The Bicycle Thief Reaction

 I enjoyed The Bicycle Thief. This was a good film to introduce us to Italian Neorealism. It was interesting to see a film so realistic that really shows how Italians were dealing with life after World War II. One thing that I felt like made it very realistic was how natural the lighting was. It was clear that all the scenes that were outside were actually using the sun which I thought was cool. I think this helped capture what Rome really looked like back then instead of making it look fake with artificial lighting. It made it feel so real that I sometimes felt like I was watching a documentary. I did find the film to be very sad though. It's clear that this family is really struggling and when Antonio finally gets a job you start to feel happy for the family but this film quickly reverses that feeling when his bike gets stolen. It's very frustrating to watch as Antonio and Bruno spend the entire film looking for the bike. Everytime he sees the bike, the thief rides away and when he finally catches the thief, the bike is nowhere to be found. Every glimmer of hope that we have is always quickly stolen from us. It was also kind of sad to watch Antonio slowly lose himself over this bike. He interrogated an old man in a church, he hit his son, he made a kid have a seizure/stroke, he spent money on the prophecy lady, and then eventually ended up becoming the Bicycle thief himself, forever ruining his image to himself and his own son.I was surprised to see the film end not so happily ever after and then I remembered that this is Italian Neorealism, and real life doesn't always have happy endings.