Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves (1948)

Bicycle Thieves (Ladri di Biciclette), directed by Vittorio De Sica, takes place in Italy after the second world war where it is really hard to make a good living. The movie is about a man named Antonio in trouble financially who finds a job putting up posters around the city, but in order to do this he must have a bike, and in order to get a bike he will have to sell his few possessions. On his first day on the job his brand new bike gets stolen. And the rest of the film is about how, because the police do not help him, this man and his son try to bring justice and find the bicycle thief themselves. Now Antonio is on a desperate quest to find a bike so he can keep his family from starving.

The film is famous for having used individuals with no experience in the acting industry for the job. In fact the leading role (Lamberto Maggiorani as Antonio) is played by a factory worker. These factors – a story about poor, working class people, using untrained actors, and shooting on location rather than a set, along with frequent used of deep-focus photography, long shots, and lengthy takes – define a film movement known as neo-realism. De Sica is one of the most famous of the Italian neo-realist directors. Roberto Rossellini is another.

Many critics have considered Bicycle Thieves to be one of the best neorealist films ever made. Upon its release it received numerous awards including an honorary Academy Award for the most outstanding foreign language film released in the United States during 1949. (The Academy did not begin giving out an award for “best foreign language film” until 1956. Prior to that, they gave only special or honorary awards.)

But the film is not important because it is neo-realist; it’s important because it tells, beautifully, a story in a way that marked a change in film-making style. As you watch De Sica’s film, consider what movies you may have seen that approach film-making the same way he does. Many people, for example, have seen similarities between Bicycle Thieves and Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful (1997), and others have pointed to the neo-realist influence on American films of the 1970s. More recent films have nodded to De Sica as homage: Tim Burton’s Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, for example, follows the pre-pubescent Pee Wee Herman as he tries to retrieve his stolen bicycle.

Beyond acknowledging the influence Bicycle Thieves has had on films that followed, we encourage you to think about how it stands on its own. In 2005, the British Film Institute created a list of the “50 films you should see by the age of 14.” Bicycle Thieves is in the top 10, along with films like The Wizard of Oz, The 400 Blows, Spirited Away, and Toy Story. Why? What makes this movie one that everyone should see before they get out of high school? And there you have it: something to discuss over a soda at a local restaurant after the movie. Just make sure you locked up your bike. You wouldn’t want it to get stolen.

Nick Volpi and R. Findlay
Film Club

Geoff Murphy’s The Quiet Earth (1985)

One of the subsets of post-apocalyptic storytelling is the “last man on earth” tale. Richard Harland Smith, critic for Video Watchdog magazine, explored the sub-genre in the insert for The Quiet Earth’s DVD release, writing:

“All last-man-on-earth movies lie. That’s how they rope you in, with their secret promise of a world with nobody in it except a sole protagonist through whom we hope to enjoy the vicarious thrill of being the only one left. Last-man-on-earth movies are our favorite worst case scenario, allowing us to fantasize about where we might live, how we might dress, and the ways in which we might spend our days if suddenly – by dint of atomic blast or nuclear fallout or bacilli spread – we found ourselves unfettered by economics or status and no one was looking. Would we seize a mansion or a penthouse, or possibly camp at the top of the Empire State Building? Would we drive a Rolls or a Porsche or one of those Caterpillar 797 off-highway trucks? Would we elect ourselves General or King or God, go paramilitary, or run through the empty streets au naturale? Would we teach ourselves to garden, take time to read the Greeks, or just go around smashing things? Unlike life as we know it, the possibilities of being the last survivor seem endless. Alas, the dynamics of the three-act screenplay require that last-man movies renege on the promise of their premise and trundle in a second party, then a third party (or more) to up the dramatic ante; before you know it, monologue becomes dialogue and there goes the neighborhood. Last-man scenarios are most satisfying in their first act, when it’s just our protagonist knocking around society’s hollow shell, going into buildings, taking stuff, and setting himself up with a lifestyle he could never have afforded before things went pear-shaped.

“Last-man movies are the flip side of the disaster flick, a sci-fi sidebar that mulls over the fate of the human race via cautionary tales of destruction from space (When Worlds Collide, Armaggedon) or nuclear folly (Testament, The Day After) More intimate and more selfish, last-man movies comprise a respectable title list of their own, reaching back to the silent era. In the Fox Film Corporation’s The Last Man on Earth (1924), a pandemic wipes out all adult men save one Ozark rube, who is promptly cashiered by the reigning gynocracy. A decade later, the more sober-sided Deluge (1933) destroyed the world in Act I, paired the last man Sidney Blackmer with the last woman Peggy Shannon in Act II, then trucked in Blackmer’s wife and children as a third act complication, prompting Shannon’s altruistic suicide to preserve the sanctity of the family (at the sacrifice of 33% of the earth’s adult population). In the three-handers The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1959) and The Last Woman on Earth (1960), garrulous ménages a trios ponder the point of living after “The Big One.” In contrast, Sydney Salkow’s Italian-made The Last Man on Earth (1964) and The Omega Man (1971), both sourced from Richard Matheson’s classic science fiction novel I am Legend, are nightmarish nesting fantasies in which a sole survivor of the human race must barricade himself against an un-neighborly mutant horde whose incessant catcalling night after night requires him to keep his turntable volume on high. …

“Hitting American cinemas late in 1985, Geoff Murphy’s The Quiet Earth (based on the novel by Craig Harrison) dialed back the post-apoc weirdness to rethink The End of the World As We Know It without blasted cityscapes, monkey-man mutations and discotheque fashions. The film’s first act is a one-man-show for Bruno Lawrence, cast against type as Zac Hobson, an Auckland egghead in the employ of “Project Flashlight,” an American-financed experiment to create an energy grid allowing war planes to circle the globe indefinitely without the need to refuel. Something has gone terribly awry, however, causing the human race to go missing at 6:12 one July morning. … The Quiet Earth eases speculative science to the background in favor of nailing the very human behavior that in its own way has brought on the end of days.”

Richard Harland Smith
Video Watchdog magazine