Dir. Vittorio De Sica
There is power in reflecting life on film. Objectively, the ability to empathise with characters on screen shouldn't matter in our appreciation of a film. Subjectively, and in practice, that's bullshit. Take one look at the Harry Potter fandom and it's clear that a large majority of those fans love the world of Hogwarts because they would wish to be there themselves, in the shoes of Harry, Hermione, or Gryffindor Student #84. Hell, some people watch Breaking Bad and empathise so wholly with the journey of Walter White from chemistry teacher to drug baron, that they whine and moan about how horrible a wife Skylar White is. Objectively, she is the wife of a man who, while suffering from cancer, spends his remaining time not with his family, but cooking and selling drugs to pay for his treatment. That excuse is lost as the series continues, and he cooks for the pleasure of it, but still, some people stand with him, and the amount of times I've seen Skylar called a bitch is unbelievable. But is that a bad thing?
The answer is of course, yes, one of the reasons being the above. But arguably, the show-runners and filmmakers of Breaking Bad succeed in making us empathise with Walter to such a degree that we at the very least understand his drives as a person, whether we support him is a different matter, but many do. Skylar doesn't support Walt, and so she becomes this shrewish woman to some viewers, bringing down this outlaw, drug dealer vibe that the show bathes us in. Scorsese's Wolf of Wall Street does the same thing as in a drug-haze Jordan Belfort attempts to drive away with his child, crashing the car, his child's head slamming into the seat - it comes like a bucket of cold water, breaking us away from the outrageous fun of the previous two hours, and showing us the true Jordan, an incompetent, dangerous father.
Speaking of buckets (how's that for a clunky segway?), we have Bicycle Thieves. Here, as with most Italian Neo-realist films, the goal is to portray the lives of present-day (post WWII) Italians, often poor, and to have us see them not as larger than life characters on a screen, but as real people, merely shown to us via the screen. I spoke in my last post about Vertov and the cinema-eye, showing us the true world, well this is it again, however it is no documentary. It is fiction, but done in such a way to reflect real-life that it may as well be a documentary. The plot has a political bent, as we see how the country fails to find work for all the returning soldiers of WWII, and this tale, of a man and his family making ends meet to afford a bicycle so that he can hang posters of new Hollywood movies over Rome, is one of many.
The film opens with Antonio (Lamberto Maggiorani) learning of the job opportunity that he's chosen for, but to accept it he must have a bike. He says he does, although he doesn't. He returns to his wife, Maria (Liannella Carell), she fetching water in two buckets for the house. She is clearly doing her bit, like the other wives, as housekeeper. Antonio relays the information to her, his personality apparent - slightly feckless, a worrier, who is lost in his own problems but doesn't solve them directly. She struggles to carry the buckets and he does nothing. He turns around to see her reaction to his worry that they cannot afford a bike, and she articulates her neck to the buckets. Almost snapped back to reality, Antonio reaches over and takes one of them, saving her the struggle.
The scene continues, as the walk back to their house. But that's it. That it the moment where the promise of Neo-realism, which I'd read up on a little before viewing the film, was met. See my previous Ponyo post to see how much I appreciate human moments on film. This was glorious. The detail adds nothing to the plot, but it provides spades of character-building. The way Maria struggles for a while, not even prompting Antonio, as she is used to this absent-minded treatment from her husband, who she nonetheless adores. The way Antonio immediately rights the wrong, and welcomes her input after taking the bucket.
As they return home, we get another of these moments, as Maria goes into the bedroom and begins to take the sheets off, to Antonio's befuddlement. In that wonderful, determined way, she does this, then reaches into the cabinet drawer to remove the spare blankets, so that they can be sold to afford the bike. But wonderfully, the drawer sticks a bit, and in her frustrated mental state, this annoys her even more. She doesn't want to deprive them of the simple warmth of a bed, but she must do, and will do, so that her husband can afford the bike, get the job, and earn enough money to buy food, pay the rent, and eventually buy the sheets back. We've all had drawers stick when we're in a hurry, and it's doubly frustrating, and so what do we do? We empathise almost fully with Maria, and we see her as a real-person, dealing with real issues - Neo-realism in a nut-shell, accomplished not with camera trickery, but with the documentation of real, trivial things like forgetting to carry heavy buckets, or a stuck drawer.
As the two pawn the bed-sheets later, they sneak a look through the window of the warehouse and we see rows upon rows of similar sheets plied high, as the warehouse attendant must climb the wooden shelves to find room for them. This is how the film links to the wider social issues of the country, as hundreds, if not thousands of families go without necessities like bed-clothes to keep themselves alive. The much needed sheets however sit, among hundreds of their type, in a warehouse, benefiting nobody but the pawnbroker, and even he benefits little as who has the money to buy sheets? The film points fingers, but does it with an understanding that the person you point fingers at is just that, a person, with their own story, their own troubles.
The thief of Antonio's bicycle is later found, and is defended by his neighbours as an upstanding man. The old man who spoke to the thief only wants to be left alone, and the churchgoers look down on Antonio for disrupting their service. I mean it when I say that every character in Bicycle Thieves is believable. Each character has a story that can be inferred from their place in this era of Rome, and that story tends to be one of poverty. Antonio, Maria, and their son, Bruno's (Enzo Staiola) story is only one such story. In the close of the film, Antonio he attempts to steal a random bike, and he is accosted by the crowd, who see him as little more than a weak-willed thief. We know different, but only because we have been shown his story. Even the 'villains' of the world should be given the utmost empathy, as under poverty families begin to look out only for themselves, and this tends to harm others, ironically it is normally the poor, thus creating a cycle of misfortune for those already under economic blight. The world is not black and white, but grey, and on film, that grey is a rainbow of opportunity to explore.
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