robobalboa To be completely honest I came to this film as just another movie to cross off the list that everyone talked about. It was almost a joke. If you wanted to get into foreign films it was this and The 400 Blows, and maybe Seven Samurai. And I watched this film with the expectations that it was a CLASSIC, or Untouchable or a film without a peer, after all in Robert Altman's "The Player", the thought of remaking this film is a joke, and as a character says "You'd probably give it a happy ending." So I came into it expecting a depressing, black-and-white-foreign-language film that was completely removed from me and unrelatable in the sense that I would never know what it felt like to be a father in post-war Italy. I was wrong. In plain and simple terms I couldn't have been more wrong. This film, apart from being engaging and full of pathos and tragedy, represented so many disturbing and uplifting facets of the world that for every fear there was angel, for every danger was a comfort. This should always and forever be remembered as the Greatest Street Casting of all time and it should also be remembered as the Greatest Father-Son-Film of all time. Whether you have a wonderful relationship or a strained relationship with your father this film could go a long way to explaining a lot of the simplicities and complexities of relationships that have haunted humans for generations. This is a pure film. It's honest. It's real and it's magnificent. It will stand the test of time, and it unfortunately has never been topped. I can't give you historical reasons or even reasons based on the creators' filmography why this film is so magnificent, I can't even give you a non-emotional reason why this film is just so damn good, all I can say, or recommend is that this film goes deeper than you expect it to, further than you want it to, and represents a slice of life than hopefully none of us will ever know, and in that creates a beautiful piece of art that has lasted 70 years and could easily last 70 more.

ashrafamodd Filmmakers should learn from Bicycle Thief. Learn what can be achieved economically without ridiculous budgets. Tens of millions of dollars were not necessary to create what is one of the best films in history.What a beautiful film it is! The innocence of these characters even with their faults due to their desperation after their livelihood is shot with the loss of their bicycle. This is a human story about the human struggle as father and son walk all over the city to find their stolen bicycle. As simple as the film is, it's highly emotional, particularly the final, famous scene. My favourite moment was in the restaurant as the son is wary not to spoil his father's budget, and the father is too concerned with his plans, to notice anything else. The boy can't help being distracted by the rich boy beside their table. Genius filmmaking by by De Sica.

Prismark10 Set in Italy after the second world war, Bicycle thieves is an example of Neo-Realism Italian cinema, looking at broken Italy and its broken people trying to survive in poverty.From the opening shot we can see Antonio Ricci as lost all hope. He is in the margins of society and suddenly there is a job opening for putting up posters that requires having a bicycle. However he has no bike, he pawned it. His wife Maria pawns their bed sheets and uses the money to get the bicycle back.For the first time in a long time Antonio believes life is on the up. With the wages and the family allowance he reckons he can look after his family. He finally has hope.This hopes come crashing down when his bicycle is stolen by an opportunistic thief and he searches all over Rome with his son Bruno looking for the bike and thief.Antonio gets increasingly desperate in the search for his bike, by the end he is humiliated and fatalistic. See Antonio almost get knocked over by a truck he does not care.There is a key scene at a restaurant with his son where Bruno eats a pizza and drinks water and Bruno sees a wealthy family eating a sumptuous lunch. Antonio explains to him how important this job was and the money he was going to make meaning he could afford treats like this for the family.Antonio may not had been good in his job but the film explored the men who were marginalized in Italian working class society and it was their wives who had to be practical in order for the families to survive.This is a raw film it is not an easy watch, you suffer as Antonio goes on his fruitless search and you will him to steal a nearby bike and just ride off.

Leofwine_draca BICYCLE THIEVES has gone down in film history as a classic for its ability to transport the viewer effortlessly to a different time and place: to post-war Italy, blighted by poverty and restrictions on general life, where the mere possession of an ordinary push bike is the difference between life and death for an ordinary family.The film follows a father and his kid as they pursue the thief who has stolen the father's bicycle. There's no more plot to it than that, but the film uses the opportunity to explore mob violence, social realism, petty crime, justice, family relationships, and of course poverty. It's a well acted and realistic drama throughout, sometimes too realistic as it ultimately ends up being rather depressing. The film is beautifully shot and easy to watch despite the subsequent passing of the years.