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November 27, 2009
NYC
When the Wheels Come Off
By CLYDE HABERMAN
With unemployment in the city exceeding 10 percent, the timing is perfect for one of the most wrenching films about job desperation to make the rounds in some New York theaters.
We’re referring to “The Bicycle Thief,” directed by a titan of Italian cinema, Vittorio De Sica. Released in the United States 60 years ago, it was part of a monthlong retrospective of Italian Neorealism that ended this week at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. It had a two-week run this month at Lincoln Plaza on the Upper West Side. On Dec. 11, it is scheduled to move to Cinema Village in Greenwich Village.
Though set in impoverished Italy after World War II, “The Bicycle Thief” speaks to today’s widespread economic misery, said John M. Poole, the president of Corinth Films, the movie’s distributor.
The main reason for releasing it now is the 60th anniversary, Mr. Poole said. Nonetheless, “it absolutely dovetails with the economy these days,” he said. “We’re in such dire times.”
The film holds up well.
It is the story of one Antonio Ricci, whose days are spent with other luckless men looking for work. One morning, a job comes open: pasting wall posters. It is reserved for someone with a bicycle. Antonio has one, even if he first must get it out of hock.
On his first day, proud to finally hold a job, he is putting up a poster of Rita Hayworth when his bicycle is stolen. The thief gets away.
The rest of the film is about Antonio’s mounting despair as he and his son search for the bike. He is a decent man, who plays by the rules. He turns to the police. But they are, for the most part, indifferent.
Asked by a colleague what Antonio’s problem is, a police captain shrugs. “Nothing,” he says. “Just a bicycle.”
Just a bicycle. For Antonio, it represents life itself.
“When it is stolen, everything else starts to unravel — Antonio’s status as a father and a husband, his confidence in the efficacy of the law and the decency of other people, his ethical grounding,” the New York Times film critic A.O. Scott wrote in March.
It is perhaps not giving away too much to note that the film’s Italian title is “Ladri di Biciclette,” or “Bicycle Thieves.” Under any title, it packs an emotional wallop that can be felt today by tens of thousands of New Yorkers and millions of other Americans.
“A man loves his family and wants to protect and support them,” the film critic Roger Ebert wrote of “The Bicycle Thief” in 1999. “Society makes it difficult. Who cannot identify with that?”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/27/ny...l?ref=nyregion
We’re referring to “The Bicycle Thief,” directed by a titan of Italian cinema, Vittorio De Sica. Released in the United States 60 years ago, it was part of a monthlong retrospective of Italian Neorealism that ended this week at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. It had a two-week run this month at Lincoln Plaza on the Upper West Side. On Dec. 11, it is scheduled to move to Cinema Village in Greenwich Village.
Though set in impoverished Italy after World War II, “The Bicycle Thief” speaks to today’s widespread economic misery, said John M. Poole, the president of Corinth Films, the movie’s distributor.
The main reason for releasing it now is the 60th anniversary, Mr. Poole said. Nonetheless, “it absolutely dovetails with the economy these days,” he said. “We’re in such dire times.”
The film holds up well.
It is the story of one Antonio Ricci, whose days are spent with other luckless men looking for work. One morning, a job comes open: pasting wall posters. It is reserved for someone with a bicycle. Antonio has one, even if he first must get it out of hock.
On his first day, proud to finally hold a job, he is putting up a poster of Rita Hayworth when his bicycle is stolen. The thief gets away.
The rest of the film is about Antonio’s mounting despair as he and his son search for the bike. He is a decent man, who plays by the rules. He turns to the police. But they are, for the most part, indifferent.
Asked by a colleague what Antonio’s problem is, a police captain shrugs. “Nothing,” he says. “Just a bicycle.”
Just a bicycle. For Antonio, it represents life itself.
“When it is stolen, everything else starts to unravel — Antonio’s status as a father and a husband, his confidence in the efficacy of the law and the decency of other people, his ethical grounding,” the New York Times film critic A.O. Scott wrote in March.
It is perhaps not giving away too much to note that the film’s Italian title is “Ladri di Biciclette,” or “Bicycle Thieves.” Under any title, it packs an emotional wallop that can be felt today by tens of thousands of New Yorkers and millions of other Americans.
“A man loves his family and wants to protect and support them,” the film critic Roger Ebert wrote of “The Bicycle Thief” in 1999. “Society makes it difficult. Who cannot identify with that?”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/27/ny...l?ref=nyregion