Makes Peaches Similar to Cinema Paradiso, this movie tells you about another time and place you never knew existed. I liked how it ended and that it was about something simple, a bike, but about so much more, poverty, crime, morality, love, self esteem.

Gremar John Tazarte A simple sad story of reality in poverty. A balance depiction of the cases of poor and rich. Most scenes are kinda boring.

paul2001sw-1 Watching Vittorio de Sata's 1948 film 'Bicycle Thieves' one is struck just quite how poor post-war Italy was: not only might ownership of a bicycle be critical to your chances of earning a livelihood, you might even pawn your bed-sheets when in need of money, while in the most deprived districts, people lived in almost medieval conditions. The film is rightly celebrated for its naturalism, although the story is essentially a shaggy-dog tale, and the primitive state of film-making 70 years ago cannot be totally ignored: the camera is just so much less proactive than on modern movies. But the heartbreaking ending, which finally explains the plural in the film's title, is perfectly judged. To an audience for which such tales really were their everyday reality, it must have been powerful stuff.

Prismark10 Set in Italy after the second world war, Bicycle thieves is an example of Neo-Realism Italian cinema, looking at broken Italy and its broken people trying to survive in poverty.From the opening shot we can see Antonio Ricci as lost all hope. He is in the margins of society and suddenly there is a job opening for putting up posters that requires having a bicycle. However he has no bike, he pawned it. His wife Maria pawns their bed sheets and uses the money to get the bicycle back.For the first time in a long time Antonio believes life is on the up. With the wages and the family allowance he reckons he can look after his family. He finally has hope.This hopes come crashing down when his bicycle is stolen by an opportunistic thief and he searches all over Rome with his son Bruno looking for the bike and thief.Antonio gets increasingly desperate in the search for his bike, by the end he is humiliated and fatalistic. See Antonio almost get knocked over by a truck he does not care.There is a key scene at a restaurant with his son where Bruno eats a pizza and drinks water and Bruno sees a wealthy family eating a sumptuous lunch. Antonio explains to him how important this job was and the money he was going to make meaning he could afford treats like this for the family.Antonio may not had been good in his job but the film explored the men who were marginalized in Italian working class society and it was their wives who had to be practical in order for the families to survive.This is a raw film it is not an easy watch, you suffer as Antonio goes on his fruitless search and you will him to steal a nearby bike and just ride off.