Hailed around the world as one of the greatest movies ever made, Vittorio De Sica’s Academy Award–winning Bicycle Thieves (Ladri di biciclette) defined an era in cinema. In postwar, poverty-stricken Rome, a man, hoping to support his desperate family with a new job, loses his bicycle, his main means of transportation for work. With his wide-eyed young son in tow, he sets off to track down the thief. Simple in construction and dazzlingly rich in human insight, Bicycle Thieves embodied all the greatest strengths of the neorealist film movement in Italy: emotional clarity, social righteousness, and brutal honesty.
Cast
| Antonio Ricci | Lamberto Maggiorani |
| Bruno Ricci | Enzo Staiola |
| Maria Ricci | Lianella Carell |
| Baiocco | Gino Saltamerenda |
| The thief | Vittorio Antonucci |
| The beggar | Giulio Chiari |
Credits
| Director | Vittorio De Sica |
| Screenplay | Vittorio De Sica, Suso Cecchi D'Amico, Gerardo Guerrieri and Cesare Zavattini |
| Cinematography | Carlo Montuori |
| Producer | Giuseppe Amato and Vittorio De Sica |
| Story | Cesare Zavattini |
| Based on a novel by | Luigi Bartolini |
| Sound | Gino Fiorelli |
| Editing | Eraldo Da Roma |
| Music | Alessandro Cicognini |
SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET:
- New, restored high-definition digital transfer
- Working with De Sica, a collection of new interviews with screenwriter Suso Cecchi d’Amico, actor Enzo Staiola, and film scholar Callisto Cosulich
- Life as It Is, a new program on the history of Italian neorealism, featuring scholar Mark Shiel
- A 2003 documentary on screenwriter and longtime Vittorio De Sica collaborator Cesare Zavattini, directed by Carlo Lizzani
- Optional English-dubbed soundtrack
- New and improved English subtitle translation
- PLUS: A book featuring new essays by critic Godfrey Cheshire and filmmaker Charles Burnett, remembrances by De Sica and his collaborators, and classic writings by Zavattini and critic André Bazin
by Godfrey Cheshire
Feb 12, 2007
Viewed in retrospect, much of modern cinema can seem to flow from twin fountainheads: Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane (1941) and Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves (1948). Though separated by World War II, the two movies symbolize the cardinal impulses that came to captivate serious audiences...
by Charles Burnett
Feb 12, 2007
Bicycle Thieves is truly one of my favorite films. I could watch it over and over again, and in truth, I have. It’s a complicated and eloquent story in spite of its simple plot. The first time I saw Bicycle Thieves was in a class on neorealism, and I was immediately struck by how...
