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…

Sometime during the summer between semesters I had a job that finally swayed me to get a bike on campus, something that was really nice because you could travel anywhere you needed in a minute or two and the feeling of rushing down the streets with the wind blowing past you on a warm summer evening with the sun lazily setting is something that's beautiful and transcendent and can't quite be transcribed into words (though I tried to do it justice just now).

Then one night someone smashed a beer bottle on the road and when I ran over it my tire blew out. There wasn't a bike shop nearby to fix it but we had a bike co-op that…

Featuring amateur actors in starring roles, shot in real locations with no studio sets & using only natural light to capture its drama, Bicycle Thieves (also known as Ladri di Biciclette) is one of the finest & most influential films to come out from Italian Cinema and is amongst the first films that brought neorealism into the world of motion picture filmmaking.

Set in poverty-stricken Rome in post-World War II Italy, the story of Bicycle Thieves concerns a poor father who's scavenging for any kind of work to support his family. Having secured a job after selling his precious possessions to buy a bicycle which is required to carry out the work, the future looks promising but his whole world is turned…

Film School Drop Outs Challenge 2017 Week 10 - Movement - Italian Neorealism (1943-1954)

This film broke my fucking heart.

The Bicycle Thieves, directed by Vittoria De Sica is an Italian Neorealist film made and set in post World War II Rome. Widespread unemployment is rife and the majority of the population are living a precarious existence. Antonio (Lamberto Maggiorani) has finally scored himself a much coveted job plastering up posters of Rita Hayworth all over the city. But this is a strictly BYOB, or Bring Your Own Bicycle, kind of job. Well, you have probably noticed the title. So naturally, Antonio’s bicycle is stolen, which threatens the very subsistence of himself and his family. With his son, Bruno (Enzo…