In the name of the father
The Bicycle Thief
First Look presents two restored landmark films from the canon of cinema.
The time is post-WWII Italy, a moribund period crawling to economic recovery. Antonio, the protagonist in Vittorio De Sica's The Bicycle Thief, is an unemployed man handed a lucky break when he gets work putting up movie posters on city walls. The source of his livelihood - and freedom - is a new bike. But on his first assignment his bike is stolen and Antonio's search for the thief begins with his indefatigably spirited son Bruno (Enzo Staiola) by his side.
De Sica's masterpiece is authentically neorealist with its cast of amateurs and a proudly unremarkable story devoid of spectacle. These are hard-bitten ordinary people doing ordinary things in extraordinary times. "I've been cursed my whole life", says Antonio, whose desperation grows each day, not just through the search for the missing bike, but because of how he appears in the eyes of Bruno.
The role of the "father" weighs oppressively on Charlie's shoulders too in Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets. Charlie (Harvey Keitel) is an Italian-American man torn between his ambitions to climb the ranks of the local Mafia and his devotion to Catholicism. But in his attempts to seek redemption from the church he's on a hiding to nothing, as the film's narrator says: "You don't make up for your sins in church. You do it in the streets. You do it at home."
Scorsese's father Charles once said, "Marty never gave me much trouble", but added "my son is smart, smart in the way of books, but not as smart as me in some other ways." Father knows best? He does on Sunday.
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Published Thursday, 3 September 2009
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