Bicycle Thieves (Italian: Ladri di biciclette, 1948) directed by Vittorio De Sica is a representational film in the movement of Italian neorealism, which started with Roberto Rossellini’s Rome, Open City (1945) and culminated in Vittorio De Sica’s Umberto D (1952). This movement is widely recognised significant for its departure from the dominating classical Hollywood style and the inauguration of the art cinemas in Europe. While Italian neorealism is well-known for its focus on the post-war society and contemporary social issues, with the filmmakers deploying on-location shooting and non-professional actors to build the sense of documentary immediacy, it is far more than merely documentary. As Bazin said, “realism can obviously be created only out of artifice”[1], along with De Sica himself also regarding his work as a reflection of “reality transposed into the realm of poetry”[2], it could be argued that the reality in neorealism is not merely a reflection of the real world, but is rather refined through careful planning to present the reality that the filmmakers intend to convey to the audience. This essay will focus on Bicycle Thieves, examining De Sica’s technical approach to realism and the artificial strategies that he adopted to emphasise his concern about the working class and meanwhile, to attain the realist aesthetic.
Bicycle Thieves is a story concerning Antonio Ricci whose bicycle is stolen, thus searching for his bicycle with his son, Bruno. Cesare Zavattini, the screenwriter, took a distinguishing approach to the narrative without many cause-and-effect events[3], thus the sequences are linked chronologically yet tenuously[4], stressing the full length of time and the banality of the everyday life. Through the immediacy conveyed to the audience, this also implies a sense of fatalism and pessimism[5] during the protagonists’ long-lasting and futile search, intensifying their hopeless situation and unsolvable predicament.
The use of non-professional actors is a distinctive characteristic in the neorealist films in contrast to Hollywood commercial films, as it eliminates any affection of or familiarity of the stardom. By distancing the audience from the actors but drawing them closer to the characters, this method adds the credibility of the working-class family in the illusionary film world. The actors were carefully selected according to their behaviours and demeanour, and in Marcus’s[6] and Rocchio’s[7] works, they both mention the physical distance between the father and the son and their walking patterns, shown as Antonio’s faster paces and longer strides along with Bruno’s striving quick steps to keep pace with his father. This could be interpreted as Antonio’s inattention to his son and their mental disparity, yet also demonstrates the significance De Sica attached to the protagonists’ practice of walking and to the cityscape of Rome. “The mixture of authenticity and anonymity”[8], mentioned in Shiel’s book, could be applied to both the actors and the city views. The on-location shooting specifically displays the common city views including streets, residential areas, numerous unknown buildings, a market, a restaurant, a church and a bridge instead of famous scenic spots or landmarks[9], emphasising on the vapidity and dullness of real life. The use of depth of field to show the cityscape also contributes to the “ontological wholeness of the reality”[10], so as to offer a “tangible continuity”[11] and acquire the verisimilitude of the city of Rome in the film, in which Antonio and Bruno are surrounded and dwarfed. The deep focus on the city view and the surroundings imply that this film shows not only the tragedy happening to the Ricci family but also the predicament in which the whole working class or the whole society were trapped. Thus, a plenitude of displays of Rome convey a sense of place, enriching the authenticity of the plight and the environment where the Ricci family is living in.
Because of the on-site shooting, the sound of this film was not recorded during the shooting process in order to avoid the street noises, and the characters’ dialogue were dubbed afterwards by professionals in a studio. Although this is an artificial practice that seems to weaken the authenticity, the Roman dialect spoken by the lower class in Rome was used for the protagonists and the upper-middle class people in the restaurant and the church were dubbed in standard Italian[12]. This subtle and careful differentiation accords with the reality, and thus adds to the realistic aesthetic.
The crowds play an essential yet seemingly paradoxical role in this film. When Antonio tries to stop the thief as soon as he realises his bicycle is stolen, the crowd is completely indifferent and nobody helps him. However, the crowds seem to appear out of nowhere, emerging and gathering together rather quickly, when Antonio accuses the thief and when he himself steals another bicycle at the end. Although the thief is as poor as Antonio, he possesses the support from both his family and neighbours, while Antonio could only depend on his family. This unrealistic presentation of the “function of the crowd”[13] suggests that the crowd can only express hostility and anger and cannot offer assistance, kindness or friendliness, especially to disadvantaged people like Antonio who has neither financial power nor interpersonal connections. Antonio is deliberately isolated in this distorted society in order to imply the sense of isolation that all the working class and the poor are suffering from, demonstrating the realistic social issues that the film focuses on. This sense of hopelessness is further intensified by the fact that Antonio fails to receive any alleviation of his predicament at the police’s, the trade union or the church, which implies the socio-economic theme that the poor are, to some extent, exploited by these institutions which would never come to their aid.
