Bicycle Thieves -- Shot-by-Shot Analysis of Its Great Opening Scene
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- čas přidán 13. 07. 2020
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Bicycle Thieves is one of the great, influential movies of the 20th century, an essential Italian neo-realist classic.
This video discusses and analyzes the opening scene, nearly shot for shot. I will show you how Bicycle Thieves, in its opening three minutes, announces its major plot problem and creates its themes. Those includes:
-- socialism and social justice
-- employment and the problem of poverty in post-WW2 Italy
-- the individual vs. the masses
All reasonable comments welcome, including reasoned disagreements. I ban foolish talk on sight; it's a tremendous waste of life.
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This is precious you are changing my perspective of watching cinema..thank you sir
thanks!
Thank you for this beautiful movie, I wouldn't be able to discover this masterpiece if it wasn't for this channel.
you're welcome. That's what this channel is for, and many viewers have shared great movies with me. I appreciate you.
I watched this movie yesterday after a long day of work and I couldn't fully appreciate it. I'm 21 years old and I think I would not have noticed how great it was, like when you first watched it as you mentionned in your other video, if I didn't see your two videos. They are really complementary, one explains the historical context and your general appreciation of the movie and the other goes way deeper in the details. They are just perfect, thank you very much again!!
thank you. hard movie to watch after a long work day!
This film is a time machine... mostly non actors and zero studio sets. In 1948. Incredible density in most shots. U can see how guys like Scorsese and types like Wes Anderson were inspired by this
It was really a great movie, and your analysis makes it more understandable Thank you
you're welcome!
Actually movie starts with the bus coming around. After the bus stops at some place people gather and look for a man. They follow him to the building, there the man goes into office like building and comes with the job offers and then calls out richi.
Actually what I understood from the scene is when we are in desperate times we wait for the right opportunity to work in the similar manner people wait for the bus and the man in the bus, they follow him and haunt him for the job offer, here irony is richi is lucky to get job offer among masses in the beginning and in the end he is the same man with luck becomes unlucky by loosing bicycle there by loosing livelihood. It's simple demonstration of how ruthless and fortunate life would be
You're right about the bus, although it under the opening credits. The analysis in the video starts right after the credits. Still, the bus moving is right at the opening.
The bus shows up later in the movie, I think even in the scene later in the video, where the main character tries to cut into the line but then gets in line. Very inetersting because the bus is MASS transportation while the bicycle is INDIVIDUAL transportation, something Ricci strives to attain but cannot. Thus he is stuck with the mass transportation, and then in the end, the masses are walking away from the camera.
Good point about luck. For De Sica, this was a way to generate compassion for, and maybe social action on behalf of, his downtrodden characters.
This video is amazing. I learned a lot from this. Thank you so much.
you're welcome!
I've noticed that this movie is very similar in concept that distinguished man in the beginning becomes one of many, as in the movie "The crowd" by King Vidor, but with these movies have a completely opposite mood.
The fact this film was made on a teeny tiny budget, with non-actors and real locations and it was an amazingly made film with a great story. Yet the films now with big budgets and professional actors, aren't so well done. some are good, but not the best.
Ho sempre voluto vedere questi film. Una bella sorpresa di trovarlo qui 👯
Could you do a video like this for The Sacrifice? I’d love to see you break down a scene from Tarkovsky’s last film in this format. I continue to learn more and more about film from you. ❤
it's a good idea. the difficulty is the pace of that movie is so slow that it's hard to figure out how to do that without getting blocked for showing too much of the movie. I'm going to ponder this though. thanks.
@@LearningaboutMovies Oh, you know what? I didn’t think about the pacing. Yeah, that would be quite difficult so I can understand where you’re coming from. The one thing that I picked up on is during the House of Prayer scene where Alexander makes his sacrifice, one of the things that always stuck with me is how early on in the film when Otto asks him about his relationship to God and Alexander says non-existent, I’m afraid. Then when Alexander prays, I noticed how the camera angle was pointed down on him as though for that moment the camera was God and we’re viewing this angle from His perspective. Alexander getting on his knees and praying gave me this impression that even though it’s been confined that he doesn’t believe in God, this was born out of an act of fear and despair. I’m curious to know your interpretation on the dark lighting during that scene. Alexander was bathed in darkness and I’m curious if that’s meant to represent being blind by the darkness of the world, etc hence why his relationship to God was non-existent.
