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Cinema
Bicycle Thief: A Masterpiece Lives
On...
by Pramod Khilery
 December 12,
2008 marks the 60th year of one of the greatest films ever to have been
made in the world. A film that spawned a whole generation of filmmakers
and influenced the art of cinema as no other film did. In December 1949
when Bicycle Thief was to be released in America it ran into problems
with Production Code Administration that supervised American releases
for being refused an approval owing to one scene in a brothel that
allegedly seemed irreverent and another in which a boy urinates. But
Vittorio De Sica, the director, did not budge and eventually got the
film released. At home too, film saw a dismal release in November 1948,
a year ago, when Italian audience did not evince any keenness to embrace
a movie depicting hunger, poverty and post war realities with an
unfamiliar non professional cast. Notwithstanding these initial hiccups
since then film not only went on to win the academy award for best
foreign language film of 1949 (two years ago it was De Sica’s Shoeshine
that had stunned the heads of intellectuals of art of cinema and hence
began a tradition to reward a film in a language other than English.)
but also almost every other coveted award that exists in firmament of
cinema along with top ranks in all hallowed cine critic’s list of
greatest movies.
When I sat down to watch Bicycle Thief for the first time (a downloaded
version without subtitles, later I saw it many times over with subtitles
and love affair continues) I had certain apprehensions in regard with
alienation of a non comprehensible language. But to my utter relief it
did not take more than five minutes for my apprehension to get washed
away. Within few minutes of beginning of rolling it down, I was enjoying
the sight of post war Rome devoid of its typical monuments but inundated
by war ravaged decrepit walls and buildings. I couldn’t understand even
a single sentence said in the film but yet not even a single uttering
came in the way of movie endearing itself to me. Perhaps, plethora of
information I had had (mostly positive, to the extent of provocating a
viewing) about the movie may have influenced my reaction to the film and
got translated into fervent admiration but on the flip side often
pre-conceived notions have their own limitations. What if movie had not
been able to reach high pedestal I had put it on owing to reading
accounts of gargantuan praise lavished on the movie across world. Movie
not only stirred away every pore of my nerve but made me feel being in
the midst of Ricci and Bruno as someone who can follow them, watch them,
partake their sorrow and share their joy but can’t help them.
 A
film that catches breath and ties them with every image that springs up
on screen. A film that doesn’t hold our attention but make us loll along
with the father son duo in their quest for their bicycle and hence any
left over signs of development on the index of humanity in the post war
Italy. A film that caters to the intellectual stimulation and satiation
of intelligentsia in equal measure to that of curiosity level and sense
pleasing of an average cinegoer or movie buff. An almost
story-less film, without having a solid foundation of conventional
elements interspersed in, carries the audience with utter fairness along
its pace through 93 minutes of its play. A frantic search for a bicycle
without much twists and turns sans any suggestion about the possible
recovery of bicycle is what all that forms the narrative of this film
that is called Bicycle Thief.
Once Satyajit Ray, while emphasizing the importance of visuals over
words in a piece of cinematic work, had spoken about the image as a
potent career of words rather than words themselves since cinema is
primarily a visual medium. Bicycle Thief stands true to this definition
of cinema. You don’t need to know language in order to be able to
identify the film. Great cinema doesn’t let the language become an
impediment in its march towards a universal appeal and impact and
Bicycle Thief does it with aplomb. That said knowledge of language or
availability of subtitles will definitely help in bestowing more
clarity. Once I entreated my mother (an erudite housewife) and brother
(a 10 the class student) to see the movie at sometime around 9 pm (time
for retiring to bed for my mother) in the night. To my utter
astonishment and great gladness not only both enjoyed the movie but
couldn’t resist themselves from dipping into a discussion about it. And
so did one of my colleagues when he wished to see the film. He took
leave of me utterly satisfied after having a tryst with a new kind of
cinema, he had never encountered before. I have cited these two examples
to back this movie’s universal appeal. This is the cinema that is more
in motherly embrace of poetry than prose, that celebrate images rather
than grotesque visuals, that respects music for its sensibility and
balmily coupled with sprinkling of haunt-ness rather than hoodwinking it
by using it the way a pimp uses whore to further his pot bellied greed
and lust.
