![]() The message was especially appropriate for the nations of Europe in the years after World War II. Where "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" is a parable about what greed can do to a man's soul, "The Bicycle Thief" has the same message about the effect of need. By the end of the film, he comes to realize that if he cannot recover his own stolen bike, he might have to resort to theft himself in order to feed his family. But on his first day of work, the bicycle – which he has just gotten out of hock by pawning all of his family's bed linens – is stolen. It is a good job with decent pay, and it instills him with a sense of pride. The only requirement for the job is that he must have a bicycle to get around town. Trying to provide for his devoted wife and their two young children, Ricci gets a job hanging posters. Take, for example, the protagonist of "The Bicycle Thief," an unemployed laborer named Antonio Ricci (Lamberto Maggiorani, a non-actor whom de Sica cast because he liked the way the man walked). The deceptively simple plots were often vehicles to explore the complex moral issues confronting fundamentally decent people living in desperate circumstances on the margins of society. They often used non-professional actors, providing unaffected performances (and eliminating the disconnect that viewers sometimes feel when confronted with a glamorous movie star playing a downtrodden laborer). ![]() The films were shot on location, not on sound stages and back lots, giving them a gritty, realistic look. Neorealism also included key films from directors like Roberto Rosselini and Federico Fellini, focused on the lives of people who were struggling to get by. Vittorio de Sica's landmark film is the centerpiece of the neo-realism movement that emerged in Italy as a reaction to the poverty and despair left behind by World War II. And yet, the film is so compelling – its look and feel, its characters, its plot – that it still has the power to take our breath away more than 65 years after it was made. ![]()
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