Bicycle Thief

The story of “Bicycle Thief” is meant to be a compelling note on poverty as it occurred in Italy and a setting example of neorealism. Neorealism – unglamorous depiction of the working class – being an important and keystone part of the story itself, the movie’s premise of a man who’s bike is stolen from him and searching after it only to steal one for himself is not only a depiction of the working class, but a strikingly dim description of the lower class. The costume and set are underpinned, such that save for difference in gender, the majority of both the extras and the characters in the story look significantly uniform.

    Director Vittorio de Sica utilizes anonymizing shots such as the long shot (a far distance view of a set, object, character, etc.) to bring into play the concept of contextualization as it relates to frame construction. The shot of Antonio stealing the bike is done in such a long shot; the frame is at such a distance that one cannot see the look on Antonio’s face even as he acts in the most crucial turning point of the plot. The street in front of Antonio is in much better view than he is, but it is the shot that includes the street and its bypassers and workers that create and allow for the contextualization that makes this film so neorealistic – not one event happens without it rippling into the world around it. The set itself is an actual town, not a studio, so all of the shots take place more organically and create the atmosphere that de Sica sought to capture in a camera without the arguably necessary glamourization that take place in an artificial studio.