As the very first bars of a music (by Alessandro Cicognini) strikes our
ear drum, it sets the tone for entire movie to get unfold the way a poem
hurls the combination of words to represent metaphors that carries
within them meanings and interpretations ready to be molded. And for
the next ninety three minutes we are transported into a world whose
images devour the distance between viewer and protagonists to endow the
movie the indelible label of an everlasting classic. As we see the weary
face of Ricci on the screen, we are convinced of his being a vulnerable
entity. The ripped and filthy clothes, he is attired in, further
buttresses our nascent but firm belief. Through the ordeals and travails
of Ricci we also get to know and see the travails of post war Italians
(especially those who are from the same stratum as Ricci is) and post
war Rome, trying to emerge from the shadows of a cataclysmic war.
Employment opportunities are too scant thereby a grabbing anyhow is
worth life seized. Ricci tries for a job and he turns out lucky to be
summoned. He is happy and ecstatic for a second before getting grim when
he is told about the possession of a bicycle to be necessary in order to
be able to grab job. He is given time to arrange for a bicycle. The
times after war are gloomy despite effort to build the nation again. A
job equals life and life becomes worth living through a job only, a
truth relevant till this day. Ricci’s wife mortgages their wedding gift
of a pair of bed sheets in lieu of some money that helps in bringing
previously pawned bicycle back home. The repetition of pawning stands
testimony to the dire times. Ricci’s son, Bruno, only 8 year of age but
much more grown up and mature for his age (being mature at raw age is
good or bad for child himself is an incisive question) is already
employed with a diesel pump. The new found job and hence new found
spirit to live life creeps into Ricci’s home and with smiling visages
and blithe greetings father son duo set off to their respective work
places mounted on their new possession and riding on new found hope to
live life. Ricci drops his son at diesel pump before reaching his
destination. Day wears on. Bruno waits for his father to come and take
him home on their bicycle but the wait stretches further and further
before father approaches Bruno stealthily from behind. No bicycle in
sight, only utter deflated face of father is what Bruno gets to see.
Father has no answer to Bruno’s curious eyes, pale face and some word
teetering lips. He just beckons him to start walking and father son duo
with their gloomy visages and palpitating heart set out to home along
the dusty embankments of Tiber river. A day that had begun at happy
visages ends in gloomy shadows.
No bicycle, no job, no job, no life. No life no living: as simple as
that. Ricci had already been snubbed by post war insensate Rome police
when he had gone there with his plea to help him recover his stolen
bicycle and hence a reason to live. He doesn’t have the heart to walk
into home, empty handed but ironically with loads of moroseness
scattered around his face. He thinks it prudent to seek some friend’s
help to scour the life again, to search for bicycle, again: a poor man’s
desperate wish to live.
Next day is Sunday: a long and crucial Sunday of frenzied search for
bicycle by father son duo. Why Ricci is not alone? Why he is dragging
Bruno with him. May be poor man is not that poor as he perceives
himself. A mature working son is the only solace in lieu of bicycle that
he so desperately needs to soothe his longed solace. A wandering around
Rome, not the Rome that outside world knows, but a Rome that Ricci and
millions like him know, with bomb ravaged buildings, charred gates and
decayed walls. Mooching about through streets, markets, tolerance house
and even a restaurant with a shower of rain to force them take a breath
and walk on even more slippery paths than they actually are, finally
Ricci is able to nab the crook. Father son duo, in the throes of pathos
and poverty do present before us an indefatigable spirit to discover
life once again from amongst the rubble of dashed but not dead hopes and
the inextinguishable power, that human beings are able to draw from one
another. Ricci and Bruno are searching for their chance of life in the
form of bicycle trudging through the cobbled and oozed streets of Rome
in utter state of being cadaverous but the moment they realize they are
two, they are with each other, a flow of life from one to another serves
as an immense power in allaying and to some extent even livening up the
moribund hope lying on their faces. In these utter moments of despair, a
flirtatious chuckle doesn’t escape their lips.
In the light of the fact that Ricci and Bruno have a crucial job at
their hand, they achieve a tour de force when they find themselves in a
restaurant munching on some dishes and savoring the music. The contrast
with which the image of Bruno stretching a helping while looking at a
rich girl having her morsel is juxtaposed with merriment of rich family,
drives home the poetry of pathos, the triumph of humanity and chasms
deep in the vein of society. A chasm that gets deeper as we age. The
return of gloom on Ricci‘s visage after forgetting for a while the hard
reality of life completes the poem where metaphors not only decide the
range of poem but also the sorcery of paradoxes.
