Is there a moment more revealing, or even heartbreaking, in our lives than when we realize our parents are human? As children we look up to our mothers and fathers as people without flaws, fears or doubts. When we age and learn more about the world, those rocksteady notions of our parents and their unfailing nature begin to crumble. It happens for all of us, but the circumstances differ. Do we see our father crying or witness our mother making a poor decision? Our parents are cast in a new light, an important demarcation in our lives.
Vittorio De Sica’s classic Bicycle Thieves (1948) ends with exactly this type of moment, a son seeing his father reach a breaking point and commit a criminal act. In a Hollywood film, such a scene would likely feel maudlin or ghoulish. However, De Sica was working within the basic tenets of the Italian post-war neorealist movement, using actual locations and non-actors to push his social message. This stark realism gives Bicycle Thieves, with its already sad narrative, a heartrending finale.
World War II has come to an end and the people of Italy are struggling to make ends meet. The film begins as Antonio Ricci (Lamberto Maggiorani), a father and husband, finds a job posting movie posters around Rome. When he is offered the job, Ricci realizes he needs a bicycle. However, work is scarce and he’s already pawned his bicycle. His wife, Maria (Lianella Carell), comes to the rescue, trading in her bedsheets for the money to get the bicycle out of hock. Things are looking up for the Ricci clan until the bicycle is stolen on Antonio’s first day of work. Distressed, Antonio enlists his young son, Bruno (Enzo Staiola), and scours Rome to get back the one thing that can ensure the continuation of his livelihood.
Shot on Rome’s boulevards and curving backstreets, Bicycle Thieves feels more like a historical artifact than fictional film. In a brief 89 minutes, De Sica takes us on a tour of both a city and society beaten down by the horror of war. It’s a city in which children beg on the streets and men resort to petty theft to make ends meet. Ricci, torn between caring for his family and a single-minded pursuit of his bicycle, spends the day scouring flea markets and chasing suspects as we watch Bruno watch his father slip into a haze of desperation and madness. The police won’t help; Ricci’s friends try and fail. A bicycle is an insignificant thing in a city as big as Rome, yet to Ricci it’s the only thing keeping his family from starving.
As Ricci presses on, he becomes so intent he doesn’t even notice Bruno. The little boy falls down, harassed by what appears to be a pedophile and is almost run down by cars, but Ricci’s tunnel vision prevents him from even noticing. Bruno’s frustration and confusion with his father grow as Bicycle Thieves progresses, boiling over in the film’s depressingly dour final moments. Desperate, Ricci resorts to stealing another man’s bicycle but is caught. A mob of men is ready to haul him off to the police, but a tearful Bruno intervenes, convincing the aggrieved party to let Ricci go. As father and son walk on, Ricci bursts into tears. Bruno, rather than be horrified by his father’s emotional breakdown, takes his hand, a gesture that demonstrates the boy has ascended yet another rung on the ladder of adulthood.
Even though the final moment of Bicycle Thieves is tear-jerking, it is a necessary one. According to critic Godfrey Cheshire, repeated viewings of the movie may demonstrate that, “Bruno has been ‘looking after’ Antonio in several senses” all along. It is true that the little boy helps center his father, serves an anchor for his frantic search. One of the best scenes in the film is when Ricci pauses looking for his bike to take Bruno out for wine and mozzarella sandwiches. It’s an intimate moment between father and son, one that can’t even be sullied by the presence of a bourgeoisie family behind them, table festooned with food. After the end of Bicycle Thieves, moments such as these will have a new resonance as the days of Ricci being the infallible giant of fatherhood peel away and reveal the aching, imperfect human being underneath.
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