There is a tendency among cinephiles, essayists, and critics to over-lionize our most intense objects of affection. We vaunt, we canonize, we deify. And then, at the end of the day, we can look back at our mad fits of passionate taxonomy, neatly gathered into a pile, and assure ourselves that these films stand apart, above, and beyond all the rest. They are the glittering and glorious greats in an art form that is too often marked by the mere average.
This canonization of great films, however, can often seem like a plot to distance ourselves from a film’s difficult dramatic immediacy. We don’t need to spend any more time discussing the complex morals behind Citizen Kane because we’ve already included it in the canon. It might take a unique revisitation – perhaps we show it to a friend for the first time – to really appreciate the emotional impact the films still have.
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Vittorio De Sica’s 1948 film Bicycle Thieves – now available on Criterion Blu-ray for the first time – is often called one of the best films of all time, and is even sometimes even declared to be the best. And while the film warrants continued study from students of the cinematic form, and I would never even ponder asking critics to cease their breathless enthusiasm, I would gently implore everyone to perhaps take a deep breath, sit down, and realize that Bicycle Thieves is a sweet, real, and quietly devastating movie.
Umbrella Entertainment, Joseph Burstyn & Arthur Mayer
Bicycle Thieves is a story we can all relate to, as we have all been in dire financial straits. It takes place in Rome after World War II had effectively wiped out Italy’s economy. Poverty is widespread, and jobs are coveted above all else. In the world of the film, the pawn shop in an empire unto itself, and, in a notable scene, we see a shopworker climbing an enormous scaffold, full to the ceiling with heap upon heap of hocked bedsheets. This is a film where the saddest scene is of a young boy (Enzo Staiola) spying wistfully at other diners in a restaurant, wishing that he and his father (Lamberto Maggiorani) had enough money for a plate of spaghetti. Father explains that you need to be earning more to eat like that.
The story is simple and wonderful. Ricci (Maggiorani) has just landed a job. He is to paste American movie posters all over town. One of the film’s more notable symbols is Ricci pasting up an image of Rita Hayworth in Gilda. Hollywood glamour meeting impoverished reality. Ricci needs a bike to do this job, and his wife (Lianella Carell) pawn their sheets to get his bike out of hock. As you may predict, poor Ricci’s bike is stolen.
Umbrella Entertainment, Joseph Burstyn & Arthur Mayer
What follows is a procedural wherein Ricci seeks the thief, comes close, loses the scent, loses patience, yells at his son, has a moment of joyful abandon in buying a simple meal in a restaurant, picks up the scent again, and ultimately begins toying with the notion of becoming a bicycle thief himself.
There is a grave seriousness to the drama, but Bicycle Thieves never stoops to melodramatic solemnity. Various interpretations over the years have seen the film as a metaphor for Italian politics, an advertisement for Communism, and even a dark criticism of the modern Italian man. It may be these things. Foremost, however, Bicycle Thieves is a modestly glorious and immediately knowable work of heartbreaking humanity.
Umbrella Entertainment, Joseph Burstyn & Arthur Mayer
The Criterion Blu-ray has been ported over wholesale from its DVD release, and there are no additions beyond its improved picture and sound. This is fine. A film like this should remain updated frequently as to keep it in the consciousness. So that we may be reminded that the Greatest Movies Of All Time are, in fact, pretty wonderful.
Top Image: Umbrella Entertainment, Joseph Burstyn & Arthur Mayer
Witney Seibold is a contributor to the CraveOnline Film Channel, and the co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. He also contributes to Legion of Leia and to Blumhouse. You can follow him on “The Twitter” at@WitneySeibold, where he is slowly losing his mind.
