Vittorio De Sica, 1948.
Viewed at Cinematheque, July 2009, w/ LN.
A nice film, better then I remembered. It’s a bit thin; the plot is very simple – perhaps too simple. A story of poor people, like ‘La Terra Trema’, but not as sophisticated in it’s development. The acting and general production are all good, but not quite remarkable; in a sense, the ’solid, but not remarkable’ tenor carries remarakably consistently through all aspects of the film (the camera work, the writting, the production, the acting). It’s like a supurbe amateur film, without any pretension.
The film’s fame on the cinemaphile circuit is unjustified, but that is not the fault of the film. It is a good film. It is very clever in one way, in that the title tells you what is going to happen, but after that does happen, you discover in the end it,, or the title, meant something different then what you had expected. I would (and you would need to know more then I am willing to say here to properly understand this) not agree with the titling as “Bicycle Thieves”. I can’t translate from Italian, but it should be, without question, ‘The Bicycle Thief’.
