An Italian movie The Bicycle Thief was screened here on Sunday under the weekly film screenings being organized at Bharat Bhavan. As the various events at Bharat Bhavan captures a huge crowd, so as the weekly film screenings do.
Notably the weekly film screenings are organized by Chhavi wing of Classical cinema, Bharat Bhavan for the regular movie watchers of the city to enjoy different genres of movies. The Bicycle Thief was directed by Vittorio De Sica in 1948. This is story of a poor father searching for his stolen bicycle during post-World War II in Rome without which he will lose the job which was to be the salvation of his young family.
Adapted for the screen by Cesare Zavattini from a novel by luigi Bartolini, and starring lamberto Maggiorani as the desperate father and Enzo Staiola as his plucky young son, Bicycle Thieves is one of the masterpieces of Italian neorealism. It received an Academy Honorary Award in 1950. Antonio is a poor man who is thrilled when he is at last offered a job, delivering and putting up movie posters. But he needs a bicycle, and must supply his own.
On his first day at work, the unlocked machine is stolen and Antonio drops everything to go on a desperate odyssey through the streets of Rome with his little boy Bruno to get his bike back, pleading and accusing and uncovering scenes of poverty similar to theirs wherever they go. They create uproar in classic crowd moments: in the streets, in a market, in a church mass.
This is a story that magnificently withholds the comic or dramatic palliatives another sort of film might have introduced. The son is the intimate witness of the father's humiliation, his inadequacy as a provider. The scenes at the beginning of the film, when Antonio casually leaves his bicycle unlocked but it remains for the moment miraculously unstolen are worthwhile to be watched.