Blu-ray Review: BICYCLE THIEVES

Italian Neo-realist cinema is not exactly a genre on which I am an expert.  I understand it, but I haven't really invested a lot of my time in exploring it.  Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves is widely accepted as one of the benchmarks of that revolutionary movement that followed the second World War and Italy's reconstruction.  To some filmmakers, like De Sica and screenwriter Cesare Zavattini, it just felt wrong to continually make fluff films that didn't reflect the reality of what was happening on the streets of Rome.

Enter Antonio.  We first find him as a face among many clamoring for a job at a local job club.  he gets lucky and immediately gets an offer, there's only one catch: he needs a bicycle.  He lies and says that he has one.  Desperate not to lose this opportunity, his wife chips in their last bedsheets to a pawn shop in order to put together the money to purchase a working bicycle so Antonio can try to make this job work.  For a brief moment, everything is bright and beautiful.  Antonio and his family are poor, but hopeful, and the new job gives them good reason to be, until tragedy strikes. 

As suggested by the title, not halfway into his first day on the job, his bicycle is stolen right out from in front of him.  Antonio gives chase, but with the thief on wheels, there is no chance of him catching up.  The rest of the film takes Antonio through the seedy streets and dodgy markets of Rome.  We follow one destitute and/or dishonest soul after another as each tells his piece of the story while trying not to help Antonio too much.  Through brothels, markets, churches, and back again, Antonio and his son doggedly search for their ticket out of poverty, only to be struck down at every turn.  This is life in post-war Rome; tough, unyielding, and full of hardship. 

Vittorio De Sica's use to non-professional actors is par for the course with neo-realist films, and his use of on location shooting rips the artifice from the filmmaking process, which was one of the biggest achievements of the movement.  The people of Rome could see their lives, the places they shopped, ate, worshiped, and lived on the screen portrayed in a relatable way.  The camera never intrudes and never becomes a character, only a witness to the suffering and struggle that one man faces over the course of a day in order to make sure he can continue feeding his family.

The film is heart crushing.  The audience has a surrogate on screen in the form of Bruno, Antonio's young son who tags along on the quest.  He acts as our witness to his father's desperation, and what he feels, we feel, especially in the gut wrenching final reel.  De Sica's film is a masterpiece, and one that feels prescient about the situation in many places in the world today as economies struggle and more and more people find themselves out of work and hoping for that one chance to grab and make a better life.

The Disc: 

Arrow Films launches their new Arrow Academy imprint with Bicycle Thieves, and it looks like a winner to me.  Sort of designed to complement Masters of Cinema and The Criterion Collection, Arrow Academy will feature classics from Europe (at least so far), presented in brand new, collectible editions with the same kind of attention to detail they've shown in their Arrow Video line. 

The video in this release looks absolutely splendid in motion, the images are sharp and clear, if perhaps a tiny bit brighter than I'd expected. There are several small marks on the print being used, but nothing overly distracting.  The film is over sixty years old, so perhaps a bit of print damage can be forgiven.  I was very satisfied with the image, and when compared with some of the SD footage from the film that is in the bonus features, I can say that the HD version is a huge step forward in quality.

The audio is in similar shape.  Arrow Academy provides an LPCM Mono audio track that is as good as I've heard.  The audio is clear and crisp, once one gets past the post-syncing.  All Italian films were post-synced in this era, live sound just wasn't an option, so there are moments where it can be a little distracting, but it is the nature of the beast.

Arrow have come up with some exceptional extras for this release that really make it even more worthwhile.  First up is a very informative and engaging academic commentary from Italian Cinema expert Robert Gordon, author of BFI Modern Classics 'Bicycle Thieves'.  I don't typically like commentaries, but it felt right for this one, and I'm glad I spent the time on it.  Also included are two hour-long documentaries from Italian TV, one about screenwriter Cesare Zavattini, and the other about his frequent collaborator Vittorio De Sica.  The two figures feature heavily in each other's documentaries, but they overlap little, which is nice.  Both documentaries make for wonderful viewing and a good primer on the careers of each.

At the time of this review, I haven't yet received the finished product, but this edition also includes Arrow's customary 4 paneled reversible artwork, as well as a a booklet with an essay from Michael Brooke and an essay called "Some Ideas On Film" by Zavattini, which is sure to be fascinating.

Overall, this release is wonderfully compiled, with awesome extras and a great treatment of the feature.  Arrow Academy's Blu-ray/DVD Dual Format edition of Bicycle Thieves is Region B, so European readers can buy with confidence, and North American and Asian customers will need to have a region free player to accommodate this wonderful disc.