As a masterpiece of Italian neo-realism, this film is very straightforward and realistic. The Rome after World War II, the broken streets, the crowded traffic, the city full of bicycles, the poor masses, the indifferent hearts. This makes the viewers who have seen “Roman Holiday” completely unable to draw the two Rome related symbols.The themes of the film, I sum up three, indifference, poverty and affection.Indifference fills all the episodes of the film. After his bicycle was stolen, the police appeared three times, but none of them really enforced the law impartially and solved the problem for him. Although the third police officer appeared to be very amiable, but in the case of a large group of people embracing the thief, he only advised Richie to give up, essentially he was no different from the first two police officers and could not work for the people. When his bike is stolen, the old man who is as complicit as he is in the underclass masses doesn’t help him, the crowd near the thief’s house mob him, and finally when he steals something, he is beaten mercilessly.
In this, a great deal of contrast is at work in the plot. Once he did not believe in fortune telling, but later he took the initiative to go to the “psychic” fortune teller. We can find that the poor people like mole crickets in this kind of society have little possibility to turn over a new leaf. They are knocked down in reality and can only seek refuge in the gods of nothingness, but they are only pointed out by the “psychic” and hit more directly. Many of the same people who go to church are also poor people. Just because the church offers a free meal, right? This is the theme of poverty. In fact, whether it was Richie or the old man, or even the hateful bicycle thief, all of them were poor, and we don’t know who the blame really belongs to. Obviously, the government of the defeated country is inactive, and the people seem to live as if they are self-perpetuating in the ancient metropolis – Rome, what a contrast! The so-called upper classes were absolutely dominant. The church speeds up its services because a lawyer has an emergency; the peddler who does not cooperate with Ritchie in his search for a bicycle respects the police when they come. I wonder why the same class of people instead turn on each other instead of uniting against the unjust world and fighting for their rights?
Despite the world being so cold, there is still a faint fire in the world to give warmth. The love and support between husband and wife, the friend helping to find the car’s righteousness, the most heartwarming is still the pulsating but deep affection between father and son. One of my favorite scenes is the part where the father and son eat at the restaurant. The black band played and sang the old jazz music, the lead singer’s round eyes make people feel funny but do not want to laugh out, the vicissitudes of the face has a smile on Richie and Bruno emerged, there is a mutual compassion with the end of the world. Only they will give Ritchie father and son a little good-natured smile it. Ritchie and his son had a big dinner, they temporarily put the loss of the bicycle behind them, ate lassie bread, and also behind his mother’s back to drink together. Although this scene is still not simply a lyrical affection, there are several shots in it comparing Bruno with a boy in the next seat, the huge gulf between rich and poor has been reflected so abruptly in the next generation. Many times to the rich child distorted close-ups make him look very ugly, making people feel that the gap between the rich and the poor as a rift between the sky is difficult to bridge. In this paragraph, Richie said something that I will hardly forget: “Everything can be solved, except death.” This makes me seem to see a little bit of romanticism.
The director is very good at creating conflict and climax, which makes the whole film without peeing. Steal and seek this thread throughout the film, but also a pair of always contradictory, the final Ritchie turned to steal someone else’s car so that the conflict finally culminates. The transformation between “stolen – seeking – stealing” is saddening. The middle section of drowning is also a clear climax. This paragraph feels like the audience was set up by the director, if Bruno really drowned, the film is too tragic, the tone will also change greatly. In other episodes have also been maintaining the conflict, such as Ritchie and the bicycle thieves repeatedly showdown, Ritchie and the old man’s encounter.
An extremely important prop throughout the film is the bicycle. It was the common means of transportation at the time, so he became a symbol to distinguish the regular people from the poor. He became a symbolic symbol that separated people from each other in a raw way. Ritchie tried hard to fit in with the better class, but failed. In the pouring rain, surrounded by a sea of bicycles, the father and son are now helpless in the street, making them seem even more alone and helpless.
This is a black and white film that fits the realistic subject matter very well. The images have the feel of old photographs. The situation in Italy after World War II unfolds in the simple shots, giving us an insight into the society of the time and making us reflect. This is also the meaning of neo-realism, right?
