Bicycle thief review

Bicycle Thief Review 

Notes

Slow, very slow.
Characters are a bit unrelatable.
Film takes a while to explain the stakes
Why does he not just steal another bike?
Boy is more active than the Father
Long anxiety, build ups little pay off

not a great film
bike represents the man lively hood
The actors work well
father becomes more and more desperate and angry
Boy starts to feel ashamed of his father and hurt by his actions

Review

The bicycle thief is a rather slow film that takes a long time to tell a story where very little actually  happens. The film centres around a man called Antonio trying to support his family in post WW2 Italy. When he gets a well paying job that requires a bike, the Antonio's bike is stole while he works meaning he is unable to do his job. While I think the beginning of the film is well paced and sets up the story well, the rest of the film does little with the premise. Antonio's

Maybe the film was a master piece of Neo-realism, but by today's standards "The Bicycle Thief" is slow and rather boring. One of my major problems with the film is just how thick the protagonist is portrayed to be and how silly the film is at times. It takes Antonio most of the film to realise that he will probably never find his original bike and that even if he finds the man who stole his bike, he has no proof of the theft and the thief has probably already sold the bike. It is only at the end of the film that Antonio even thinks of stealing a bike and even when given the prefect scenario he still messes up the theft by peeling at what is basically jogging pace. When Antonio steals the bike, He is close to a large crowd of people leaving a stadium, many of who are on bikes. If he had biked faster and driven into the crowd, he could of easily lost his pursers. The other problem with Antonio's assault on the thief and the attempt bike theft is that when Antonio commits these acts everyone in the general vicinity drops what they are doing and rush to intervene. The assault on the thief is particularly silly as 50+ people pour out of nearby buildings to assist the thief. I can understand some people might hear the racket and investigate, BUT 50+????

While I understand that the director and writer's were trying to portray an every man with good morals, I find it hard to relate to a character who lets his moral get in the way of logical and his own survival. Antonio state in the film that the lost of his job will result in his family starving, yet it takes him so long to realise that the solution to his problem is to steal someone else's bike.

Overall I feel like that "The Bicycle Thief" is a slow film that delivers very little build up. The supposed everyday life of the poor man feels very circumstantial and the events of the film seem to be driven and caused by general lack of logic thought.