Great Great Great
i this scene 4:51 considered as mise en scene or not? correct me if i am wrong... i still have trouble to spot a mise en scene
well, "mise en scene" can apply to several things: 1) an analysis of one shot, 2) this is the most common, maybe, which is an analysis of a scene or section of a film, and 3) the entire film. I have seen "mise en scene" applied to all of those. If you are talking about "mise en scene" of an entire film, you are talking about its general techniques and strategies, and elements that are repeated and/or emphasized.
@@LearningaboutMovies so anything can be mise en scene? i am very nervous because what if i am wrong... i am still a learner ! thank you professor !
don't be nervous. I suggest using "mise en scene" to describe specific details and choices of a film, particularly when you are looking hard at a shot or a scene in a film. You can't go wrong using the term then.
great analysis. are you a film professor or something?
thank you. yes, more or less. I'm a literature professor who teaches a film class.
@@LearningaboutMovies dope. i like your mirror review too, keep up the good work
To have and have not
yasss good stuff
thank you.
He's there to find a job. He needs a job badly and yet....
Why is he so far away?
Why was he sitting playing in the dirt like a child might?
Has he given up?
Is he immature?
Is he lazy?
As we see later his young son is more industrious and at times more responsible than him.
The more I watch this movie the less I like Ricci as a father and husband and the more I admire Bruno
we could also say he's a man set apart, different from the crowd, given his position at the beginning. As well as a dreamer. I can sort of see what you're saying, but where else in the movie is he being criticized for work ethic?
@@LearningaboutMovies Certainly different in that he takes his poverty quite casual compared the other men there seeking work even though he is in the same boat as them.
I think you when you suggested he was dreamer is the reason he's so far away. He wants to work but time has shown him nothing will come. So he takes himself away from the reality of the unemployment office and the desperate men who surround it.
One can see his dreamer side throughout the movie too. It fits very well. Only a dreamer would think he has any chance in finding a stolen bicycle in Rome in one day. A practical man would have spent that time trying to borrow or rent a bike until he could buy his own.
I personally thought (when I watched that scene) that he was just tired of being hopeful, he was just another man looking for a job, and there by the building stood hoards of other men who desperately wanted a job too, but that 'playing in the dirt' scene that made me think that Antonio's level of desperation is almost turning into a hopelessness or a "whatever, I won't get the job anyway", and it may show that he might had been desperate longer than those people, and that's what makes his story sadder in the end, and that's what makes him an interesting main character: someone who was just on the verge of losing hope, finally gets a glimpse of hope for a better life, only to get it taken away from him soon. So in conclusion, I think that opening scene of him playing in the dirt actually emphasizes his suffering, it's like an investment to make us feel happier when we saw him getting the job that he might've thought he had no chance in getting, and it made us feel sadder when he lost the bike etc. That's what I thought tho
@@lonefoxcub That's great I agree with this
There's a dark part of human nature that insists that those who suffer misfortune must be responsible for it in some way. They suffer so they must be guilty. It's like how in the book of job, his friends all insist he must have done something to offend God.
This guy chased down his bicycle all day, found the thief, called the policeman, doing everything he could and yet you are willing to blame him for sitting down in the dirt for a few seconds away from the crowd of job seekers. I find this reaction utterly bewildering. There's something wrong with you.
And I would like to remind you that finding the bicycle isn't his idea. It's his friend's recommendation.
Some of this is quite pretentious in my opinion. You're reaching quite a lot, pointing ou some obvious things, or non existent things at all.
Fine.
@Aaron D if you're going to disagree do it respectfully and contribute to the discussion with examples and counter points rather than leaving a pointless comment like that
@@LearningaboutMovies Yeah I apologize @Learning about Movies. Reading this back 6 months later I could see how this could be most definitely hurtful. I might have just been in my feelings at the time of writing this so my apologies. And overall I really enjoy your videos even if this one wasn't my favorite at the time.