Bicycle Thieves Essay
Due: Thursday, October 30
Most films focus on one of the following plot lines: Will the world be saved? Will he and/or she become romantically involved? Will he/she get the money? Will the mystery be solved? Will the missing person (or item) be found or returned? Will justice be served? Will the hero win? Will the escape be successful? These films are then organized in such a way as to serve the plot, to work toward a resolution of the central conflict.
Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycles Thieves radically rejects the typical style of most standard filmmaking. He presents the human struggle in a much more exhilarating and profound style than what we are used to.
De Sica’s film is replete with scenes, images, and moments that depart from the main narrative of Ricci searching for his bicycle. Yet it is the inclusion of these nonnarrative moments that expand and enlarge our consciousness by presenting us with so many diversions and interruptions to navigate. Instead of moving closer to a resolution or an answer as the film goes on, the opposite in fact occurs –De Sica presents us with a series of detours, dead-ends, and digressions. We don’t move toward a distinct goal; if anything, the goal becomes more elusive than ever by the end of the film. The world does not get more simple and understandable; it becomes more complex and mysterious. Meaning is constantly deferred. The action does not stop long enough for us to decode or interpret what anything represents. The tone does not stop changing or fluctuating. It is a world of pure, moment-to-moment experience.
Prompt: Choose any two scenes from Bicycle Thieves that have nothing to do with the plot and answer the question: What do they add to the film?
Note: Do not summarize the plot or provide any biographical information about De
Sica. Keep your paper focused on the above question. Assume your audience knows the film. Begin with a thesis statement that expresses why the two scenes you chose are significant. Then describe each scene separately, discussing its important qualities and its place in the film, citing specific details (what we see, what we hear) to support your reading. The number of paragraphs you write is up to you.
-Write a minimum of 600 words.
-Type the paper using MLA formatting.
-No Works Cited necessary.
-Include a relevant title for your paper.
** As with your Bowling for Columbine essay it is very important that you limit yourself to two scenes only. You will be graded on your ability to identify relevant details, your analysis of the details and your explanation of the scene’s overall place in the film.

As a class, we’ll discuss some of the following details:
Children’s wedding procession.
Man pawning binoculars.
Pan up to the tower of linens.
Kids playing with rocks in the street.
Women calling, “Concierge…”
Woman crying on her way down the stairs.
Woman: “Last door.”
Off-screen: woman asking about the condition of her son.
Ricci gluing the Rita Hayworth poster.
Children begging.
The police station: the clicking typewriter, the files, officer being called to a meeting.
Political discussion/amateur theater rehearsal.
The two vendors arguing: “I was here first. You wanna fight?”
Man blowing bubbles in the market.
Trash truck driver complaining about the rain: “You just can’t win. It rains every Sunday.”
All the items for sale: bicycle parts, inner tubes, a phonograph record player, etc.
The German seminary students chatting during the rainstorm.
Old man: “Don’t shave my chin. I’m letting it grow there.”
The church volunteers serving the poor.
The women preparing the food line: “Not so much there.”
The clergymen crossing themselves in font of the altar.
Room inside the church: crucifixes, religious bric-a-brac.
The boy rescued from the drowning.
Soldiers yelling from passing jeep, “Go Modena!”
The buy-eyed musician.
Bruno’s stretchy mozzarella sandwich.
Second visit to Holy One: boy on crutches.
Holy One: “My boy, you are very ugly.”
“This one yes and this one no.”
The brothel sequence.
The thief’s epileptic fit (fake?).
The interior of the thief’s apartment.
Woman with baby in background, closing the shutters.
The roaring of the crowd outside the soccer arena.