Wow, Alicia Fletcher, I am swept away by the rich manner in which you present DeSicca's The Bicycle Thieves. Listening to your presentation triggered memories of a time in the early 1960s when I lived in San Francisco. Then, a group of us frequented a modest sized movie theater, situated in the Richmond District, whose owner was dedicated to show foreign firms like The Bicycle Thieves, The Apu Trilogy from India as well as Kurosawa's masterpieces. On the side of American and European avante guarde films, we saw movies like David and Lisa, Seduced and Abandoned and others like these. Those were the days. So thank you for your presentation.
What? This film is so overly praised. Don't get me wrong, it's good but it's a masterpiece because it used non-professional actors? Come on, we need more than that.
That's a testament to the Italian neo-realism era, this was following World War II when most of Europe especially Italy was very poor and with little morale. Professional actors were not affordable but these directors of this age saw that they don't need to have this highly funded program and can shoot normal people in a normal setting and still make something excellent. Casablanca and the film La Dolce Vita came out around the same time and though Casablanca is great and has great production and acting especially for the time I would much rather watch La Dolce Vita from the sheer emotion and sense of humanity you are feeling with the characters on screen, it's really hard to get that today and Italian neo-realism captured just that. I think it's perfectly just to say it's a masterpiece and not just cause of the everyday man as actors.
