The Bicycle Thief

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The Bicycle Thief Imagine yourself in a country in economic turmoil. Imagine a large number of it’s people out of work and unable to find employment. Imagine individual families as well as your own at their wits end struggling to hold it together. Imagine a world not so much different than the state of our country right now and you will be able to identify with Vittorio De Sica’s film, The Bicycle Thief. Released in 1948 and set in post WWII, the devastated country of Italy is trying to bounce back and regain its former glory. Italian filmmakers during this time period felt a great importance to be as real and true to the current times (Dancyger). Being leftwing political philosophers at heart, and opposing the fascist ideologies of both Mussolini and the Nazis party, they consciously steered clear of the escapist pre-war Italian cinema. Out of that doctrine, neorealism was formed and The Bicycle Thief was its champion. The film is shot more like a documentary than a narrative film. They believed that the use of non-professional actors filmed in real locations would create a revolutionary film style full of truth and ideas. Due to the scarcity of the economy, film equipment was hard to come by. And since the film was shot shortly after he war, the movie studios were in ruin like the rest of the country. The film stars Lamberto Maggiorani as Ricci, a man who joins a group of men down on their luck every morning looking for work. One day there is a job for a man if he owns a bicycle. Ricci assures the employer that he has a bicycle when in fact he didn’t. At word of this, his wife Maria takes the sheets right off of their bed, and he is able to trade them in to a pawnshop in exchange for the bicycle. They are not alone at that pawnshop. In fact they’re surrounded by so many just like them who must trade in their valuables for life’s common necessities. So

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