It’s a title you simply must watch, not necessarily for the truths it packs but rather for the bombed-out buildings of postwar Italy, peripheral details that director Vittorio De Sica insisted on.
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11/04/09
The Bicycle Thief (1948)
95
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:41
Fresh:39
Rotten:2
Average Rating:8.8/10
Runtime: 90 mins
Genre: Foreign Films
Synopsis: The recipient of international acclaim, Vittorio de Sica's Italian Neorealist masterwork, THE BICYCLE THIEF, is a treasure of world cinema. After nearly two years of unemployment, Antonio (Lamberto... [More]
Starring: Enzo Staiola, Lamberto Maggiorani, Lianella Carell, Gino Saltamerenda
Director: Vittorio De Sica
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Reviews for The Bicycle Thief
One of the great, perfect crystalisations of a specific point in time into a particular film, this is one of the greatest cinematic experiences ever.
12/19/08
De Sica’s neo-realist lodestone may have retained its vitality over the decades, but whatever sense of anger it whipped up in the disgruntled masses of postwar Rome feels lost to the excessively syrupy score.
12/19/08
Yes, it's a titan in the annals on cinema history, but more importantly this is a profoundly moving allegory that balances the grimness of its characters' plight against some of the period's most elegant visual poetry.
12/19/08
Bicycle Thieves is a postwar classic from the school of Italian Neo-Realism.
12/19/08
This is poverty's authentic sting: banal and horrible loss of dignity. Bicycle Thieves is a brilliant, tactlessly real work of art.
12/19/08
The lasting soul of Thieves’ pure cinema poverty-parable finally nestles in its deeply affecting father-son pairing in which seven-year-old Staiola dazzles as one of cinema’s wonder-kids.
12/19/08
Not in the top 10 or 15 or 100 films ever made... But it is undeniably good, very good.
12/14/08
... a plainspoken, poetic work that is likely to surprise you with its virtues no matter how often you've heard it called a "great film."
07/11/08
Devastating. Brilliant. Perhaps the most influential film of all time.
07/15/07
De Sica classic still enthralls.
02/20/07
there are few characters that are more fully realized and deeply felt as Ricci
02/07/07
Like so many of the films grouped together under the heading of Italian neo-realism, its grainy monochrome images and simple storyline never delve beneath the surface of the characters' lives to reveal the social mechanisms at work there.
02/09/06
No review available.
10/27/05
No review available.
10/09/05
No review available.
06/25/05
Remains an enduring classic
04/20/05
No review available.
02/08/05
A defining landmark of Italian neorealism and a haunting fable of want and desperation… an ideal marriage of form and meaning. Even the title is indispensable.
01/07/05
No review available.
12/21/04
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