This week I am writing about Italian Neorealism with this Italian film called Bicycle Thieves (1948), directed by Vittorio De Sica. This film has won a number of awards because it is very different other Italian films in that era, after the World War 2. While other countries like France are still struggling to recovery from the war, Italy surrendered early and has a faster recovery and more resource for filmmaking.

The plot of the movie is a father, Antonio together with his son, Bruno on a quest to find Antonio's bicycle. Bicycle at that age of time is a luxury to everyone, making the character
having to find it desperately. The bicycle was traded with items, and with this bicycle, Antonio can get a decent job to raise his family. Unfortunately, while he was doing the job he newly got, a thief came by and drove it away from him, his struggle begins here. The next day he started traveling around with his son to search for it, they found the thief, but there are not enough evidence. This is how I could summarize the whole movie.



Moving on, let's talk about Italian Neorealism. This type of film generally is a duplication of reality, using movies to recreate real life situations. What different from ordinary movies is that most movies are not true, a movie that is based off an event will have it's own point of view, meaning it is only using someone's interpretation that does not define reality. The idea of this type of film movement is to use mise-en-scene and shots to adapt into film storytelling. For example, having a long take can make the audience focus more than the character, a shot that has a character standing in the middle of a large scenery shot, the audience would look at the scenery after the character. This can help make the movie bring out a more immersive experience. A great example is when Antonio and his son were walking in the city, the camera took a long take to show the details of the city, having the sense of they are in a city filled with people but not themselves only.

Suggested by Cesare Zarattini, this method is a new type of approach in Italian cinema in 1942. Neorealism has got in touch with the current society instead of a movie with portrayals of perfection like a society filled with handsome, beautiful and rich characters. This has attracted a lot of other filmmakers from other countries to use this method, spreading this method to the world. What is so different from ordinary films is that this approach does not use plots because a well-planned movie is very fake, the use of real life people as actors is also another fact that this method is unique. This is because professional actors have taken training in acting, giving out a fake structure, while ordinary people will have a more realistic reactions to the situation given.

On the dark side of this film approach, it did not do so well in Italy, except for the rest of world. The other cinemas love it, and slowly the cinemas in India, Hong Kong, and Japan started using it. Italy did not do well because the society doesn't want to be reminded of the past tragedy, even the Italian government does not favor this kind of filming method. It praises contemporary social realism, which is unconditionally emphasizing the ordinaries of the current time. This movie was made in between the post-war rebuild of Italy which is in 1945 until 1949, it uses one type of filming style to make it as grainy as possible to emphasize on the sufferings of the characters. This melodrama which sent out the message of how sad people in Italy at that time is to unite the people in the end of the day.

Verdict - This movie has a very realistic storyline that brings out together with real life events in the past, the use of Italian neorealism in this movie has brilliantly enhanced the hardship of the characters and make it feel more like an event than a plotted movie. Overall, I really like the movie.