Apart from the crowds, there are other characters in Bicycle Thieves serving as elements of a sense of allegorical realism. When Antonio, Bruno and the policeman are at the thief’s home, talking about whether Antonio could be certain about the thief and whether there are witnesses, there is a pan shot showing a statue of Madonna and Child opposite to one window and a mother holding a baby in the house across the street opposite to another window. As the mother and her baby could be equated with Madonna and Child in this long take, the action of the mother shutting her window could be implied as Madonna and Child (the God) refusing to help him[14]. These elements that on the surface merely constitute the descriptive presentation of the external environment, are implicitly fused into the narrative and attribute the director’s viewpoint to it, uncovering the unrealisation of this film[15]. Yet they manage to reveal and reinforce the isolation and marginalisation of the poor and the disadvantaged, remaining to accord with the theme of social realism. In other words, De Sica utilises these unrealistic moments to restore the realistic situation in the illusionistic form of film. Another example occurs when Antonio runs into the thief just after he leaves the fortune-teller’s house. This seems unlikely to happen in a real life, but miraculously coincides with the fortune-teller’s saying “you’ll find it straight away or not at all”. This antirealistic plot reinforces the influence of “supernatural power” on ordinary people, which Antonio also yields to at this desperate point in contrast to his contempt towards it at the beginning when his wife goes to the fortune-teller’s house. It is, thus, an allegorical but also realistic demonstration of the power that the poor are facing and being suppressed by.
Apart from the narrative, cinematography is also prudently utilised to achieve a sense of realism. The slow and detailed tilt showing a large number of bed sheets at the pawnbroker’s reveals that the Ricci family is not the only one suffering from poverty, and that the exclusive fortune would not fall on them. After the bed sheets are put on the shelf, they soon vanish and merge into other bed sheets. Similarly, when Antonio fails to stop the thief when he sees his bicycle stolen, the thief rides the bicycle merging into the massive crowd immediately. Therefore, the homogeneous sense of incapability is conveyed through these artificial strategies, along with the use of depth of field enhancing the protagonists’ insignificance as they are further dwarfed against the significant number of people and goods. The ceaseless tracking shots of the bicycle parts at the market, too, imply the futility of the process of searching for the lost bicycle[16], along with several intercuts of Antonio’s anxious countenance as if he was overwhelmed by the hard work of identifying his bicycle among large quantities of similar bicycles. When Ricci and Bruno try to seek out the old man at the church, the camera follows their movement into the hall, the courtyard and other rooms. Through a number of pans, cuts, and point-of-view shots, the confusion of Antonio and Bruno is also transmitted to the audience[17]. These editing and cinematography strategies are meticulously designed, which subvert the sense of spontaneity of the events but intensify the Ricci family’s plight and impress the audience with the realistic social condition.
To conclude, the realistic quality in Bicycle Thieves could be attributed to the social theme, the chronological narrative, on-location shooting, non-professional actors and the use of depth of field, which altogether replicate the contemporary social condition and the cityscape into the film. While the pervasive deliberateness in the narrative and the selective displays of certain props, characters and sequences diminish the realist quality, they are utilised to emphasise the particular social issues that the working class and lower class were facing. The artifice, therefore, serves as a path to an intensified realism that specifically concerns the disadvantaged groups of people.
[1] André Bazin, What Is Cinema?, trans. Timothy Barnard (Montréal: Caboose, 2009), 227.
[2] De Sica, Vittorio, Miracle in Milan (Baltimore: Penguin, 1969), 4.
[3] De Luca, Giovanna, “Seeing Anew,” in The Italian Cinema Book, ed. Peter Bondanella (London: British Film Institute, 2014), 102.
[4] Mark Shiel, Italian Neorealism: Rebuilding the Cinematic City (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 55.
[5] Peter Bondanella, Italian Cinema: From Neorealism to the Present, 3rd ed. (New York: Continuum, 2001), 59.
[6] Millicent Joy Marcus, Italian Film in the Light of Neorealism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986), 62.
[7] Vincent F. Rocchio, Cinema of Anxiety: A Psychoanalysis of Italian Neorealism (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999), 71.
[8] Shiel, Italian Neorealism: Rebuilding the Cinematic City, 56.
[9] Shiel, 56.
[10] Bondanella, Italian Cinema, 32.
[11] Bazin, What Is Cinema?, 230.
[12] Christopher Wagstaff, Italian Neorealist Cinema: An Aesthetic Approach (Toronto; Buffalo; London: University of Toronto Press, 2007), 319.
[13] Marcus, Italian Film in the Light of Neorealism, 70.
[14] Ben Lawton, “Italian Neorealism: A Mirror Construction of Reality,” Film Criticism 3, no. 2 (1979): 17, https://www.jstor.org/stable/44018624.
[15] Lawton, 17–18.
[16] Bondanella, Italian Cinema, 60.
[17] Lawton, “Italian Neorealism,” 18.
Bibliography
Bazin, André. What Is Cinema? Translated by Timothy Barnard. Montréal: Caboose, 2009.
Bondanella, Peter. Italian Cinema: From Neorealism to the Present. 3rd ed. New York: Continuum, 2001.
De Luca, Giovanna. “Seeing Anew.” In The Italian Cinema Book, edited by Peter Bondanella, 101–8. London: British Film Institute, 2014.
De Sica, Vittorio. Miracle in Milan. Baltimore: Penguin, 1969.
Lawton, Ben. “Italian Neorealism: A Mirror Construction of Reality.” Film Criticism 3, no. 2 (1979): 8–23. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44018624.
Marcus, Millicent Joy. Italian Film in the Light of Neorealism. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986.
Rocchio, Vincent F. Cinema of Anxiety: A Psychoanalysis of Italian Neorealism. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999.
Shiel, Mark. Italian Neorealism: Rebuilding the Cinematic City. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006.
Wagstaff, Christopher. Italian Neorealist Cinema: An Aesthetic Approach. Toronto; Buffalo; London: University of Toronto Press, 2007.
Filmography
Bicycle Thieves. Directed by Vittorio De Sica. Italy: Produzioni De Sica, 1948. DVD
Maggie 叶芷灵 