Movie Description:
The Bicycle Thief is about a man, a worker, who must have abike in order towork at his job. He is desperate, pawns everything to regain his machine, goesto work, has the thing stolen from him while his back is turned, and then goes on a search through Rome to find it. That isabout all there is to it. But ithappens to be very close to a lyrical masterpiece. And this isnot because we see Rome as it is, or poor people, or rags. It isbecause these actual details are organized by a humane view of life. The film is unafraid to examine openly, straightforwardly, the terribledistorted, destructive world which Man has made for himself. IUt has a point of view. It is genuinely angry, in fact, ferocious. Andthis anger is not cloaked, got at by indirection and ladies`magazine plot masquerades, but is expressed by means of a head-on collision with the facts oflife as they exist. For many years, while writing my plays, I had tried to find means for expressing my ideas about life. It isthe central process of every writer`s development. I came, painfully, to the area where there was nothing left, no plots, no cagey angles, but only thepossibility of saying openly and clearlyand simply what I had in mind to say, uncloaked, naively.
