"Bicycle Thieves" is highly effective in its very simplicity, in evoking a time and an era where hardships and financial strife were all too common. The simplicity goes further in establishing desperation through a necessary mode of transportation.
That mode of transportation is simply a bicycle, one needed sorely for a new job that our protagonist needs. The protagonist is Antonio Ricci (Lamberto Maggiorani), a desperate man who finds a job placing movie ad posters on bare walls surrounding selective parts of Rome, Italy. Ricci has a wife who has a strong religious faith, Maria (Lianella Carell), who sells her bedsheets for money, and a young, empathetic son named Bruno (Enzo Staiola) not to mention a newborn baby. When Maria receives sufficient money, Antonio uses it to buy back his bicycle at a pawn shop. While doing his job one day, a young man steals his bicycle and Antonio spends the rest of the film trying to get it back. Without it, he can't do his job (although he tries to convince the boss that he can walk all over Rome if needs be). Antonio files a police report but to no avail - Rome is littered with its citizens riding bikes. Finding the bike is practically a needle in the haystack yet he does come across the young man, seen speaking to an older, disheveled man who wants a hot meal at the local church. The young man disappears in the bike yet again and Antonio begs the old man to tell him about this thief but to little avail, until an address is finally revealed.
Set during the post-WWII era in Italy, director Vittorio de Sica has crafted something that was unusual at its time - a street-level look at life in actual locations that look and feel real. Aside from some rear-screen projection during a bus ride, nothing in "Bicycle Thieves" seems inauthentic or less than credible. The film never gives you the impression that you are looking at dressed-up sets or elaborate soundstages with expressionistic lighting. This film was one of a select few that birthed the neorealism movement on film (the movement began as a literary one in the 1920's) - using found locations with people marching along or bicycling their way around the many tight corners around buildings and the wide, open streets. The cast is not a group of professional actors - they are all people with real jobs selected by De Sica and it is admirable how not one false note is apparent in their characterizations.
I did get a bit impatient with the business of the Wise Woman, an alleged fortune teller whom Maria seeks and gives money to when luck initially seems to be on their side. I see the necessity of such a character but one scene would've been enough - an extra scene with Ricci just seems extraneous. It is the only issue I have with "Bicycle Thieves," a film where you can't help but empathize with this unfortunate poor family getting by with scraps yet hoping for a better future. We share in Antonio's plight so strongly that it is hard to feel anything other than pity and helplessness at the end during a very tearful scene rich with irony. No bike, no job, and if there's no job, no money to support a family - very elegantly and simply told. Everybody seems to be poor (other than the restaurant scene where we see people affording luxurious pasta meals and refreshing wine) and we know the young thief is poor and we feel sorry for him, as well. Antonio feels that sorrow as well.
