Bicycle Thieves

In postwar Rome, Antonio Ricci has been out of work for a long stretch when he is offered a job putting up advertising posters, on one condition: he needs a bicycle. He has one, but it sits in a pawnshop, and his wife Maria gives up part of her dowry to redeem it. On his first day, the bicycle is taken from him on the street. Antonio sets out to recover it, accompanied by his young son Bruno, whose presence turns the search into something more than a hunt for a missing object.

Vittorio De Sica directed the film, and wrote it with Cesare Zavattini and Suso Cecchi d'Amico; Giuseppe Amato and De Sica produced it for Produzioni De Sica. The third film in the chronology given here, released between Shoeshine and Miracle in Milan, it belongs to the director's run of neorealist work. Lamberto Maggiorani plays Antonio, Enzo Staiola plays Bruno, and Lianella Carell plays Maria among a cast of twenty-one credited players, few of them professionals.

The film runs eighty-nine minutes. Its reputation rests on unusually broad agreement: on IMDb it holds 8.2 from around 192,000 votes, on TMDB 8.2 from roughly 2,750, while the critics' rating stands at 9.4 from 67 reviews, a level of critical approval well above even the strong audience response.