“It's simple, my boy. What good is planting seeds if the soil rejects them? You plant, but don't gather. Understand?”

“I haven't understood a word.”

“She doesn't love you! Forget her!”

Similar to The 400 Blows being my first French film, Bicycle Thieves was the very first Italian film I’ve ever seen outside of A Fistful of Dollars, which is a very different type of movie. I didn’t have much of a reason to watch this other than to expand and hopefully improve my interest in foreign cinema, as it was just another movie that caught my eye as I was scrolling through HBO Max. The premise seemed incredibly simple, but I knew there had to be a lot more to it because of how highly regarded it was on Letterboxd and other movie platforms.

And a lot more to it there was. By far my favorite thing about Bicycle Thieves was its main themes and central message. It asks the question, “How far are you willing to go to support your family financially?” but also goes even further than that. As you get further and further into it, it starts to question the main character’s own morality and becomes a rather deep study into giving attention to what really matters the most in life, instead of your current financial situation.

Even though it’s still only an hour and a half, I was still pretty surprised by how well-paced it was as well. It barely ever slows down, but still manages to hold your attention all the way through. The characters are always on the move and in pursuit of the main goal at hand, which makes the entire movie really fly by.

The 1940s were also the decade where cinematography really started to pick up in movies, at least as far as how we look at cinematography today, and Bicycle Thieves has some pretty good camera work to say the least. It doesn’t really do anything mind-blowing, but the framing and especially the set pieces always looked neat and fairly precise in their design, which is always something I can appreciate. The “raining” section of the movie was also definitely the standout part, as far as cinematography goes.

I have to be honest, though, I was quite disappointed by Bicycle Thieves as a whole. The big problem that I really had a hard time looking past was the main character, Antonio. In pursuit of his bike, I found that especially once you got closer and closer to the end of it all, he just started to, to simply put it, make absolutely ridiculous decisions that didn’t really make much sense to me if I’m being honest. I get what the movie was going for, but I was also supposed to care about Antonio, as well as his son, Bruno, in both their relationship as well as their little adventure to find this bike, and I really don’t like saying it, but I never did much at all. I didn’t find Antonio to be a very relatable character because of the decisions he kept making, which made the moments that were supposed to really hit hard not really hit much at all for me, even if the message the filmmakers were going for was still a good one at the end of the day. This includes the ending, which I’ve seen a lot of people say they were very emotionally impacted by, but that just wasn’t the case for me, unfortunately.

I know this is still the 1940s, but I really didn’t think the acting in Bicycle Thieves was very good at all. I’ve even seen much better acting in movies from this time period, such as Casablanca and It’s a Wonderful Life (maybe it’s not fair to compare those, but still). I just thought that all of the performances were excessively over the top in a way that made it hard to see this movie as very grounded in reality, which it definitely needed to be.

At the end of the day, though, I see why people hold up Bicycle Thieves in higher regard to its impact on cinema as a whole. It has good direction, good thematics, and very good pacing, which made it clear the bar just enough for me to give a positive review on it. While I may have my fair share of issues with it, I would definitely be lying if I said I didn’t overall enjoy my time with it. I would still recommend it if you are interested in seeing classic Italian cinema or movies with good messaging.