Next, I have an Italian movie. It's subtitled, and it's really an awesome movie. It's 1948's Ladri di Biciclette (The Bicycle Thieves). It has 8.4 stars and is ranked #83 on IMDb's Top 250 List.

It's about an unemployed man, Antonio Ricci (Lamberto Maggiorani) who manages to get a job hanging posters, if he has a bicycle. He sold his bike to a pawn shop in order to get money for food, so he and his wife sell their bedsheets in order to get his bike out of hock so he can have this job. On the first day of work, his bike gets stolen. Reporting his stolen bike to the cops do nothing. The next day, he and his son, Bruno (Enzo Staiola) wander around Rome, looking for his stolen bike. The leads they get quickly fall apart. He thinks he found the guy that stolen his bike, but the neighborhood the young man lives in comes to the man's defense. At one point, Antonio is so desperate that he also steals a bike, but is quickly caught.

At the end of the movie, Antonio still hasn't found his bike.

This really is an incredible movie. And it feels real because it is real. It's depicting life in post-World War II Italy where poverty and unemployment was rampant. People would do anything to survive. None of the actors in this movie were professional actors. Lamberto Maggiorani was a factory worker that director Vittorio De Sica liked the look of. Enzo Staiola was 7 years old and plucked off the streets to play Bruno because De Sica liked his walk, and he's also incredible in this movie. Both actors made a few more Italian movies, but they remained pretty much amateurs.

And I think the amateur-ness works with this film. You're watching a real man and a real child deal with this horrendous crime. It may not seem like much to us, but the character is absolutely dependent on that bike to support his family. Since this man isn't a professional actor, there really is no willing suspension of disbelief. It's raw, stunning. You absolutely feel his sorrow, because this isn't a professional actor projecting these feelings. It's that of a real person.

Robert Osborne, the host of TCM Essentials, where I recorded this movie from, said that when he first saw this movie, he was dreading the ending. He knew he would have hated the ending if it had a Hollywood happy ending—Antonio found his bike, and all is well. And he was dreading the unhappy ending—Antonio doesn't find his bike. Obviously, at the end, Antonio hasn't found his bike. But, I agree with Osborne: this really is a perfect ending to the movie. It reflects life. Life in Italy at this time was tough, due to WWII. If it was actually real life, with a cameraman following a real guy, we wouldn't necessarily expect the guy to find his bike, although we would like it. Since this is almost a documentary shot with a very movie feel, the fact that he doesn't find his bike is kind of the perfect conclusion.

Life will go on somehow. Bike or no bike. We don't know how it will go on, and neither do the filmmakers. But it has to.

This film is part of the Italian neorealist movement. The movement was sprung up in the post-WWII era as retaliation against the idea that people need to use their imaginations in order to be happy in life—that real life is dull and boring. This movie is anything but dull and boring. It's actually kind of beautiful, how it's shot, and I can't praise the acting enough. The movement, like this film, attempts to bridge the beauty of imaginations with the beauty of real, everyday life and doing what people do—surviving in spite of the odds stacked against them.

In the end, I'd love to think Antonio found his bike. We just don't see it.

All right. Until next time.

Kat