Something to watch tonight: Tuesday 18 June

Bicycle Thieves (De Sica, 1948)

Editor’s note

Grateful thanks to all of you who have been recommending F&S over the past few weeks. Don’t forget, if your recommendation turns into a paid subscription, you get a reward!

I’ve picked up a contract that’s going to take up a bit of time so I’m going to be looking at the production schedule to see how efficiently I can keep everything running here.

Probably the biggest change will be that I won’t be able to spend every Thursday in various local cinemas (as I have been doing). That will have a knock-on effect on the “Friday new releases” section which may have to move to Monday (after the weekend).

Your thoughts and preferences would be appreciated.

The most immediate impact will be this Friday as I have travel all day so there won’t be a newsletter at 3.15pm. Apologies in advance.

Last year, for RNZ, I spent a bit of time watching and writing up the top 50 films in the BFI/Sight & Sound “Greatest Films of All Time” list.

They have decided that they don’t want these any longer which has brought the project to a grinding halt with Fritz Lang’s M at #36. I’ll get back into it one of these days, probably here.

Anyway, M isn’t today’s recommendation (although it easily could be).

I want to talk about one of the most heartbreaking dramas ever made, Vittorio De Sica’s Italian neorealist classic, Bicycle Thieves:

In the opening scenes of De Sica’s 1948 classic Bicycle Thieves a young mother goes to the factory-sized pawnshop in her neighbourhood to turn in the family bed sheets. “They’re used,” says the attendant. “Two are new,” she replies. Can you imagine the state your family must be in to resort to that level of desperation? In fact, it’s only the beginning.

Maria (Llanella Carell) pawns the sheets because the family needs money to get her husband’s bicycle out of hock. He’s been offered a rare and precious job putting up posters around the city but only if he has a bike to get around, a bike that is currently sitting alongside hundreds of others that are being used as a pitiful security for the loans that are keeping Roman families fed in the lean years following the end of World War II.

Antonio (Lamberto Maggiorani) is giddy with happiness at finally being able to support his family and slowly get them out of grinding poverty but on his first day on the job – while he is putting up a poster of Rita Hayworth – the bicycle is stolen and, despite giving chase through the streets of Rome, the trail goes cold.

He knows that without the bicycle, the job is gone and without the job his dreams are dashed. The next day he enlists the help of some garbage collector friends to scour the city for the bike, or the thief, and his young son Bruno (who makes his own contribution to the family finances by working at a gas station rather than going to school) joins them on the search.

Every moment of hope is dashed and the situation becomes more and more desperate until Antonio makes a fateful decision which will break your heart.

I’d love you to read the whole article. I’ve been thinking about this film a lot over the last six months.