Bicycle Thieves

This is an entry in "The Big Ones," a series covering 32 classic films for the first time on The Dancing Image. There are spoilers.

"Put the blame on Mame," sang the red-haired girl in the poster, the one that Antonio is gluing to the wall when his bicycle is stolen. If it only it were that easy. Bicycle Thieves has scorn and skepticism aplenty, for the overwhelmed bureaucracy and government of postwar Italy that can't put men to work, for the Catholic Church with its phony sentiments and bourgeois charity offering a shave if you'll grovel low enough, for the pompous bedroom psychics who offer cheap pessimism and recoil from money as if it reminds them what they're really doing. And for the small-minded, jeering mobs who gang up on desperate men, and the snobby little brats who turn up their noses over plates of spaghetti, and even the Communist Party which writer Cesare Zavattini belonged to, which seems distant and rhetorical compared to the desperate needs of the stumbling human beings interrupting its gatherings in the catacombs of Rome.

And yet this is a film of context and, ultimately, compassion. If the film refuses to sentimentalize institutions or ideals, it is ever-attuned to the complications that motivate and mitigate human behavior. As Jean Renoir said, "Everyone has their reasons." And those reasons have an awful lot in common - one of the signature motifs of the movie is that in an atmosphere of competition, desperation, and degradation, every man feels compelled to look out for himself. Bicycle Thieves does not endorse this ethos, nor does it offer a hopeful alternative - this is not a film which offers cheap inspiration, or even much hope at its conclusion. Yet it observes this atmosphere unblinkingly, leaving us to draw our own conclusions, and the climax refuses to let us wallow in self-defeating despair or condescending pity. Instead at its end we feel angry, uncertain what should be done, but knowing that this situation, whether in 1948 or now, is unacceptable.

Does it seem strange to say that this movie is also beautiful, often warm, occasionally quite funny, and suffused with a careworn romanticism and naturalistic poetry? It is also, very pointedly, a "movie" - a slice of life, yes, in a sense, but filtered through the structures, motifs, and payoffs of the movie world.

Noir and Naturalism 1946 - 1949 • "32 Days of Movies" Day 8

The eighth chapter in "32 Days of Movies", an audiovisual tour through 366 films.

(2015 update: included Vimeo embed after the jump)


View "Chapter 8: Noir and Naturalism"

Noir and Naturalism

Waking up in the postwar world, it was as if all the jitters and anxiety that had been submerged for the war effort were now out in the open. Already, a new style/genre/sensibility/movement had been developing (though it was too unconscious and informal to fit some of those terms). Later dubbed "film noir," this perspective scanned the hardened landscape with jaundiced eyes, yet with an undercurrent of wounded romanticism that made this dark world something you wanted to plunge into again and again. Meanwhile, both overseas and in Hollywood, an "opening" was occurring in the classically enclosed studio style.

Over at the Examiner

If there's any Bostonians out there (or perusers of random city's cultural scenes), here's a guide to the some of the movie goings-on for the next 7 days. This took way longer to assemble than I expected, and I didn't get a chance to compile much else, but there's some good stuff in store for the Examiner next week. I'll provide a preview on Sunday.

(The link is no longer active, but here are some of the films I mentioned:

Bicycle Thieves (1948)

One of the greatest movies ever made. In postwar Italy, director Vittorio De Sica and writer Cesare Zavattini abandoned the glamorous studio films of the Mussolini era, writing real stories about real people, casting non-actors to fill the roles and shooting in real locations to capture the desperate mood of the times. The story is one of their simplest yet most effective: a working man has his bicycle stolen; needing it to support his family he sets out through Rome with his son to find it. Despite - largely successful - attempts at realism, the film is also quite poetic, with wonderful black-and-white photography, highlighted in a brand new 35mm print.

Pickpocket (1959)

Another one of the greatest movies ever made, and this one's showing for free! French director Robert Bresson's minimalist masterpiece is austere, but it's also one of his most audience-pleasing works given the exhilirating shots in which he tracks skilled pickpockets hard at work - you'll walk out of the theater and into the subway with one hand on your wallet and renewed respect for those who want to take it. But the heart of the movie is in its character's moral and spiritual crisis, inspired by Crime & Punishment.

Wings of Desire (1987)

A free screening for a Harvard class, open to the public. A few years before it became a reality, German director Wim Wenders imagined bodies passing through the Berlin Wall - though in this case they were heavenly bodies, celestial vessels for angels who could watch over human interactions without being able to affect them in any way. Eventually one angel, played by Bruno Ganz, has had enough and decides to "plunge in", giving up his wings to be mortal, and yet to be alive. Features some of the most stunning cinematography in cinema history.

Severed Ways

An epic vision of "the New World" circa 1007, when Native Americans, Irish monks, and Vikings lay claim to the land nearly 500 years before Columbus approached its shores. Shipwrecked Vikings make their way through the rugged wilderness, in what Eric Hynes of indiewire.com has called this "a visionary work from one of the most promising new American narrative filmmakers in recent years.")

This post was originally published on The Sun's Not Yellow, based on a Boston Examiner round-up.