italian
A man struggling to make money for the family gets his bike stolen on his first day of the job.
The Bicycle Thief is about a struggling man to put food on the table for his family. The movie takes place in Rome post WWII. Since it takes place in Italy it requires watching the film with subtitles if you’re not fluent in Italian. Antonio Ricci (Lamberto Maggiorani) is an unemployed man that is struggling to get a job. When he does get a job it requires him to have a bike. So his wife sells some linen to the pawn shop in order to pay for the bike. He hopes this job will help the family since the pay is pretty good. The first day on the job he learns how to properly glue a poster on a wall. While he is gluing a poster his bike gets stolen he chases after the thief but eventually the thief loses him. This just ruins his day because he thought the income would help make things better for his family. The next day he gets a few friends of his and along with his son Bruno (Enzo Staiola) a place where most likely the thief would take the bike. They start looking when someone spots a part of the bike similar to the one stolen. The man that has the bike in his possession refuses to let Antonio see the bikes identification number. Antonio calls a cop so the man can allow him to see the number it turns out that it wasn’t the bike. Its starts to rain and that put a halt to the search for the bike. They go to another place and he finds a man that looks just like the guy that stole the bike. He follows the old guy that was making business with the young guy. He follows him to a church and tries talking about the bike but eventually the guy is able to make a run for it. As he tries to catch the old there’s kids calling for help because one of them is drowning. Antonio runs towards the kids thinking its Bruno but it turns out that it was a false alarm. Bruno was waiting for his dad on the top of a staircase. Antonio is so relief that it wasn’t his kid that he invites him to lunch. During lunch he allows his son to drink wine. It shows that incidents like that make you relies what’s really important in life. I think it made Antonio relies that an irreplaceable family is better to have than losing a replaceable bicycle. The end was a bit unsatisfying but at the same time it made sense since it’s based on an everyday plot. You’ll have to watch it in order to understand what I mean of this. I liked the movie since it was better than watching a musical. I was told after the movie that the actors that portrayed the father and the son weren’t actors they were everyday people playing the parts. In my opinion they did a very good job of playing the parts. I would rate this movie an 8 since it was a relatable movie to people that struggle every day. I enjoyed watching the film.
