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Spokesmen For The Working Class | Lamberto Maggiorani and Enzo Staiola had better enjoy their new possession while they can; after all, they’re in a movie called The Bicycle Thief.

THE BICYCLE THIEF
Directed by Vittorio De Sica. Starring Lamberto Maggiorani, Enzo Staiola, Lianella Carell. Metro Cinema (Zeidler Hall, The Citadel). Fri-Tues, Dec 4-8.
*****

For its first 20 minutes, Vittorio De Sica’s 1948 Italian classic The Bicycle Thief is a suspense film of the most basic ilk. We see the down-and-out Antonio (Lamberto Maggiorani) get offered a job putting up posters for the city, on one strict condition: he needs a bicycle. Along with his wife Maria (Lianella Carell) and doting son Bruno (Enzo Staiola), Antonio proceeds to hock nearly everything they own in order to buy one secondhand. Bruno helps him clean the thing up, and the next morning Antonio pedals happily off to work, ecstatic at being able to provide for his family once again.

What gives the next few scenes, breezy as they may be, such nail-biting intensity is a combination of two things. First is the film’s title, which spells out the inevitable: Antonio’s good luck is about to swiftly reverse itself. Second is De Sica’s perverse determination to let the bike coyly slip out of the frame as often as possible, each time eliciting the same gasp from the audience. “You fool, Antonio!” we shout, or mumble, or curse inwardly. “Don’t ask that punk kid to watch it for you!” But then the bike keeps reappearing, mercifully intact — until the one time it doesn’t, this time plucked from plain sight, from the middle of the frame.

Of course, The Bicycle Thief isn’t actually a suspense film. It falls squarely in the genre of neorealism, which basically means its mission is to show the gritty nuances of the human condition that Old Hollywood glosses over. Accordingly, the world of the film doesn’t bend to Antonio’s will just because he is a good man wronged. On the contrary, most of De Sica’s Rome is a downright pain in the ass: from the street toughs who send Antonio and Bruno careening down the wrong alleyway in pursuit of the thief, to the largely indifferent police department, which does all it can to frustrate Antonio into finding the bike himself.

That’s not to say there’s no fun to be had in the working class. Most of The Bicycle Thief shows Antonio and Bruno in various states of despair and injustice, but they’re both on the whole optimistic people. And there’s at least one scene of pure exuberance, when Antonio treats his son to a fancy meal. It’s obvious that they’re much scruffier than the rest of the clientele. They don’t care. Antonio greedily gulps down his wine, while Bruno stretches each bite of mozzarella bread as far as he can, letting long trails of cheese grow taut and then snap back. For this all-too-brief moment, they’re millionaires.

Many critics have argued that De Sica’s masterpiece resonates as powerfully as it does because its struggle is timeless: we all want to provide for our loved ones, and we all know what it’s like to feel as though the solution to all our problems has been plucked out from under our noses.

In fact, at the same time it’s being screened by our own beloved Metro Cinema, The Bicycle Thief is getting a revival in New York’s arthouse cinema circuit for this, the film’s 60th anniversary. According to the New York Times, that’s because the tale of a despairing job hunter hits home for a lot of Americans these days; we’ll see if some of that sentiment will translate here
this weekend.