Bicycle Thieves (1948) (DRAFT)
Well, finally made it to this, a "high concept" movie before someone had invented that silly phrase.
In poor post-war Rome, a man, Antonio, starts a new job that requires him to cycle round the city and put up posters of Rita Hayworth. Alas, someone steals his bike while he is up the ladder. He and his son scour the city trying to recover the bike.
Will he find his bike?
This being a piece of Italian Neorealism (yes, I knew that, because I looked it up, but it just sounds so pretentious) the search for the bike is an excuse for a tour of Rome's poorest neighbourhoods, of its moral ambiguities. (police, church, market of stolen bikes, seer's house, brothel) and of the relationship between the father and his son, Bruno.
The Roman tourist board must have been dead chuffed by this advertising. Not. Italy's capital never looked so hot, sweaty, dusty and run-down. Rather like Antonio's face, actually, always sharply etched with a frown, or look of deep despair as he contemplates unescapable poverty. Curiously, the film seems to have been shot with a cheap camera too, or cheap lenses, as often only the foreground is well-focused, and occasionally the quality of the film stock seems uneven.
I found it engrossing enough, partly because of its portrayal of an Italian community, partly because I wanted to know what would happen in the end. But the joins between scenes weren't seamless, with the geography occasionally confusing (where did that football stadium suddenly spring from, and surely the bridge where a boy was drowning wasn't the same bridge where Bruno had been asked to wait for his father?); and the time scale ambiguous (did this all happen in one day - I don't remember anyone going to bed?). The prolonged pestering of the old man in the church who knew something about the thief but wouldn't tell was rather tedious too.
Perhaps it's worth it for the story of Bruno, the son, who is resilient in the face of Antonio's crushing circumstances, but who will inherit his father's poverty.
