Bicycle Thieves

No major studio would finance Vittorio De Sica, so he raised the money from friends. Lamberto Maggiorani, who plays the father, really was a factory worker, a turner, and afterwards he could not go back: management let him go, reasoning that he had made millions as a film star. He took bricklaying work and only ever got extra parts. Enzo Staiola, who plays Bruno, was found in the street, an 8 year old watching the shoot while helping his father sell flowers. The realism has a limit: Maggiorani’s lines were dubbed by a professional actor, which Visconti held against the film. The Italian title Ladri di biciclette is plural; the English release title was singular, and the Academy filed the film as The Bicycle Thief. At the 1950 ceremony it took the special award for outstanding foreign language film, and the same night Cesare Zavattini lost as a screenplay nominee. That year BAFTA named it best film from any source, and it came top of Sight and Sound’s first poll in 1952. A good fit if you are ready to watch a man walk step by step into a corner rather than a thief get caught, and want the father’s decisions read off his son’s face. Not for viewers who need the search to resolve and the account settled.