Bicycle Thieves and the worker cast as Antonio Ricci
The father at the center of Bicycle Thieves was played by Lamberto Maggiorani, a factory worker before appearing in the film. Director Vittorio De Sica selected him after he brought his young son to an audition. Maggiorani's role was Antonio Ricci, a poor father in postwar Rome whose opportunity for employment depends on having a bicycle. The casting connects an untrained performer with a story about work, family, and precarious circumstances. The film was released in Italy on 24 November 1948, runs for 89 minutes, and was photographed by Carlo Montuori, with editing by Eraldo Da Roma and music by Alessandro Cicognini.
Another casting decision came from an encounter on the street. De Sica noticed Enzo Staiola on his way home from school, and chose the eight-year-old boy to play Bruno, Antonio's son. The cast also included Lianella Carell as Maria Ricci, Antonio's wife. De Sica cast untrained actors, following the approach associated with neorealism. Some performers' roles paralleled aspects of their lives away from the camera, adding realism to Bicycle Thieves. Fellow neorealist director Luchino Visconti criticized the decision to have a professional actor dub Maggiorani's dialogue, placing a different aspect of his screen performance under scrutiny.
De Sica had recently made Shoeshine but could not obtain backing from a major studio for the new film. Instead, he raised money from friends. Cesare Zavattini adapted Bicycle Thieves for the screen from Luigi Bartolini's 1946 novel, with De Sica and other collaborators working on the script. Their aim was to portray poverty and unemployment in postwar Italy. They used the novel's title and only a few plot devices. That selective adaptation left Bartolini dissatisfied, since his protagonist was a middle-class intellectual and his theme concerned the breakdown of civil order.
The physical setting mattered alongside the cast. De Sica filmed largely on location, using real environments for the story. Bicycle Thieves belongs to Italian neorealism, a movement whose early examples include Luchino Visconti's Ossessione (1943). De Sica's choices of locations and untrained actors followed that movement's principles. The search unfolding across Rome brings Antonio and Bruno through markets, a church, a neighborhood, and the area near a football stadium. Gino Saltamerenda played Baiocco, Antonio's friend who helps with the search, while Vittorio Antonucci played Alfredo Catelli, the bicycle thief.
The immediate stakes in Bicycle Thieves begin inside the family. Antonio needs employment to support Maria, Bruno, and their baby. A job posting advertising bills becomes available, but accepting it requires a bicycle. Maria takes her dowry bedsheets to a pawn shop, raising enough money to redeem Antonio's bicycle. On his first working day, a young man steals it while Antonio is high on a ladder. The thief's accomplices prevent Antonio from following him successfully. Police take the complaint but say there is little they can do.
Antonio's search draws other people into the effort. A political comrade enlists waste collector colleagues, who join Antonio and Bruno at the Piazza Vittorio market. A bicycle frame seems promising, but a policeman checks its serial number and finds that it does not match. At Porta Portese, father and son see the suspected thief speaking to an old man. Both evade them, with the old man slipping away after they follow him into a church. Later, Antonio finds the suspect again, but a search of his apartment yields nothing. Without witnesses, and with neighbors ready to offer an alibi, the case remains weak.
Near the Stadio Nazionale PNF football stadium, Antonio sees an unattended bicycle and tells Bruno to take a tram to Monte Sacro and wait there. Antonio then tries to steal the bicycle himself. Bruno misses the tram and watches his father pursued, surrounded, and pulled from it. The owner notices Bruno's tears and asks the others to release Antonio rather than take him to the police station. Father and son walk away through the crowd, with Antonio struggling against tears and Bruno taking his hand. Their movement away from the camera pays homage to films by Charlie Chaplin, De Sica's favorite filmmaker.
The English title has its own history. The Italian Ladri di biciclette literally means "thieves of bicycles," with both nouns plural. When the film reached the United States in 1949, Bosley Crowther used The Bicycle Thief in his New York Times review, and that singular version became its familiar English name. San Francisco Chronicle critic Bob Graham preferred the singular title when the film was rereleased in the late 1990s. A later North American edition made a different choice: the Criterion Collection release in 2007 used Bicycle Thieves, returning the title to a plural form that reflects the Italian wording.
- Wikipedia, Bicycle Thieves — en.wikipedia.org