Related Film: Children of Heaven (Iranian); Salaam Bombay(Indian) What are the means of production discussed there?

Major Characters: Antonio Ricci, the father Bruno Ricci, the son Maria Ricci, the mother The Thief -- The title in original Italian should be "Bicycle Thieves."  Why?    Is a Antonio too helpless and pathetic in the film? -- How does family relationship get affected by poverty?  -- How are social hierarchy and class differences presented? Relevant Links

  Minor ones who represent different social groups or different social institutions:

• The poor: The other unemployed; the community the thief belongs to and his family;
• The rich people in the restaurant
• The middle-class who can enjoy leisure time: The Medena-goers

 
• The "charitable women" in the church
• The policemen who fail to enforce justice
• Sontana: The foretune-teller

  major images: bicycles and their parts, crowded buses and the crowds on the street; the wooden ladder; the pawnshop with piles of pawned goods

  Background information:

•  The film is set in post-World War II Rome.
• The actors in the film were all amateurs. Vittorio De Sica decided not to use professionals.
• The one poster Ricci is putting up that we see in detail features Rita Hayworth in Gilda (1946).
• Neorealism: From a review --
1. "neorealism took its stories from the struggles of the working class, went out into the streets to record them, and used non-professional actors to tell them. This style borne of scarcity is also typified by a grainy, almost documentary cinematography, and frequent use of hand-held camera.
2. "Cesare Zavattini, the script writer for Bicycle Thieves, was the most important theoretician of neorealism. He wrote his screenplay in just four days after watching an attempted theft while sitting at an outdoor Roman cafe. "My fixed idea is to deromanticize the cinema," he said. "I want to teach people to see daily life with the same passion they experience in reading a book." A committed Marxist, he spread his ideas in polemical essays and critiques as well as in many screenplays and collaborations with Vittorio de Sica and other directors.

• Vittorio De Sica: bio
• Italian neorealism:
• Brief Intro. and Chronology
• A longer introduction, including  its ideology and style--recommended.
• A long essay on neorealism, including general historical background and of that of The Bicycle Thief

• Strictly Film School review(39k)
• The Tech (MIT)
• Austin Chronicle
• Boxoffice Magazine Classic Reviews Search
• Cinema(German)
• Philadelphia City Paper
• culturevulture.net
• Edinburgh U Film Society
• Film Commentary by CGK
• Wesley Lovell - The Oscar Guy
• FireBlade Coffeehouse DVD Reviews
• San Francisco Chronicle
• Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
• Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times