great in my opinion isn't the ability to identify with the main character, it's the issues raised and the insight into post-war Italy it provides. The mass unemployment (that's how his friends could spend the day helping him) the piles upon piles of sheets from the many families who have needed the money for food (at the beginning Antonio's wife asks why he had pawned his bike in the first place and he responds with something like "how would we have had money to eat otherwise?", so that's where they had been getting money from until this point). The general uncaring and out-for-himself attitude of everyone Antonio encounters (the police say he'll have to look for it himself, the people at the beginning when he is offered a job try to steal his job by shouting that they have bikes and he doesn't) lead me to believe that should he have asked someone to borrow their bike they wouldn't oblige, even if he offered them money. The point is that Antonio is not a strong or clever man anyway, but put in this awful situation he does everything he can think of to save his family from poverty and the audience is supposed to sympathise with his desperation. Not necessarily identify with him, but perhaps grow to pity him. I could go on and on about the elements of this film that make it great, but I won't. What makes this film great in my opinion isn't the ability to identify with the main character, it's the issues raised and the insight into post-war Italy it provides. The mass unemployment (that's how his friends could spend the day helping him) the piles upon piles of sheets from the many families who have needed the money for food (at the beginning Antonio's wife asks why he had pawned his bike in the first place and he responds with something like "how would we have had money to eat otherwise?", so that's where they had been getting money from until this point). The general uncaring and out-for-himself attitude of everyone Antonio encounters (the police say he'll have to look for it himself, the people at the beginning when he is offered a job try to steal his job by shouting that they have bikes and he doesn't) lead me to believe that should he have asked someone to borrow their bike they wouldn't oblige, even if he offered them money. The point is that Antonio is not a strong or clever man anyway, but put in this awful situation he does everything he can think of to save his family from poverty and the audience is supposed to sympathise with his desperation. Not necessarily identify with him, but perhaps grow to pity him. I could go on and on about the elements of this film that make it great, but I won't.

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