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Updated 8 September 2006
ENGLISH 114: INTRODUCTION TO FILM, Fall 2006
Section 3: Thursday, 6:00-9:30 p.m., Professor Larsson
Week 2, September 7
6:00-6:10
Questions and follow-up on last week
6:10-7:45
View The Bicycle Thief
7:45-7:55
Break
7:55-9:15
Discussion of The Bicycle Thief
9:15-9:30
Quiz 1
The Bicycle Thief (Ladri di biciclette/Bicycle Thieves), Italy 1948
For cast and crew credits, see the textbook website:
http://www.wwnorton.com/web/movies/chapters/ch1/case_study.asp
A prime example of the movement known as “Italian Neorealism”
§ Arose in Italy at the end of World War II and following years
§ Emphasized stories about lives of ordinary people
§ Dealt with situations arising from mistreatment or economic injustice
§ Often used non-professional actors
§ Much or all of the film shot on location and using available light
Story situation:
Ricci, an unemployed laborer, has nearly given up on getting a job. Finally, the government-run employment bureau hands him an assignment—putting up posters (of American movies) around the city, but he will need a bicycle to get around. Ricci had pawned his bicycle earlier, but with his wife’s help, he recovers it, only to have it stolen on his first day on the job.
With the help of his son, Bruno, Ricci goes about Rome trying to find the thief and his bicycle.
A word
about subtitles
Questions for Discussion:
1. Why is the bicycle so important to Ricci? What do we learn about him and his family in the first scenes of the film?
2. How does Ricci’s situation seem to be typical or not typical for other working people in Italy at this time? Is there anything about his situation that reaches out to viewers beyond Italy in the post-war years?
3. What is the effect of watching these scenes unfold on the streets and in actual buildings in Rome? How would the film seem different if it had been shot in studio settings?
4. What is Bruno’s role in the film? How does it change from the beginning to the end?
5. What is implied by the film’s ending?
6. The original Italian title translates literally as Bicycle Thieves. Is the difference between that and The Bicycle Thief important? Why?
From Cesare Zavattini, “Some Ideas on the Cinema.” Sight & Sound, 23 (October-December 1953): 64, 65
To begin with, while the cinema used to make one situation
produce another situation, and another, and another, again and again, and each
scene was thought out and immediately related to the next (the natural result
of a mistrust of reality), today, when we have through out a scene, we feel the
need to "remain" in it, because the single scene itself can contain
so many echoes and reverberations, can even contain all the situations we may
need. Today, in fact, we can quietly say: give us whatever "fact" you
like, and we will disembowel it, make it something worth watching.
While the cinema used to portray life in its most visible and external moments
-and a film was usually only a series of situations selected and linked together
with varying success -today the neorealist affirms that each one of these
situations, rather than all the external moments, contains in itself enough
material for a film.
Ricci’s isolation
Friends are ineffectual
Cops/militia are uninterested
“It’s only a bicycle”
Church is oblivious
Neighbor groups (suggestions of Mafia) are hostile
Bruno (and Maria) are only real connections that Ricci is left with
Ends as Ricci and Bruno fade into crowd
Windows as motif (repeated element)
Windows at pawnbrokers
Window at work headquarters (closed on Maria)
Bruno closes apartment window
Neighbors view and comment from windows or shut
windows
Some notes on The Bicycle Thief and Form
· Events in film are linked by cause and effect
· Ricci needs job to support his family
· Ricci needs bicycle to hold his job
· Bicycle is stolen
· Ricci and Bruno search for thief and bicycle
· Thief is found but not bicycle
· Ricci steals bicycle but is stopped
· Ricci is released
· Ricci and Bruno are reconciled
Note:
· a number of events occur that do not directly lead from the beginning to the middle to the end
· the ending resolves one problem (split between father and son) but leaves other questions unresolved
Film does
not open state a “message” but implies a number of things about the role of an
ordinary worker in relation to family, state, and church
For next week, Read Chapter 2: Form and Narrative