There is another scene in the movie which depicts so poetically the
irreverence of humanity towards softness. A colleague of Ricci, busy
posting posters on wall mauls a barefoot child mendicant when he walks
past him playing a musical instrument. As he gets hit the melody of
music too gets disturbed. Here the man is not mauling just a child but
also disturbing or disfiguring what could have been a lilting melody.
How can the melody be heard much less played in the times contrary to
rhythms of life.
The poetry of images like vehemence defense of thief by her almost
harridan mother, Bruno sending for policeman at sensing trouble for his
father, thief taking refuge into a brothel, roars emanating from a
football ground, striking up of Ricci’s shoulder with moving vehicle,
creeping in of restrained sentimentality in climax and many more such
moments uplift the movie from being just a simple collate of visuals to
world of images wanting to be seen and deserving to be seen time and
again.
We are made completely assured of decency of our protagonist when we see
him (in the bicycle theft scene), after having failed to nab the thief,
getting back to his work and trying finish the leftover work in acute
distraught. Our perception of Ricci doesn’t take a hit even when we
see this simpleton trying to be, though bludgeoned by indifferent
circumstances, what is contrary to his nature. We feel bad when Ricci,
the hero for his son gets thrashed before the eyes of son before
dissolving into the crowd. The trenchant question is never answered. We
are left in the belief that now Ricci is part of the crowd and dictates
of crowd will shape his life hence after not his own frantic search to
discover life. Decency of Ricci couldn’t make him worthy enough to be
able to provide us with answers before taking to disappearance. We can’t
have more apt symbolical representation of times of post war Italy
playing games with innocent lives.
The urgency of job at the hands of a father gets reflected in an another
landmark scene when in the midst of frantic search for bicycle Bruno
tries to relieve himself and even before he begins, a loud shout of
father makes him abandon answer the call of nature. Then we see Bruno
shadowing the father again. We have no idea whether he got another
opportunity to relieve himself or not.
A spirited work of Neo-realism, that vicariously launched the career of
as stalwart a filmmaker as Satyajit Ray (Ray once admitted that it was
the viewing of Bicycle thief in Britain that precipitated his desire to
become filmmaker), that entrenched and firmed the foundations of a new
wave started by the likes of Visconti and Rossellini and that set the
theory into motion that actors can be dispensable commodity with even
more greater force. De Sica preferred a factory worker to play the
character of Ricci to legendry Cary Grant and made him work like an
accomplished actor. Not for once the lead actor, Lamberto Maggiorani,
who had no knowledge or experience of acting prior to working in this
film, did show any signs of nervousness before the camera. So did the
child actor, Enzo Staiola. This too is one difference that sets it apart
from other neo realist movies where amateur actors do give a sense of
their not being perfect. No doubt Vittorio De Sica’s immense experience
of having been an actor had helped him profoundly. His habit of enacting
almost every scene for the actor made the task for actors somewhat
easier and hence the groundbreaking film with unforgettable and
indelible charisma.
When we talk about De Sica, the actor’s contribution to De Sica, the
director, we should not forget that his first four films as a director
were normal movies in the tradition of the then run of the mill Italian
cinema. There was nothing to write home about them. Even that
insignificance characteristic of cinema stood him in good stead when he
filmed Bicycle Thief. The scene set in house of tolerance where men
pursuing the Ricci and Bruno kneels each time they pass the pulpit
engineers a light chuckle on viewer’s visage. Then we have that
restaurant scene where Bruno though immensely mature indulges in a
transient childlike activity. Viewer is relieved to see a child in a
child. These scenes bring a lightened texture to an otherwise gloomy
film.
Loosely based on a novel by Luigi Bartolini, whose script was written by
Cesare Zavattini, (the arrival of whom started a dream run of De Sica:
beginning from the The Children Are Watching Us, both went on to do many
films together) Bicycle Thief represents a world where the famous adage
“survival of the fittest” propounded by Charles Darwin gets lived and
breathed. Bicycle Thief shows us a world where, to be able to survive
one needs to have incessant courage. In terms of its cinematic adoption
the story transcends the simplicity of a story, the location of a city,
the poverty of a particular stratum and represents for us a world where
we have to fend for ourselves irrespective of who we are and where we
are. As we see father son duo being lost in the crowd we also see a
compendium of images savored by our eyes for last one and half hour
being hanged on a rope of universality of emotions to see them being
drenched by rain of pathos of yearnings and then being dried to a
resplendent sight by sunlight of borderless humanity.
December 27, 2008
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