Rating: 
Summary: One of the best films ever made
Review: Vittorio De Sica's 1949 cinematic classic is, quite simply, one of the best films ever made. The film features Lamberto Maggiorani as an impoverished man whose job hanging movie posters depends on his bicycle. When it's stolen, so is his livelihood. He and his young son (Enzo Staiola) undertake a desperate search through Rome to find the stolen property, becoming increasingly more desperate as the search progresses. The story is simple and eloquent, quiet and powerful, harrowing and moving. Poetry in motion, the Bicycle Thief will stick with you long after you've seen it.
Rating:
Summary: By far the best and most heartbreaking of all films.
Review: Vittorio De Sicca's heartbreaking film, The Bicycle Thief, is by far the best film of all time. Strong acting, direction, and a story that moves swiftly and ends all to soon. You are abrubtly drawn emotionaly to this film and it's charcters. Just goes to show, they don't make em like they used to.
Rating:
Summary: As powerful as any movie created!
Review: When I started watching the Bicycle Thief, I was wondering what could be so interesting in a story of a man and his bike. But by the last scene, I was all choked up. The movie is very simple in the fact that it is a tale of a man and a bike. But the emotions and hard-hitting reality of the man's misfortunes makes this movie one of the most powerful and greatest ever filmed.
Rating:
Summary: the final scene is the scene that counts
Review: When the father gets slapped in front of the son by the policeman at the end of the film, who then - after having seen all the film and witnessed the relationship between father and son - will not be moved? Who will still believe in capitalism or any other ism, defending the rich or powerful against the poor and powerless? Noone with a heart, that's for sure. The whole film builds up to this final scene and the comprehension of it. If You just see this scene without having seen the rest of the movie first, the impact will not be as strong. This is an anarchistic film, in the good sence of the word 'anarchy'- a society in which strength, beauty and love is allowed but in which power and oppression cannot be allowed.
Rating:
Summary: painful
Review: Widely regarded as one of the great films of all time, The Bicycle Thief is easy to avoid because even a brief recitation of the plot is so depressing.
In impoverished post-War Italy, men line up every day to see if the government has any work for them to do. Ricci is told that there's a job for him,
but it requires a bicycle, so his wife has to pawn her good linen in order to redeem the previously pawned bicycle. As Ricci and his wife depart the
pawnshop a clerk climbs several stories to add the linens to an immense stack, showing that their situation is hardly unique. Despite this ignominy,
Ricci is obviously overjoyed to be able to provide for his family and to redeem himself in the eyes of his precocious son, Bruno. Ricci's job consists of hanging posters and he needs the bicycle to transport a ladder around town. But on his very first day the bicycle is stolen by
what appears to be a pretty experienced small gang. The remainder of the film follows Ricci and Bruno as they desperately search for the bicycle and
the thief. Ricci does eventually catch him, but the thief's friends swear that he is innocent and a cop persuades Ricci that his word won't hold up
against all these others. Ricci takes Bruno out for a dinner that they can ill afford and this poor father and son are contrasted with the wealthy family eating at a nearby table.
As the two trudge home, Ricci spots another bicycle, leaning unattended in a doorway. He sends Bruno on ahead and then sneaks back to steal it, but
is caught and humiliated in front of his boy. Not exactly a feel-good flick, huh? The film is probably the archetypal example of neo-realism, which eschewed fictional adventure in favor of the dramas of every day life. And it was
understood in its day, and still is by many today, to be some kind of criticism of social inequality. The suggestion being that in a more just society,
wealth would be distributed more evenly and men wouldn't be reduced to this. Yet the movie was also chosen for National Review's list of best
conservative films, so what gives? It seems fair to say that, regardless of the filmmakers original intent, what is portrayed on screen is one of the fundamental reasons that Marxism
failed so completely : Marx assumed that men resented laboring and found it degrading, but in Ricci we see illustrated the great truth that men define
themselves in large part by their work; not only are they not alienated from their labor, they are desperate to labor. Nor does Ricci appear to be a
man who wants a handout from those who have more than him. Ricci does not seek equality; he seeks dignity, the dignity that earning a living will
grant him, particularly in the eyes of his son. He appears to be a man who simply wants a job, and who is destroyed when opportunity is snatched
from his grasp. I said at the beginning that this is a film you want to avoid because it's depressing, but nothing can prepare you for its violence. No, not blood and
guts violence, but psychic violence. In its own humble way, this is a slasher pic, but instead of a knife-wielding maniac slashing co-eds, a thief
slashes the soul of an essentially decent man and reduces him also to thievery. The violence hear is done to the soul of a man, a man who is
destroyed as his son looks on. It is extraordinarily painful to watch, but watch it you must, at least once--it is a great, great film. GRADE : A+
Rating:
Summary: Move over Charles Foster Kane
Review: Without doubt the best film yet made! It should be seen by anyone who claims to be knowledgeable about film.
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