Some thoughts on "The Bicycle Thief"

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Rita, Antonio, and his bike

I’ve never been to Italy and don’t know the history of the unpitiably blank, suburban residential highrises which appear, for example, in Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita” and with which Vittorio De Sica’s “The Bicycle Thief” opens. I don’t know whether they’re public housing or privately constructed; they appear new on their denuded moonscape grounds but the interiors remind of ancient Roman tenements constructed of little more than the despair of their purgatoried denizens. What is clear is to filmmakers of the time they represented loss of soul and the suffocation of the individual by the bureaucratic hive. And so “The Bicycle Thief” opens with these buildings and men gathering at a government employment office with little hope of being selected for one of the few jobs that would enable a partial escape from years of crushing post WWII poverty. Antonio Ricci (Lamberto Maggiorani) has become one of the lucky ones because he had listed himself as owning a bike, which means transportation, and these are days when one is damn lucky to even have a bike. But Ricci is no longer so fortunate as his bike has been pawned. Thus, his stoic wife (Lianella Carell) bravely strips the sheets off their beds, washes them and takes her dowry of linen to the bureaucratic hell of what appears to be a government-sponsored pawn shop that bears no resemblance to the lending institution of last resort down on 5th Street. No, these are institutions where go all those residing in the barren moonscape to offer, piece by piece, in exchange for cash, every last individualizing possession to huge warehouse-sized offices surreally filled from floor to towering ceiling with bitter misfortune. Then, the couple having successfully haggled for the necessary lira, it’s off to peer through another window on a warehouse of a room filled with bikes and retrieve Antonio’s.

Which is a cause for celebration, because now there’s a job and tomorrow will be just a little better than today, and the day after that just a little bit better than the day before it. Living modestly is on the attainable horizon. Living in society means society having a use for one, which means being valued, sometimes even if all society values you for is pasting Hollywood movie posters to walls, which is to be Antonio’s work, and he no more cares about whether the job is suited to his skills than the next man when for years you have waited an opportunity for any labor at all, just as the 15,000 people who applied for 400 openings at a Wal-Mart in Chicago recently could have probably not cared less if they had skills more exceptional than being able to stock shelves. Being valued means being secure in food on the table and medicine in the spoon and the ability to replace one’s child’s ragged coat, which means being able to plan past the hour, to think of the future, to be able to free the imagination to create even if in a cash-based, wage-earner society one’s ability to engage creatively means simply the ability to engage in commerce. Which is part of the problem, that Antonio has been locked in a situation where he’s unable to provide for himself, much less anyone else, if there hasn’t been the cash to exchange for even the most menial of skills. But it’s the way things are, and it’s ultimately not even his skills but his bike that has returned Antonio to the land of the living, where you do and are paid and take what you are paid and purchase tomorrow.

It’s a terrible deadlock, and ultimately what “The Bicycle Thief” is about, though Antonio’s wife instead believes their luck has rested in god’s hands, had consulted a seer, had been told that her husband would indeed get a job, and her first duty is to go to the seer and pay her for skrying rightly god’s favors. Maria had not told her husband about the consultation, and following her he briefly leaves his bike on the street. Knowing his bike is to be stolen, we worry now will be the time, but it’s not. Antonio derides his wife for her superstition and quickly ushers her back outside.

The next day, Antonio drops his seven-year-old son (Enzo Staiola) off at his job at a gas station then proudly goes off to work. While he’s pasting up one of the posters, a youth grabs the opportunity and seizes the bike. Though one has dreaded the stealing of the bike, there’s a curious sense of relief when it happens; edgy anticipation of this misfortune ended, we can look forward to the odyssey of Antonio’s search for his bike with hope of some reward, whether it be the return of his bike or our possible attainment of knowledge of equivalent or greater value.

Antonio goes to the police which of course can offer no more assistance then an American police officer would offer me if I submitted a complaint of a stolen bike. Find it yourself, they tell Antonio, which he sets out to do with the assistance of a friend and his son.

They go to the huge flea markets of the city to seek the pieces of the bike they suspect will have been broken down into parts, and one feels very little hope for their finding such in the blocks upon blocks of horns and bike frames and tires.

Their journey takes them to a church where individuals even more desperate gather for the peculiar exchange of their worship of the charity’s god in return for church soup, and the church hampers Antonio’s efforts with its demand for worshipful respect of the deity over his efforts to attain justice and retrieve his living.

Eventually, Antonio, who had ridiculed his wife for her consultation with the fortune-teller, resorts to the seer with the hope she may tell him where his bike could be. The message she has for Antonio is if he doesn’t find his bike that morning then he will never see it again, which seems more common sense than a matter of divine inspiration, but is at least more honest than the dime-a-dozen faith healers and televangelists who rake in multi-millions with promises of divine return. But when he returns to the street Antonio happens upon the youth who stole the bike and pursues him. A mob intervenes demanding proof of Antonio’s accusation. Police arrive and escort Antonio to the home of the youth which seems even more dismal than Antonio’s own. The bike is not found and because Antonio has no witnesses to the theft the police are unable to do anything much but do ask him if he wants to press charges. Frustrated, he flees the mob. Every last hope and trust of his has been obliterated, any faith he may have had in the justice system, any faith he might have had in humanity and himself. If he held any belief in a divine prosecutor, even that judge seems to have turned against him, which for Antonio means fate has also set itself against his family.

