Friday, February 5, 2010

#43 The Bicycle Thief: There's a cure for everything except death.

1948. dir. Vittorio De Sica, starring Lamberto Maggiorani, Enzo Staiola, Lianella Carell. Italian with subtitles.

Seen it before? No.

It's post-WWII Italy, and the economy is in the crapper. Lots of unemployment, and people are poor and hungry. This guy, Antonio Ricci (Lamberto Maggiorani, who was not a professional actor) gets a job hanging posters. Catch is he needs a bike to do it, and his is in hock. He un-hocks it and hangs some posters, but then the bike gets stolen! So then he has to go the basement of the Alamo, and then he gets a ride from a scary trucker named Large Marge, and then he dances to "Tequila" in a biker bar, and... oh. wait.

No seriously he spends most of the movie trying to track down his missing bike. He gradually becomes quite dickish about it, but I guess I can't blame him. The cops were funny when they kept basically ignoring him. It reminded me of the "Leads?" scene from The Big Lebowski.

Position on the list: 104
Daniel can read: Italian. The word "FINE" came on the screen, and Daniel says "That's the end!" Harvard, are you reading this?

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