2011 Student Writing Awards Booklet - Santa Fe Community College

Academic Essay
Honorable Mention
Eric Reinach
Elements of the Iconic in Bicycle Thieves
While I watchVittoria DeSica’s Bicycle Thieves a pronounced déjà vu
occurs, the images and expressions are so archetypal that I feel a pull, a definite
sense of having seen the faces and scenes before. In writing this essay I
hope to identify some of the reasons for this sensation, and address why a
film deeply rooted in a specific setting (Rome, Italy, 1948) manages to transcend
that time and place to speak so profoundly to a modern audience.
As discussed in our class lecture, Italian Neo-Realism was the
product of the nine years immediately following the Second World War.
DeSica’s direction, out of both aim and necessity, brought together many
issues of the Italian political and social climate at the time. After the War
social concerns remained turbulent, the wake of Fascist rule and the rise of
Stalinist Russian loomed over an uncertain future. Similar issues being
faced all over Europe and the Western world comes as perhaps the first reason
the movie was so well received from its debut, not simply in Italy but
by Hollywood as well.
The elevation of the stakes from the very beginning is a more personal
reason I find the film compelling. Bicycle Thieves invokes a sense of
the dire economic situation at once and centers the action around this
simple theme for the rest of the action. We see this expressly when the
film opens with our first in a series of recurring shots of crowds, this time
located at an employment office in a town outside Rome. Through the
mass of men we see the ‘hero’ character emerge, a lean faced family man
who lucks into a job when so many obviously have no work. And here
we discover another central theme – the necessity of having a bike. From
the very start the boss makes clear to our protagonist that he must possess a
working bicycle, the man’s initial excuse that his ‘bike needs to be fixed’ (a
lie) doesn’t stand up. The director informs us with the small, white lie that
the protagonist is distinctly human, a flawed man trying to do his best for
his family. So the audience knows from those first few scenes of the film
what will be pivotal throughout; a man, a job, and a bike.
At this point I begin to wonder about the potential for our hero
to steal a bicycle; an idea I believe DeSica purposely introduces and maintains
as the narrative develops. The empathy of the audience is a tool that
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