Along the way we’ve had glimpses of the better off. Antonio was better off than the youth who stole the bike. Now he is as the youth and faces a sea of bikes possessed by those better off than him. Desperate, he steals a bike. But Antonio is caught and a pack of witnesses convenes against him.

There is however much more to the story than Antonio’s search for his bike, because the film is also about his relationship with the son who follows the father through his trial of injustices, who becomes aware of the great gulf that exists between those who have and those who don’t, and has his own struggles with his father’s despair and what it means to him.

Some appreciators of the film make much of the person from whom Antonio stole the bike determining not to press charges, as if the film’s message resides vaguely in an act of superior good will which should somehow restore Antonio’s confidence, which in essense passes judgment on Antonio’s pursuit of his bike. But the man who asks that Antonio be released still possesses his bike; friends, strangers and police came to his rescue. Had he not his bike he might be just as emphatic on pressing charges against the suspected thief as people seem to remember Antonio as being, when instead Antonio’s concern was the retrieval of the bike, and it seems to be neglected that Antonio too ended in not pressing charges. Yes, the circumstances under which Antonio didn’t pursue his complaint are different, but it still bears noting that people fix on the act of pity extended Antonio and seem to forget that his concern over his own bike was ultimately its retrieval rather than retribution, despite the fact he’s observed time and time again simply pleading for the return of his bike. Of course, people focus on the pity extended by Antonio’s would-be prosecutor because of the role Bruno, Antonio’s son, plays in his release.

No matter any weaknesses Antonio has exhibited under his stresses, we’ve never been given cause to believe he is anything other than a decent individual. Whether or not Antonio is arrested, he is utterly humiliated. He was broken before he stole the bike, his cares having stolen from him his pride, driving him briefly mad. Because it was clear Antonio had no hope of getting away with the theft. He hadn’t the guile. The theft wasn’t even the matter of the opportunity of the moment if he had no hope of getting away with it. And had he gotten away with the theft? Then despite the viewer’s awareness of Antonio’s situation, his story would be remembered with much less compassion. Despite the fact that the viewer agrees with the pity extended Antonio and supposedly has empathized (or sympathized) with Antonio’s grief, had he not been caught then the viewer would likely rise from their seat feeling cheated, that disorder has entirely undone justice. Despite the viewer having been made aware of the viciousness of the cycle in which Antonio is trapped, the audience will only be inclined to absolve him of guilt if he is caught. Though much is made of this not being a feel-good movie and that the audience is burdened with the film’s anti-resolution finish, the audience would have it end no other way than with Antonio’s humiliation. Numerous choices made with the plot make this a far more complex movie than it appears to be, Vittorio De Sica in some respects managing to relate a story that is a bit different from what some viewers will believe they’ve seen, and it doesn’t matter as the desired effect is the same. The audience absorbs something of the enormity of the vicious cycle of poverty and despair and has been challenged to consider that the popular ideas of justice may have very little to do with fortune at all.

Now rewind to the scene in which Antonio’s bike is stolen. What is he doing? Putting up movie posters. Glamorous posters of Hollywood fantasy. Distracted by his work, he doesn’t see the youth making off with the bike until too late. As this is a film from the neorealist movement (and the lead actors were not professionals, having no former experience) one should pay attention to what Antonio is doing when the bike is stolen as it is a commentary on cinema.

How might such a story be filmed in Hollywood? Perhaps the father would be a race-car driver. His car stolen, he teams up with his wise-cracking, precociously mature son to find it. As there must be some tear-jerking sentimental moments that provide a showplace for the film’s song, at one point the child is also lost and the father wanders briefly looking for him, assuring us that his heart is in the right place and that his boy matters more than the car which by now has little more meaning than the song’s placement in the movie. Eventually, the child taking matters into his own hands upon seeing the stolen car, steals one himself and pursues the race-car with a frightened father clinging to the dashboard. The thief is caught. With a wink, the father says to his child, “Yeah, but you know you really shouldn’t have stolen that car, two wrongs don’t make a right,” and puts him on probation for an evening. Seems a tad outside-the-system subversive but it’s not. No one is called upon to really consider the long string of cause and effect; all that’s really demanded of one is to respond emotionally to push-button prompts and go home satisfied with having been entertained if your pulse rate was at any time elevated. The end scene shows the father winning his race then making a victory lap with his son at the wheel. On Monday, one returns to one’s job satisfied one could too have an adventure if one was driving race cars rather than working.

And no one, curiously, will give a damn about the car that is stolen by Hollywood’s equivalent of Antonio. No one will feel a need to condemn him, no one will feel for his absolution, because their characters are cartoons which have no soul, though not very many will intuit this. As long as it’s felt their emotions have been exercised, a majority of individuals will feel they’ve made contact with something which has meaning.