Film Review - The Bicycle Thieves

In this touching yet sympathetic film, the character Antonio Ricci finds himself living the life of a poor post-world war citizen, scraping around for money. He soon finds a job, to his delight, and is told he needs to have a bicycle in order for him to have the job. When told "No Bicycle, No Job" his family manages to scrape some money together for a bike, but ends up losing it while putting up a poster. This film is fascinating when representing a realism or "neo-realism" concept, as it originally was created with non-actors in mind. The film's main character best represents a natural realism as he is actually a factory worker in real life.

The awakening theme is that it is realistic, to the point of poverty being displayed, in a no-truer form than real life. Antonio makes it his mission to go after the thief who stole his bike, eventually he starts to create accusations against people who are actually innocent. This idea of him searching to fulfil his own needs of having a bicycle ultimately transforms him into a bicycle thief himself. This can be seen as a larger metaphor for life itself. He tries to hunt down an opposition and ends up becoming what he's chasing after. There are many ways this can translate into modern society. The government is a great example, the fact that they reinforce laws and regulations to ultimately make it safer for people in the world and to be free from injustice, is ironic as some people accuse the government of stripping them from their own rights to free speech, this in turn creates the government as a tyrant that people need to escape from to create the freedom they truly need. The fact Antonio makes a transformation from the character at the beginning that's wanting to put himself up for the job, and be a part of society, into the character at the end who is a thief, shows exactly how some people end up where they are in life. Sometimes it's a misunderstanding or judging of their realistic character. We can apply the sympathy we may give to the main character at the end, to the thief at the beginning, and we've come full circle in understanding the realism of society. Everyone has their reasons for ending up where they are.

To conclude, the main character can represent all people in society, and a larger picture of any person that may be judged for what they do, but the fact is, we only observe from the outside, as the main character at the beginning, therefore we cannot see on the inside who they are. The main character is misunderstood for what it looked like with the young thief and Antonio at the end, because they were all judging on the initial sight of what had happened with the young boy having a fit on the floor. Antonio was judging the young boy, and he eventually became judged himself. The realism associated to this film is that we can only take in what our senses show us, but essentially we can be enormously misunderstood in our judgements.