Bicycle Thieves (EOTWS)

End Of The Week Shorts #46 extract: Bicycle Thieves (1948)

A true, undeniable masterpiece. No matter how many times I see this, the ending still punches hard and there is still more discovered. 

Just as much a film depicting the dishevelled state of society in post-war Italy as this is an allegorical journey towards reason, Bicycle Thieves is all about faith (fides, the make of Antonio's bike), or rather, its illusory nature. This then proposes a vast set of questions. How does one go on in a world of inertia and disrepair? What is suppose to motivate the hopeless? Who is to hear one man's cries in a sea of woe? Where is one supposed to set ones sights when tomorrow, the next few hours, the next few minutes, cannot be predicted? 

Feeling all of these questions at once, and dared to feel hopeful, to think we have a solution, we then watch our main characters enter the screen and fade off of it. The pain sets in, however, when we realise that this may as well be a real story, and though we know it, we are helpless to change it as it goes on without us.