That's just about where the similarities end. Luigi Bartolini's 1946 novel was about a man searching for his stolen bicycle. IT WAS BASED ON A BOOK, BUT WAS DRASTICALLY DIFFERENT FROM IT. He acted in a few more films later before becoming a math teacher as an adult. His name was Enzo Staiola, he was eight years old, and he was hired on the spot. While filming the scene where Antonio looks for a friend to help him search for his bike, De Sica saw "an odd-looking child with a round face, a big funny nose, and wonderful lively eyes" in the crowd of spectators. As fate would have it, the right person showed up randomly. THE KID WHO PLAYS YOUNG BRUNO GOT THE PART BY JUST HANGING AROUND.ĭe Sica had to start shooting before he'd found someone to play Bruno, the main character's son.
#The bicycle thief movie#
At his wife's urging, he returned to the movie business and acted in about a dozen more films, but he never found either the fame or the fortune that the star of one of Italy's greatest movies deserved. Business had slowed down, and though Maggiorani had been there for 16 years (minus three months off to make the movie), his co-workers and boss jealously assumed he was a millionaire now and could afford to be fired. He returned to his factory job but was soon let go. Lamberto Maggiorani got great reviews for his naturalistic performance in the film, but things went downhill for him afterward. Giuseppina persuaded her husband to meet with De Sica, and he was hired for a salary of $1000 (the equivalent of about $10,000 today). The director didn't want the boy, but he was struck by the face of someone else in the photo: Enrico's father, Lamberto, a 38-year-old machinist. She took a photograph of her son, Enrico, to De Sica's office. In April 1948, when De Sica was casting about for non-professionals to be in his film, a woman from Rome named Giuseppina Maggiorani heard a radio announcement calling for a nine-year-old boy. THE LEADING MAN WAS A FACTORY WORKER WHO DIDN'T WANT TO BE AN ACTOR. It is far easier to teach it, to hand on just the little that is needed, just what will suffice for the purpose at hand." 3. It is difficult-perhaps impossible-for a fully trained actor to forget his profession. Director Vittorio De Sica wrote, "The man in the street, particularly if he is directed by someone who is himself an actor, is raw material that can be molded at will. Part of the aesthetic was to use non-actors, or at least actors who were very good at being natural. MOST OF THE CAST WERE NON-PROFESSIONAL ACTORS.īicycle Thieves was part of what came to be called Italian Neorealism, a post-war movement where the glossy, polished studio productions of the past were replaced by gritty, authentic depictions of Italian life. If you've seen the film, you understand how important the seemingly minor alteration is. Since then, it has gradually come to be better known as Bicycle Thieves, and The Bicycle Thief is fading away. (It was correctly titled Bicycle Thieves in the U.K.) It wasn't until Criterion released its definitive edition in 2007 that the American title was corrected. Nobody knows why, either, but that's what it was called in the subtitled prints, in advertisements, and in virtually every review and news article about it in this country. Singular would be “Ladro di bicicletta.”) But for some reason, when it was first exported to America, it was translated as The Bicycle Thief-singular, and with "the" added. In Italian, it's Ladri di biciclette- Bicycle Thieves.
Get your bike out of hock and join us as we discuss some behind-the-scenes details about this poignant Italian drama. Directed by Vittorio De Sica and shot mostly on the rubble-strewn streets of postwar Rome, Ladri di biciclette has been a revered classic of world cinema for more than 65 years, far eclipsing the fame of its own director.
When you hear "Italian movies," you probably think of Federico Fellini, Sergio Leone, maybe Roberto Benigni, maybe Cinema Paradiso.
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