The Bicycle Thievesis such a powerful film because
of the director’s spare style, humanist treatment of
the story, and his willingness to trust his viewers to
make up their own mind about what it means.
Although neorealist films were innovative, they
were not popular with Italians (who preferred the
more upbeat American movies) and consequently
not successful at the box office (economic success
was not one of the movement’s primary goals).
Critics, furthermore, thought that the films gave a
false, even sentimental, portrayal of Italian society,
one inconsistent with a country eager for prosper-
ity and change. The government discouraged the
neorealists’ interest in social problems by subsidiz-
ing instead domestic films that focused on the new
prosperity of the postwar society and implement-
ing taxes and quotas on foreign movies.
By 1952 the movement was finished, yet it
had an enormous impact on later Italian and
world cinema. In fact, a handful of neorealist films
helped to rekindle a greater awareness among
filmmakers worldwide of the need to observe real
life and to abandon, insofar as possible, the make-
believe world of the movie studio. The movement
also helped to launch the careers of many great
Italian directors, including De Sica, Rossellini,
Visconti, Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni,
and Pietro Germi and influenced Italian directors
who were not directly involved in the movement,
including Pier Paolo Pasolini, Bernardo Bertolucci,
Ermanno Olmi, and Paolo and Vittorio Taviani.
Filmmakers as different as Satyajit Ray in India
and Martin Scorsese in the United States regarded
neorealism as the principal inspiration in begin-
ning their careers. Today you’ll see its influence in
such different movies as Jean-Pierre and Luc Dar-
denne’s L’Enfant (2005), John Carney’s Once
(2006), and even Matt Reeves’s Cloverfield(2008).1959—1964: French New Wave
After the Second World War, France, which had
been occupied by the Nazis between 1940 and
1944, faced a unique set of problems, both foreign
and domestic. Abroad, it was engaged in two wars
with French-controlled territories: the French
Indochina War (1946–54), which ended in a divided
but independent Vietnam, and the Algerian War
of Independence (1954–62), which led to Algeria’s
independence from France. At home, in addition to
the challenges facing President Charles de Gaulle’s
government in dealing with myriad social, political,
racial, ethnic, and cultural differences produced in
part by the twin forces of collaboration and resist-
ance during the Nazi occupation, everywhere there
were calls for change coming from students,
artists, intellectuals, and philosophers, particularly
the existentialists, who called for a new world in
which individuals would be more responsible for
their actions. The French New Wave was born
within this broad context.The Bicycle Thieves: a neorealist masterpieceDuring
the three-day chronicle that comprises the plot of The
Bicycle Thieves(1948; director: Vittorio De Sica)—which
recounts the story of Antonio Ricci’s (Lamberto Maggiorani)
desperate search for his dignity—Bruno (Enzo Staiola), his
son, is the one person who stands by him. Through hardship
after hardship, their shared bond of love and faith is
challenged but never broken. Bruno gives his father the
courage to survive through one heartbreaking moment after
another, and although the movie ends ambiguously, there is
no question that father and son will remain friends. In this
image, we see Bruno waving good-bye to his father as they
both begin their workday. When director De Sica cast Staiola,
an unknown boy from the streets, in this part, he found a
natural actor who gave the world an unforgettable
performance.
A SHORT OVERVIEW OF FILM HISTORY 457