It’s been years since a film has moved me to tears. But if there’s one film that can melt even the most stone-hearted of viewers, it is Bicycle Thieves. I can’t quite explain what it’s about because I don’t know, really. It follows a man named Antonio, thin as a scarecrow, as he tries to make a living. He needs a bicycle for the job he is lucky enough to get, but his bicycle gets stolen, and he roams the city trying to get it back, his little son dragging along behind him.

But Bicycle Thieves isn’t about that bicycle, really. It’s about fathers and sons, about the way the poor steal from each other because somebody else steals from…

I simply can not believe that these people are non-professional actors. There's the malnourished Ricci played by Lamberto Maggiorani who was just a factory worker at the time. And his son Bruno, played by Enzo Staiola who was merely 9 years old! It's inconceivable! The way they put up such a sublime performance without any training.

I would imagine they were not really acting at all and was just going on with their lives as usual, (and somehow De Sica received permission to film them like how they do reality shows now) but I can not ignore the obvious fact that Lamberto and Enzo are not blood related at all.

Still, their depiction of a father and son relationship on…

manages to achieve a brutal sort of poetry as you watch it purely through the soundtrack and all those shots of rome in its ruined glory alone. a documentary just as much as a piece of art- this is one of the finest examples of why shooting on location can be so powerful. rome and the people who live in it are horribly, beautifully alive. teeming, scrounging, surviving (and barely surviving in a lot of cases). De Sica never glories in the suffering and dirt of post-war italy but rather manages to show both the pain and the humanity in a really touching way.

initially, i found it a little hard to get into but as it went along, i…