BSA106 The Bicycle Thief.

I agree with the statement that "The Bicycle Thief" is one of the greatest films of all time because it successfully portrays the reality of living in poverty and the unfairness and desperation of the whole situation in a way that everyone can empathise and sympathise with.

In my opinion the bike represents wealth. The people who have a bike have the power to go places and, in the fathers case, work. Typically, those with bikes have a freedom that those without haven't which you can see in the early tram scene when everyone is pushing to get onto the tram but lots of them get turned away and are told to wait for the next tram. Basically they are all subject to the will of other's because of their lack of a bike. This can be read as a metaphor for the struggle of living and without the means needed to survive.
I thought that the use of unprofessional actors was not evident. Had I not known they were unprofessional, I wouldn't have guessed because they acted very well in my opinion. In a way, they brought a realism to the screen that perhaps couldn't have been achieved had they used professional, seasoned actors. One part that I found very interesting way that in one scene as the father and son are looking for the bike, the son keeps glancing up at his father as if looking for some comfort from him. I don't now if it was the directors direction or just the boys acting decision (or his sub-concious acting decision) but in my opinion it added a whole new layer to the father-son relationship dynamic between the two on screen.
The fathers character arc is very obvious. He begins being portrayed as a kind, upstanding man who obviously loves his son and wife. As the obsession to find the bike begins to override his morals. We see this unravelling when the father hits his son in his anger. The whole story arc comes to a climax when the father is caught redhanded as, in his desperation, he attempts to steal a bike for himself. The father then seems to realise how his desperation and poverty ended up changing his ideals and he seems ashamed that his son was there to witness the whole situation.

 

The son was a very good character in my opinion. He was a character who seemed to believe that hard work and dedication without giving up would lead to a successful outcome. Even when tired, hungry and upset, he continues to help search for the bike. He has a clear sense of what is right and what is wrong, and so, he is obviously upset and confused when he watches his father robbing a bike when he knows it to be wrong. In many ways, the boy grows up in the film from being a naive young boy who thinks that anything must be possible to realising there is inequality in wealth that can lead people to doing bad things. I think that one of the most obvious moments that the boy realises this is when he is in the fancy restaurant and sees that not all families are like his and some can afford an upbringing very different that the one he was given, purely as a result of the wealth of the family they were born into.