35mm

Bicycle Thieves

Ladri di biciclette
Vittorio De Sica

One of Carlo Di Palma’s earliest jobs was pulling focus for Vittorio De Sica’s neorealist opus, which follows a struggling Roman laborer who lands an ever-elusive job, only to have his crucial bicycle stolen.

DIRECTOR
Vittorio De Sica
YEAR
1948
COUNTRY
Italy
RUNTIME
89 minutes
FORMAT
35mm
ORIGINAL TITLE
Ladri di biciclette

Installed alongside Rome Open City as the quintessential neorealist opus, Bicycle Thieves marked Vittorio De Sica’s third collaboration with scriptwriter Cesare Zavattini, and was a formative experience for Carlo Di Palma—at the time, a teenaged focus puller working under cinematographer Carlo Montuori. The film follows a struggling Roman laborer (real-life factory worker Lamberto Maggiorani) who lands an ever-elusive job, only to have the crucial instrument for that job, his bicycle, stolen. A distinct departure from the wartime backdrops that had dominated earlier neorealist works, Bicycle Thieves is an unforgettable plunge into the day-to-day world of the countless citizens struggling to survive during peacetime.

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